Quick and Not-so-quick Finishes

Today I have two finishes: a quick one that I made this afternoon, and a not-so-quick one that I worked on over the course of several afternoons.

 First the quick finish...a little sewing assistant for when I'm sitting in my recliner with some hand-stitching. 

I have been working on the Quilty 365 circles for a couple of months now and often find that I've lost a pin, or the scissors, or papers. It's been making me a little nuts. So today, finally, I decided that I'd try to end some of the nutty problems. I pulled out this pretty piece left over from a pajama pants project of a couple of years ago and left-over muslin from who-knows-what project.

A small pincushion on the topmost section, two pockets on my side of the arm and another pocket on the outside of the chair arm to slip the freezer paper patterns into will keep most of my things tidy and organized. Or so I hope.

The second finish, which took quite some time at school, is a painting of a cotton plant. Our students are very lucky since we have a wonderful art teacher. However, Leta's strongest skills are in drawings and graphic arts. 

Leta readily admits that painting is not her favorite or best medium, so she asked a painter to come in and teach a class or two. Since I know Kay, I asked to sit in on the lessons, and Kay graciously encouraged me to do so. Unfortunately, that couldn't happen because I had testing duties and a meeting to attend. 

Leta helped me out by applying the gesso and texture mediums to the canvas. I dropped in one afternoon to block out the painting and begin the background. I had the idea of painting the background blue, purple and yellow, but that did not turn out as I had hoped. 

It was pretty bad. The blue/yellow mixed into a greenish color and the purple/yellow made a horrible greenish color. I did not like it, so when I was able to get back into the classroom, I covered most of the green with shades of blue, leaving small bits of the original colors. 

A few days later, I was able to get back to the painting and enjoyed playing with the cotton bolls.  It took another afternoon of tweaking and cleaning up the painting. I'd have liked another class to get it closer to what I planned, but I decided to stop on Wednesday so that I could bring it home when we began our spring break on Thursday. 

And there we are. Two finishes, both of which I really like and hope you like them also. 

Linking up with

Crazy Mom Quilts
TGIFF, which is at Anja Quilts this week