Artful Adventures

Sometimes the answer to having too much to do and not being happy with what you are doing is to change tack and do something completely different. Something that is undemanding and just plain fun.

So that is what I did. First of all you may remember that last year I participated in the #100days100blocks project on Instagram where we spend 100 days to make all the 100 blocks from the Tula Pink 100 Modern Quilt Blocks book. I am very happy with the resulting quilt that I will share you some time in the future when it goes off to it's first exhibition.

When I read that the project would be repeated this year with the hashtag #100days100blocks2017 I thought: no, definitely not. So why then did I find myself looking at my stash of African fabrics and thinking: would they work? With the excuse of tidying the drawer full of them, I was not so unconsciously looking at which ones would go well together. Why? Of course, I realized that I wanted to do it again. Very much so. The fabrics came out of the drawer and into a project box (that's how I keep organized) and a few weeks ago I found myself making the first block. These blocks are 6" (15cm) square so no huge investment in either time or materials, and I discovered that, yes indeed, the African fabrics look great in these blocks. You will be able to see them all on my Instagram feed daily. It all started yesterday with block 1 (seen above) and today it was time for block 2 (at the top of this blog post).

So much for my quilting activities but I also came across a fun project for art journaling, called Artful Adventures. This is organized by Nathalie Kalbach in honour of the publication of her book Artful Adventures (can't wait for it's arrival!). It's based on a stroll through your hood (neighbourhood) and everyone can participate. It consists of 30 days of photographic prompts as seen above. That's already very inspirational to me but it is accompanied by a series of classes and tutorials that use the photographs as a springboard to art. These are entirely free and all you have to do is sign up on Nathalie's website. Here is the link.

What I'm so looking forward to is seeing all the different neighbourhoods of all the people who sign up. They will all be so different, and spread all over the globe. It all starts off on Wednesday the 10th May with the first prompt: HOME.  Come and play!