Watercolour

Bobcat quilt pattern, Big cat quilt pattern | Whims And Fancies

I love cats and that includes big cats too. In March I got a request for a bobcat quilt pattern for a school mascot and accepted it right away. I wanted to give my block a stylized feel, so instead of using fabrics that would resemble fur, I focused mostly on just the colours.

The pattern is for a 16″ block. It has only a few seam alignment points, which makes the block easy to sew regardless of how complicated it looks.

Bobcat Big Cat Quilt Pattern | Whims And Fancies

Purchase Bobcat Pattern

The pattern also includes alternate sections without the stripes. That eliminates a lot of piecing and, in turn, a lot of sections. It is an intermediate-advanced pattern because of all the details. This large cat quilt pattern is available in my shop.

I really love how it turned out. I am not sure yet if I am going to incorporate the block as part of a quilt or make a wall hanging with it. Since I can easily imagine those markings on a kitty-cat, this block will always represent a cat to me.

Perylene Green Daniel Smith | Whims And Fancies

I have been playing with the colour green this month. We are always in need of bookmarks. I found a scrap of watercolour paper in the perfect shape of a bookmark on my shelf. After an exhausting Saturday, I painted these trees using Daniel Smith’s beautiful Perylene Green. I have been using the bookmark ever since.

Wildflower Expo Skyline Park Napa, CA | Whims And Fancies

Last weekend was the wildflower expo. Unfortunately, for various reasons we couldn’t make it there on Saturday when they would have had more plants. We went there on the cool and drizzly Sunday morning after breakfast. They still had a wide variety of local plants for sale. Although most of the plants were too young to have blooming flowers, there was a lot of information available and a group of very knowledgeable hosts to help educate us.

Wildflower Expo Skyline Park, Napa, CA | Whims And Fancies

These are the plants that came home with us.

Deep Purple Douglas Iris | Whims And Fancies

One of them is a Douglas Iris. I spotted this flower on one of the plants and that was immediately followed by the plant being in my little cart.

Other than sewing, painting and planning the garden, I have been updating my website a little. I added “Free To Imagine” as a tag line. I also created a new template for my pattern files so they have a better look and feel. It was a busy week, but the stolen moments of art gave me much-needed balance.

Happy Crafting,
-Soma

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This is a prime example of a project that would never end. It snowballed and continuously transformed into the next project. I had taken a passing photo of a stone bridge in Mull while travelling in Scotland. Although I quite often take photos with the intention of drawing them at a later date, this was not one of those photos. I simply took it because I love old stone bridges.

Stone Bridge, Mull, Scotland, Watercolour Painting | Whims And Fancies

Couple of years later, I found a watercolour painting meet in Los Angeles. I dug through my pictures and picked out the stone bridge photo to paint from. This was going to be a rough watercolour sketch, nothing special!

Stone Bridge, Mull, Scotland, Pen drawing | Whims And Fancies

Before I worked on the watercolour sketch, I decided to make a black and white value drawing. So one night I roughly sketched this small 3.5″ x 5″ piece. As I was using it as a reference for my watercolour sketch, my husband saw this, a few people at the meet saw this, and everyone asked me repeatedly why I had made it so small. I was told I should draw it much larger. They really didn’t get the point that it was a sketch. Couple of months ago, as I was rummaging through my little scraps for a drawing motif, my husband happened to see it again. I was promptly reminded that I should draw a larger version of this. So I finally did!!

North Sea Watercolour Painting | Whims And Fancies

All of this really started with this picture. This was the first drawing project I worked on while attending the group. I was playing with painting moving water on this watercolour sketch of the North Sea, from a photo I took in Scotland. I wanted to paint another picture with water in it, that reminded me of the stone bridge picture that I had wanted to paint. Thus the snowballing began!!

Stone Bridge, Mull, Scotland, Pen drawing | Whims And Fancies

My husband also insisted that I frame this one. He even picked out the mat board and the frame with me. I am ready to move on from the bridge. It is a bit ironic, isn’t it, Getting stuck on a bridge?!

Swirly Black And White Pencil Case | Whims And Fancies

I recently roped him into drawing as well. He has his own set of tools now, so I made a little pencil case for him. He picked out the fabric himself, he said it reminds him of fantasy stories. The bottom and the top pieces of the zipper were the same size when I started. I was playing with the serger and I just could not sew a straight seam that day. So the one side kept on shrinking. As I was thinking about starting on a new one, I finally got a straight seam at the very last moment. It is not the original size or the look I was going for, but he really likes it.

Projects sometimes tend to take a life of their own. What do you do? Continue on and see where it ends up or call it a day after a certain point?

-Soma

Bobcat In The Woods

A Snowballing Project