Nature

One way to encourage your creativity is to spend time in nature.  It doesn't matter where you go or what you do, just make sure you are away from concrete and asphalt.

Talk a walk in the park.  Work in your garden.  Go on a nature hike in nearby woods.  My favorite place is the local zoo.  I love to walk the trails and watch the animals.  Its design helps me feel isolated and I forget I am in the middle of a city.  No street sounds, no city smells.  Just the animals and trees.  Just nature.

Nature heals.  There is a psychological theory that the more we move inside to buildings with central heat and air with windows which don't open and surround ourselves with all the modern conveniences and technology, the more mental illness we will suffer.

   

Nature keeps us grounded. It slows us down, focuses us.  It moves and blooms and grows in its time, not ours. If we want to watch a butterfly, we have to do it now not when our cell phone call is over.  Nature fuels our core of energy, our creativity.

Nature inspires.  I bet there isn't an artist now or in history who hasn't painted, written, danced or sung nature.  Nature shows that there are endless possibilities to everything.  In nature there isn't one bird, flower, or tree but a multitude.  There isn't one color green or purple but infinite shades of each.  One never lacks if one is in nature.

If your creativity is slow in starting or has stalled altogether, spend some time in nature this week. I know it helps me, I have a feeling it will help you.  

                                                                   Floral Coduroy Fabric

                                                          Heavenly Gardener Applique Pattern

© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion

Cookie Cutters Aren’t Just For Cookies

Cookie cutters used to be for Christmas but now there are cutters for every holiday or occasion you can imagine.  But you know you can use cookie cutters for more than just cookies.  They are great shapes for kids crafts, appliqué, needle felting, and punch needle.

pompom ornaments

I use pumpkin, bell and star cookie cutters for kid’s crafts at the market.  I trace the cookie cutter on to paper, scan them on my printer so I can enlarge them to the size I need (although I have pumpkin cutters in various sizes).   I print them out on cardstock, cut them out and punch a hole in the top then add yarn for a hanger.  Give them to the kids to glue whatever they want on it or just color them.  I was given pompoms of various colors so we have been using those.  

cat applique

witch applique

               

I have also used them for appliqué.  Again just trace the cookie cutter; cut it out on fabric and sew it down.  I like the cat and witch cutters my mom had as we were growing up.  They were great appliqués for my Halloween quilt (which one of these years I will finish).

punchneedle heart

I enjoy punchneedle embroidery.  Recently I found some tie-dyed embroidery floss and wanted to see how it would look stitched out.  So I took several sizes of my heart shaped cookie cutters and made myself a little heart using the floss.  

needle felted acorn and leaf

Cookie cutters are also a great shape for needle felting.  As long as the cutter is open on both ends, you can place your roving in the cutter and needle felt until the roving takes the shape of the cutter.  Then once you have finished felting it, you can use it as an appliqué, sew a thread hanger through it for an ornament or glue a magnet on the back and put it on your frieg.  (I’ll have a future blog concerning needle felting in a shape.)

make cookies

Making sugar cookies is so much fun and decorating them with children creates memories but using your cutters with fabric and thread (or glue and pompoms) is a way to keep the cookies forever.  Cookie cutters aren’t just for cookies anymore.

© 2016 Cheryl Fillion

Gratitude

A couple of years back, I was going through a rough time.  It seemed like everything was falling apart.  I wanted to emphasize the good in my life.  So I started a daily gratitude list and posted it on my personal Facebook page. 

Research shows that gratitude along with other positive emotions has beneficial affects on our health.  The more one experiences positive emotions, the more our immune system is strengthened and the less stress we feel.

As I started to write my daily gratitude lists, I found that I felt better.  I was happier.  I tended to be more optimistic.  The more I looked at what was good in my life, the less the negative seemed to be in my thoughts.

Gratitude is just being thankful; thankful for the people in one’s life, one’s health, one’s talents, anything that makes life enjoyable.  I don’t always emphasize big things like family, friends, work or my health in my lists.  Sometimes I am just thankful someone invented ice cream or that my fish made me smile or that the sun is out.

Thanksgiving is the perfect time to start a gratitude list. Looking at the things for which you feel gratitude will make you feel better and if nothing else,  it will just make you smile.

Heart Quilt Bloc Fabric

© 2016 – Cheryl Fillion

Fabric Yoyos: Tutorial

Fabric Yoyos are simple to make.  You can go to your local fabric or craft store and find a tool that will help you make all kinds of size or shape yoyos.  Or you can make them the old fashion way with just a circle of fabric.  If you are sewing the yoyos together for a quilt or table mat, you might want to make all the yoyos the same finished size.

To determine the size of circle to start out with, you need to know the finished size you want then to be and cut a circle 2 times plus 1/2” (for seam allowance) of that finished size.  For example, if you want a yoyo 1 1/2” in diameter, cut a piece of fabric 3 ½” in diameter.    

        

Now fold over the edge (about a ¼” ) of the circle to the wrong side of the fabric and start a running stitch like a basting stitch around the circle. I hide the knot of my thread under the fold of the edge.  (I usually use the same colored thread as the fabric but I am using a contrasting thread here so you can see the stitches.) You can iron the edge down before you start sewing or just fold it over before you take the next stitch. 

I double my thread to make it stronger to pull the gathers.  But if a single thread works for you, go for it.  

One tip I learned is to make the stitches not tiny like quilting stitches but bigger stitches. Mine are usually about ¼”.   When the yoyo is finished, there will be a hole where the stitches are gathered. The bigger the stitches, the tinier the hole.  

You can gather the stitches as you are sewing or wait until you get to where you started stitching.   .  

Then gather up the circle and knot it. I try to get the knot as close to the gathers as I can, then pull the thread through the gathers before I cut it off.  You don’t have the tail of the knot showing in the opening that way

You will probably need to flatten the finished yo-yo out after you have cut the thread. You might have to adjust where the edge fold goes to get the hole in the middle.

And that is your yoyo. Now just make however many more you need for your project.

To sew the individual yoyos together, arrange them in the way you want them.   You can have them so all the gather holes show or have them so that the flat side shows.  Usually I want to see the gathered holes.  I think it is more interesting and more textured.

But occasionally when I am doing an ornament where it might swing around on the hanger, I will alternate the yoyos: one gathered next to one that shows the flat side.  It makes it more symmetrical.

Now to sew the yoyos together: Pick up two yoyos.  If you have all the yoyos facing with the gathered side up, you want to place the flat sides together.  If the yoyos have the flat side up, you want to put two gathered sides together.   If you are alternating a gathered side with a flat side, the yoyos you place together should be a gathered against a flat side.

Now slip your needle through the hole and under the gathers coming out at the edge of the yoyo.

Pull the needle through so the knot is hidden in the gathers.  Pulling the needle through the second yoyo, take a little stitch securing them together (Note: I usually use the same colored thread as my fabric. I am using contrasting thread here so you can see the stitch.)

                                                          

                                                              

Take a couple more little stitches to secure the yoyos together.  Make a knot and slip the needle through the gathers of the yoyo (like you did when you created the yoyo) and clip your thread.  That is all there is to it.  Now just repeat the stitches for all the other yoyos until you are finished with your project..

Here is my completed ornament.

©2016  Cheryl Fillion