Studio52: Eiffel

It saves a lot of time using a stencil for the city streets and fabulous fabrics from my stash...

Viking Ship Museum map / Oslo, Norway

My sister and I went to Oslo last fall with the intention of traveling north to the town our ancestors were from.  Never made it there....  Too many wonderful things to see in Oslo, and we ran out of time. 

We both enjoyed the Viking Ship Museum.  My sister as a scientist and I as a librarian and artist.  We travel well together finding wonderful memories every time we venture out on a new adventure. 

To document this fabulous museum, I created a map of it for this week's Studio52 map:

studio52 - island map

This is the last of my fabric maps of where I live. This map is the area we call, "the island". When the water is up, the creek runs in a ditch on the left side creating an island. On the island, my husband built a summer cottage. I dye fabric here during the warm months. My 3 pixies used to make potions and play island girls, but alas, the youngest turns 15 this month and play time with them is limited...

Cruise / Panama Canal

We are home.  While on our cruise I did a bit of art.  Once again, I took too much along to work on!  I did manage to work on this fabric map of our port stops.  The ports need to be labeled, but the pile of laundry and empty refrigerator must come first...

studio 52 week 7: Fairy Circle map

I'm continuing with maps of our yard.  This week is, "The Fairy Circle".  This little finger of ground was a turn around on the walking path.  As the years have progressed, I started planting hostas and other shade loving plants.  A few years ago, Jon built a little cottage for summer reading, painting, and dreaming. 

Studio 52 week 6 - my yard

Map of my yard:

Yes -  it needs more stitch and embellishment...  These weekly maps are to be quick and without too much thought and stitching takes me way too long. 

This map would be on a beautiful sunny summer day.  Here's the yard today!

Studio 52 week 5 / My yard!

During the month of February I am creating maps of my yard for my studio 52 weekly project.  This little map is my walking path back to the area we call "outback" and "down under".  Outback was an open field when we moved in.  Jon kept it mowed and planted a zillion trees, which are now of good size (after 10 years). 

This map began as a piece of lime green burlap that begged to be gelli printed.  I used a fabric glue stick to attach the paths and then machine stitched them in place.  A bit of stitch adds a layer to the pine trees outback and you can faintly see the fence on the east side of the property. 

studio 52 week 2 / Linnaeus Garden

Realized that I had not posted #2..

Made the decision after this little piece to forget trying to piece and to move ahead with layering my fabric with fusible web or glue.

Credit to Kate Beaton for her adorable sketch of "wee Carl Linnaeus " that I used with free motion stitching. Check out her site: Hark! A Vagrant. 

The Linnaeus Garden is in Uppsala Sweden . Carl developed a method for the classification of the plant kingdom. (Your history and science lesson for today).

studio 52 week 4 / Asige Sweden

I visited Asige with my cousin, her daughter, and my son a few years ago.  It was the village that my great grandfather Henry Nelson migrated to the states from in the 1860's.  What a wonderful feeling to walk on the ground that he called home.  My quick little map used stitch and inktense pencils.

Studio 52 - week 3 Jardin du Luxembourg

I am feeling horribly behind with life.  At least I did get closure with the guardian battle with my aunt.  After 2 long days in court, the judge ruled that a third party would handle her affairs.  Now she is safe and her assets are safe.  My job is done.

Next order of business is to start doing more art (and clean my house)...  

Week 3 - map of Jardin du Luxembourg in Paris. This garden was inspired by Boboli Gardens in Florence created upon the initiative of Queen Marie de Medici in 1612. 


It was fun to watch children (of all ages!) play with boats on the pond. Since it was my favorite part of this garden, it is my focal.

I used fabric, stenciling, applique and stitch to make this little map.  

Studio 52 - Gamla Uppsala

I signed up to participate in Studio 52 (on facebook).  During the year we are encouraged to create weekly art for ourselves.  This type of project came at a good time for me as I explore my new world of retirement.  While unpacking from my trip, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of maps I had picked up from various places.  Maps of cities, subway maps, art museum brochures with maps, etc.  It was pretty easy to pick a theme of Maps & Places for my year of a series.

To challenge myself, I will be working in fabric.  I would like each map to be functional in a quilt (it can be washed in the washing machine). 

#1 map is Gamla Uppsala, Sweden.  I'm not totally happy with how it turned out, but one must start somewhere.  I scanned the image and then printed it as large as possible on an 8 1/2 x 11 paper.  From there I used tracing paper to create a "map", (or pattern), for my quilt.  This first block was a great learning experience and gave me some hints on what not to do in the future.

It was missing something...

Yes, words make a difference!