Quilled Baby Gift

We brought our baby girl home last August and this is the first piece I have quilled since before her birth. I’ve turned down a couple orders over these months, but couldn’t resist doing this one as I got to quill a tree and bluebirds! It was fun to put together, but I think this may be the only one I do again for awhile. Perhaps the quilling will come out again this summer when things slow down a bit…

I’ve removed the last name and birthdate (day) for privacy; I’m sharing that so it is not assumed that the red bird is randomly floating in the air. The fox was a first for me and the dog in the grass is based on a photo of the family’s dog. Of course, the 3 bluebirds in the tree represent the happy family. 🙂

Flowering Tree

I hadn’t quilled trees in a long time before this project and had missed them very much.  That’s why there are a zillion photos with this post.  Enthusiasm.

This order was for the same family who ordered the “Family Fun” piece.  That piece was for the mother and this piece if for her oldest daughter.  The request was for a tree and a butterfly (to represent the daughter).  The tree, it was suggested, could be inspired from Shel Silverstein’s The Giving Tree.  And it was… kind of.  All the same, I was very pleased with how it turned out.  It has a very simple look to it, and I really like the color added by the blossoms.  There is quite a bit more open space (I can’t remember what the “artistic” term for that is) than usual, which was intentional.

The trunk is basically a bunch of marquee rolls all squished together.  I line the sides of the trunk with a single strip of paper just to smooth out the appearance.  The leaves are also marquee rolls, I think they were mostly 4″ strips, 1/8″ wide.  I used 3 shades of green for the leaves and 2 shades of brown for the trunk.  The blossoms were mostly 1″ tight coils.  Honestly, this is a piece a beginner could make… the shapes are very basic and the creative options (i.e., the shape of the tree, how to place leaves, blossoms, bluebirds, etc.) are endless.  This was a very fun piece to quill and I look forward to doing more trees in the future.

The photos show the piece from just about every angle.  I blurred out some of the birthday for the sake of privacy.

Bear and Pig Classic

One of my adorable nephews was born in late 2008.  I was teaching 3rd grade at the time and had very little time for quilling, but this was my sister and her husband’s first baby and I knew I wanted to quill something special to present to him on his birth day.  They did not find out the gender of their little one until he was born, but they had the nursery done in Classic Pooh so that is what I used for inspiration.  I’ve included a photo of the painting so you can compare it to the quilled version.  The 2 are considerably different, but I was still satisfied with the results—I feel that the quilled version still captures that special moment between the eternal friends without duplicating the painting exactly.  I was especially pleased with the way the tree turned out and Piglet is definitely “Piglet”… my Winnie the Pooh still bugs me to this day; I feel he lacks proper likeness and, also, his left arm is a bit misshapen.  I had the piece professionally framed and, though I could fix Pooh’s arm, it would mean dismantling the lovely frame, so I suppose the arm will always look that way.  Of course, I had to add bluebirds—they work really well in this scene!   I visited my sister and her family this past week, saw the piece hanging in my nephew’s room and decided to share it now—almost a year and a half after completing it (I wasn’t blogging back then).

Where does the “Bear and Pig” thing come in?  Well, I have no idea what the rules are about copyrights and whatnot, so anytime I do a piece based on licensed characters (which I typically try not to do), I am careful to refer to it in generic terms.  I’m sure it’s unnecessary, but it’s become sort of a comical thing and it can’t hurt to be careful.  🙂

A Family Tree

You may remember a similar piece from this past spring—a friend of the person who ordered that piece decided she would like one for her mom as well… so here it is.  I was happy to be able to do this one again because it is so full of symbolism and it features 2 of my favorite things to quill—trees and bluebirds!  If you’d like to read more about the symbolism, please view my post from April 28th, “A Take on the Family Tree”.

The challenge with this particular order was the numbers… in the first family tree I made, the recipient had 7 kids, 4 kids-in-law, and 5 grandchildren which made for an easily-balanced piece.  This recipient has 4 children, 3 kids-in-law, and 9 grandchildren.  I originally made the apples (representing the children) the same size as I had for the first family tree, but that looked all wrong… the apples were small and got lost in the tree.  So I added 2 inches to the length of the paper strip to makes the apples and that made a big difference.  4 apples made from 8-inch strips instead of 6-inch strips, on a tree that size, seemed a bit more proportionally correct.  I was also concerned about the number of saplings (one for each of the 9 grandchildren), but I found that varying their heights and making them slightly smaller than they were on the first piece worked out very well.

It was originally going to be sold unframed; however, I found this frame at the store and, because of the unique size of the piece (9″x11″), I grabbed it.  I figured it would be nice for the buyer to only have to worry about purchasing a better mat (the mat that came with the frame was the wrong color and cut crookedly) than to have to bother with getting it custom-framed, which can easily run over $100 because of the height of the piece.

The photos show a little of the process as well as the final product… enjoy!  🙂

Another Tree… or is it?

I’ve recently moved and have finally (and officially) taken my quilling stuff out of storage… yay! The first project completed at our new apartment was to fulfill an order for a 5″x7″ piece featuring the Scripture passage Proverbs 3:5-6 and the colors brown and pink.  While some sort of symbolism might be able to be derived from this piece (and surely this passage deserves some sort of symbolism), I really just wanted it to look earthy, not too frilly, and I wanted the quilling to resemble something between a tree and a vine.  It’s what I visualized immediately upon receiving the order (before I even knew what Scripture passage the customer would be using) and it turned out exactly the way I imagined.  This fact is somewhat significant because most of the time, I do not have an exact picture in my mind of how I want the a piece to turn out… which is why, when I speak about my pieces, I tend to anthropomorphize them in a sense, like they have a life of their own and tell me when they are complete or tell me what needs to be added or taken away.  Such was not the case with this one, which is OK now and then.  Sometimes it’s nice to have a picture in your mind and then create something that is identical.  I found it quite gratifying.

I think my favorite thing about the piece is that the tree/vine is exactly that… it is very tree-like because it clearly has a trunk, but the trunk almost appears to unravel as it takes on more vine-like qualities.

I wish I had been more careful with the 3rd photo (with frame) because you can totally see my reflection in the glass… oh well.  🙂

Quilling for Boys

Quilling, in my opinion, seems to have an inherent “girly” quality to it, so when the opportunity came to quill a keepsake for a little boy who was about to turn 1-year-old, I  took it on as a fun and interesting challenge!  I decided to do  an outdoor scene with an apple tree, complete with tire swing, and a small variety of toys sort of scattered around on the “grass” (which is painted).  The tree was not my usual type with the swirling leaves; instead, I fringed several strips of green paper and made little pom-poms that filled in to create the green part of the tree.  I also included an airplane in the scene because most little ones are quite taken by things that fly and airplanes also happen to be featured in this little guy’s nursery.  The dragonfly was added right at the end when I needed something to put in that big blank space.  I think if I were to do it over again, I would probably scrap the scene and just do the first initial of the child’s name much larger with maybe one or two quilled enhancements.  The important thing is that the recipient (well, his mom anyway) really liked it, so I’m happy with it too!