Lark Crafts

It’s the time of year when Mom looks forward to my cooking! I’m no baker, but I love making pumpkin pie—and I go all out. Canned pumpkin is no good in my opinion, so I start with a fresh pumpkin. All sorts of pumpkins can be found at the local farmers market. This year I discovered a “peanut pumpkin,” so called for the rough numbly growths on its shell you can see in the above photo to the right. Kudos to anyone who can name all the pumpkin kinds shown. I used the long candy roaster for my first pumpkin pie of the season.

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If you’re in New Orleans, be sure to check out a new exhibit of jewelry by legendary beader Joyce Scott, some of it in collaboration with jewelers Shana Kroiz and Lauren Schott. The show is at Thomas Mann‘s Gallery I/O.

What’s a doll quilt book without a few dolls? We had the same thought while working on Pretty in Patchwork Doll Quilts and came to this conclusion: you can’t! Cathy Gaubert swooped in to save the day with a trio of cute dolls and stuffies, perfect for snuggling under freshly made doll quilts.

Download the instructions for this sweet doll, made from scraps and with a bit of craft felt:
Hello, Dolly!

Your holiday gift shopping just got a lot easier! Read on to see how you can enter to win the entire Lark Studio Series, eight books in all, and give the gift of art to the special people in your life. The hard part will be deciding who on your list gets which book–and whether you can bare to part with them at all! Each Lark Studio Series book is like a portable art gallery, offering over a hundred images on a given theme, as culled from our best-selling 500 series, on the topic of  Handmade Dolls, Ceramic Sculptures, Tables, Earrings, Handmade Books, Chairs, Pendants, or Art Tiles.

Here are some sneak peeks from a few of the books to get you excited. You can click on the images to take a closer look.

Lark Studio Series: Ceramic Sculptures

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Quilt Festival special exhibits, interviews, classes, recaps…our blog this month has been a flurry of quilt event coverage. We hope all those that didn’t make it to Texas this year enjoyed our view from the blog! If you’re just clicking over for the first time in a while, our needlearts tab has all the Quilt Festival posts you might have missed.

But before we wrap up our quilt crazy month, we do have one last goody to share: quilt books of course!

We’re giving away a bundle of three Lark quilting books: Twelve by Twelve; Pretty in Patchwork: Doll Quilts; and Masters: Art Quilts, Vol. 2.

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Thanksgiving: for some of us this means a long table laden with traditional fare, surrounded by family and friends, akin to the classic Norman Rockwell scene. For others of us, this means a small, intimate circle of those we love best, enjoying a potluck of flavors and conversation that collectively suit us to a T. Some of us abandon the kitchen and enjoy the warmth of restaurants, and some of us spend the better part of the holiday in our cars, traveling to and from our destinations.

 

We each have our own signature traditions, rituals, and visions for Thanksgiving, and we each enjoy it in our own way. You, of course, recognize that the foundational element of the holiday, however, is less about turkey, football, or mega sales. It’s about giving thanks—reveling in the thankfulness and gratitude we feel all year long.

 

As we trundle on toward winter and its accompanying coziness, I thought it might be nice to think about the tangible nature of giving thanks, to be inspired by those who combine gratitude with the art of handmade. Thank you to the Etsy artists featured below for creating such beautiful work.

 

And Happy (early) Thanksgiving, friends.

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Hope Soars photo :: from Raceytay

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Embroidery Hoop French Knot Color Progression :: from sometimesiswirl

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One of my favorite parts of Quilt Festival has got to be the classes. I have to admit: I’m a bit of a make-it-up-as-I-go,  do-it-myselfer. But the chance to take a class with someone who’s good at what they do and can explain it well is simply something I can’t pass up. And that was definitely the case this year…

I was lucky enough to get into a class with Jean Wells Keenan called Intuitive Color and Design (which is the title of her first book). I was familiar with her work, and I was excited to put some energy into thinking about color. The class started with everyone grabbing five strips of fabric from a table. We then went around the room and discussed the selections… talking about theory, how the colors worked together and played off one another… and we each got a chance to add a sixth strip of color based on what we had learned (enter the nice, bright coral orange). I learned so much! Though I did cheat a little: I snuck some solid dark teal in with me.;)

On to the piecing! Jean showed us some tips for easy pieced curves and then we moved on to a bit of free piecing (which may be headed for pincushion-dom).

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Since my focus at Lark is on beading books, you know that while I cruised the SOFA expo floor, I had my eye peeled for any type of work made with beads. Before sharing photos with you, I want to mention names of artists whose work I saw and photographed on my first night there. Aaarg! Due to technical difficulties with the camera (give me a hammer—I’ll fix it once and for all!) I lost those images, but you can check out these links:

Iris Eichenberg–the head of Metalsmithing at Cranbrook has used beads in some of her work. To see these pieces, once you’re on her website, check out the series called Pink Years Later.

Iris Tsante–Beads? Not beads? Let the arguing begin! (Do weigh in by leaving a comment.)

Isabell Schaupp—a jeweler who uses beads in a yummy, caviar-like way.

John Garrett–a basket maker who uses beads with some frequency, as shown in this link.

Marcus Amerman–I just saw one beaded vest, but his website features other types of really interesting work.

Okay, now on to the photos.

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