Greetings once again; I’m back with the other things we did this past weekend. First, a follow up on the “string art” butterfly on yellow acrylic. The finished product. I love the laser for detailed work like hole punching. I wouldn’t have the patience to do it manually on paper at the scale that the designs print out on paper. The holes are so tiny and spaced so closely together.

We hadn’t ever cut balsa wood before. I had always been curious about sewing on it; most people do machine embroidery on it but I had an idea I wanted to pursue so I wanted to do an all over “fill stitch” pattern instead, using a regular sewing machine instead of an embroidery machine, and I wanted a back ground color instead of the natural finish of the wood. I painted it with watercolor paint and sewed the leaf pattern after it dried.

In the video below I misspeak about why the wood has a tendency to split while sewing on it. It isn’t when the NEEDLE is parallel to the grain, it’s when your stitching line is parallel with the grain that you’re most at risk for splitting. As you can see, these stitching lines go every which way and there are multiple stress fractures in the wood. I’ll use a fusible stabilizer the next time I try this to see if that helps. Here is the video of the test grid and cuts.

A year later there is still much more to learn and new ways to use this laser. It’s an ongoing adventure!

Free motion quilting is an art and a skill that takes most people many years to cultivate. This is certainly my own experience. I use my practice pieces in a few different ways but making quilted appliqués for greeting cards is by far the most fun way I use them. This time, some summery themes!

I always try to work ahead; fall and Halloween always sneak up on me so I asked Cameron to make my mom and me a raven stamp for the backs of the cards we make.

The raven is a bit of an inside joke in that my mom had an art instructor who hated her painting of a raven and begrudgingly allowed her to enter it into an exhibition…and it was so well received that it won second place! I wish I had a photo of it to share here, but it is phenomenal! So, I had to do my own raven in a quilted foundation paper piecing pattern.

Thus, the raven stamp was a hit!

I’m caught up now but do have one more surprise I can’t yet share, but I will show it to you as soon as I can.

Get out there and make something!

Dana