Pat's Quilled 3D Christmas Tree & "Pattern"

We’ve had a lot of inquiries lately about the quilled Christmas tree on the web site. The tree is at least 20 years old by now but always causes people to stop and look at it. I thought it was time for me to write down some general instructions for those of you who would like to make one. When I first started making Christmas trees the only green available was the bright Christmas green. I prefer a darker green, like a forest green or hunter green, but that is a matter of personal taste. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you how much paper you will need because it will be determined by the size of the tree and how loose (or tight) your quills are Just be sure you have plenty of green so all of your paper is from the same dye lot. (I actually spray painted one of my trees because the greens didn’t match. YUK!) The tree is very simple to make. I started with a 4” circle cut from card stock for the base; I would normally use a dark color for the base but have started one on a white base to make it easier to see. My first row of quills was 6” teardrops which I glued (pointy side out) around the circumference of the base. My next row was 3” tight rolls which are glued on top (toward the back) of the teardrops. The rest is easy . . . just keep alternating rows of teardrops and tight rolls. Each row is glued farther back than the one before; the shape of the tree just comes naturally. You can make the tree in any size; mine are usually about 6” high. If you want a smaller tree, start with a smaller circle; for a larger tree use a bigger circle. The tree “trunk” is tight rolls (I use at four full strips to make them sturdy) stacked and glued together. You can make these with 3/8” strips so you don’t have to stack so many. Glue the “trunk” to the middle of the card stock base and then glue to whatever you are using for the base of the finished piece. (Mine is on a wood base that came with a glass dome.) I made my trunk about 1 ¾” high because I put little paper packages and quilled figures under the tree. The fun part is decorating the tree. I made lots of tiny bows from 1/16” wide paper. The candles are tight rolls made from ¼” paper strips about 1/12” long. Glue a bow to the candle base and put a 1” shaped teardrop for the flame. I use 12” strips to make little bells from silver paper (the new metallics are much prettier than what I used) and glue a bow to the top and a matching “clapper” inside. I also added some little yellow stars (using 5 one inch teardrops), Christmas balls (using 18” of paper is different colors), folded roses, and made red and white candy sticks by twisting the two colors into tendrils. This is my favorite type of tree, although I have also made some Victorian trees and decorated them with fans, hearts, roses, candles, and bells. Hmmm . . . maybe it’s time for new tree!

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I hope your Thanksgiving is filled with family, friends, and of course, lots of good food. It is my favorite holiday; a day spent with those we love without all of the “hoopla” of some of the other holidays. This year I have been reflecting about the special people in my life. My children, who are my biggest fans; my husband, who willingly shares his home with “Whimsiquills”, (it’s not a very big house!); Debbie, without whom I couldn’t run the business and of course our friends and families. But I am also thinking about the quillers I have met over the years and how they have changed my life. Malinda Johnston, (former owner of Lake City Crafts) has been a kind of mentor over the years. She encouraged me to start selling supplies, published some of my work in her books, and still stays in touch even though she has retired and moved on. I am grateful for a special group of quillers (Mary Alice, Ev, Donna, Bobbye, Kay, Gerta, Rita, Rick, Jinny, and Malinda), who were, and still are, so dedicated to this beautiful art form that they formed the North American Quilling Guild so American quillers have a way to stay in touch and learn from each other. I am thankful for my friend Andy Papineau (Paplin Products) who has worked so closely with us here at Whimsiquills. He has worked with us to develop tools (like fringers and crimpers) that were truly scarce just a few short years ago, and he has brought in all of the colors I’ve asked for as well as specialty papers. He also prods me to keep working on new quilling kits, which I never would have done on my own. I am also grateful to countless numbers of quillers, many of whom I have never met, who have written to me over the years, sending pictures of their work as well as those who have let me feature them is this blog. I have a great deal to be thankful for; I get to work at something I love and I enjoy all of the quillers I work with. I wish you all a Happy Thanksgiving and a happy healthy holiday season.

Quilling Can Be Therapeutic

Quilling can be therapeutic . . . thank goodness for that! Of all of the things I enjoy doing: walking, gardening, reading, playing the piano, and quilling . . . quilling is the one thing I can do even when I am exhausted and unable to focus. Just the simple task of rolling shapes to be used in making flowers or snowflakes, something very routine, seems to calm my mind. There are times when I just make teddy bears or roses or shapes for several hours at a time; it helps to still my mind while keeping my fingers busy. I mention this because the last month has been a very tough one for me, personally. I have not been able to find the time, or collect my thoughts enough to put together a post for this blog. I have just come back from Florida where I spent a week helping my sisters move my mother and her husband into an assisted living facility. At 86 & 83 years of age, both of them are in failing health; he has had multiple strokes and my Mom is very frail and is having serious memory issues. My family has been trying to convince them that they needed to be in a safe place, but naturally, the actual move was precipitated by a crisis. While all of this was going on, my 96 year old mother-in-law fell and broke her hip necessitating several trips to New Jersey. One of my sons was hospitalized with a kidney stone, and to top it all off my daughter’s house was totally flooded due to a plumbing problem. Her house has been totally gutted and she is living in temporary housing for the next several months. So what does all of this have to do with quilling? Well, I came back home to Connecticut last week, took a look around and just didn’t know where to start to “pick up where I left off”. (Thank goodness, Debbie was here most of the time . . . that is until everyone in her house got sick!) Since my brain seems to be non-functional at this time, I finally sat down and started quilling. I just started making marquises . . . I figured I could use them for daisy petals at some point in the future. While I was tranquilly rolling them, I started thinking about the upcoming holidays and decided I could use those marquises to make snowflakes; before long I was so engrossed in what I was doing that I forgot about how "frazzled" I was feeling. So while I was trying to clear the fog from my brain I played around and made a bunch of Christmas cards. Quilling is definitely better than Valium . . .

Directions for snowflake card: (in case you are interested)
I used the new Snow Bubbles punch on a white Paplin fold over greeting card. I then cut a 3’x4” rectangle from an accessory pack and used the border punch. I attached it to the front of the cart using a Dotto removable adhesive (so I could reposition it if necessary. I found the center of the punched rectangle by measuring diagonally across the rectangle. The snowflake was made from six 6” marquises which I glued into six 4” open V’s. I then made six 2” teardrops and assembled the snowflake right on the card. The tiny snowflakes in the corners were the “falls” from the punch. Quick and easy. Directions for Christmas ornament:
I used the Antique Elegance Circle Border Punch for the green background, positioned it the red card with Dotto removable adhesive. Then I positioned a white circle die cut (2 ¼”) on the punched background. I marked the center of the die cut and put a green 3” tight roll in the center. I placed six 3” tight rolls around the center. I made six green 3’ teardrops which I alternated with six 3” marquises around the tight rolls. For the border around the die cut I used eighteen 3” marquises and eighteen green 3” tight rolls between the marquises.

Meet Alise!

Today I would like to write about a new quilling friend. As you all know the tea cup has kind of become my personal “logo” if you will. I can’t tell you how many people have written to me about getting directions for the tea cup. I don’t work with patterns, but was able to provide general instructions as to how I created the tea cup. It is always fun for me to see the results. I’d like you to meet Alise:

“My name is Alise and I am 15 years old. I’ve been quilling for 5 years. I contacted you about how you quilled the teacup on your website and you gave me wonderful instructions. I added some sugar cubes and candy. I entered in our local fair and won a blue ribbon. I made a Christmas Faberge Egg for this year’s fair. I enclosed a picture of these projects and a framed picture that I also made.”

Of course I was delighted to see her work as you will be. I wrote back and asked permission to show her work on my blog and to get a little more information from her.

“I am fifteen years old, in the tenth grade and from Lynn, MA. I began quilling in the fifth grade after taking a class that was being offered at a local Michael’s store. I only know basic quilling but with that I found you can do so much. I’ve given many quilled gifts at Christmas and to my teachers. For the past four summers, during vacation, I’ve challenged myself to do bigger quilled pieces for our local agricultural fair – the Topsfield Fair and I have happily won four blue ribbons. I like to embellish my pieces with pearls, beads and especially Australian crystal rhinestones. The tea cup and saucer that was displayed on your website was my first attempt at a three dimensional piece. Although it was very challenging, I really loved the finished product. Besides quilling, I like to knit, play tennis and play my violin.”

In this age of “instant gratification” it is truly refreshing to see a young person willing to take the time to create. Thank goodness we have Alise to carry on our beautiful art.

Quilling with the Visually Impaired & Evangeline (Part 2)

In my August 7th post (Evangeline Enns & Quilling with the blind), I told you that Evangeline Enns was going to be working with some visually impaired people who wanted to learn to quill. We got a lot of feedback from that post, and I thought I would take a few minutes to update you on how it was going. I spoke with Evangeline yesterday. She has had two classes already and was busy preparing for her next class. She made shape charts for her “students” by gluing the actual quilled shapes to the chart (instead of printed shapes). This would give the new quillers a point of reference, they could feel the shape she was teaching them, and then make one of their own. She has her group finger rolling and said they seem to be pretty comfortable with that. They are working with ¼” wide strips and they are measuring and cutting them on their own. At their first session, (I forgot to ask how long each class is), she had them making teardrop shapes for flower petals, and they learned how to shape short strips to use as stems. At the next meeting she had them make marquises so they could add leaves to their flowers. She says they are an enthusiastic group and some of them want to make snowflakes! We talked about how they could do that with no visual pattern . . . but decided that if it were a simple snowflake to start, they would be able to feel the different shapes used . . . but the placement? I know many sighted quillers do use a pattern to get their snowflakes nice and even and suggested copying the patterns and then using a ball point pen or an embossing tool to go over the lines of the pattern. That would make a raised pattern on the back side of the paper. Most quillers that I know, who do use patterns, put a sheet of waxed paper or Mylar over the pattern and then lay their pieces on the pattern. I would think that using a piece of plastic food wrap instead of the waxed paper would allow them to “feel” the pattern through the plastic wrap. Once again I am asking for any suggestions or feedback from you, the readers, this is definitely a “learn as you go” project, but a very exciting one.

I also spoke with a quilling friend of mine who is legally blind, and who had put her quilling away when she lost her sight. When I told her about Evangeline’s classes, she decided to give it a try, once again. I will let you know how she makes out. We talked about the necessity for good organization for the blind . . . for those of us who are blessed with sight; we can have a messy workspace and just pick out the appropriate color strip from the pile on our tabletop. Perhaps organizing strips by color could be done by using the label makers available in office supply stores to label the front of plastic drawers or the top of the bags the strips come in. Once again, I am open for any suggestions.

Quilling Tool Lending Program/Quilling Teachers

Just in case you haven’t noticed . . . I love quilling. I am fascinated by “all things quilled”. I was so impressed with the “simple” designs quillers created for the Accord Calendar project a couple of years ago. Simple is in quotes because the projects were anything but. It took a great deal of creativity to create designs that used no more than 108” of quilling paper. I was blown away when I saw my first reliquary the year we had our quilling conference in Rochester, NY. My personal goals included creating my own quilling and helping to promote this little known art form. That’s why I worked towards organizing American quillers so many years ago helped in organizing what today has become the North American Quilling Guild. Of course, now I have Whimsiquills, the business that has taken over my home and a large portion of my life. I am still selling my work and of course selling supplies as well, but I find I don’t have much time left over. I don’t get to teach or demonstrate much anymore (unless we have a visiting quiller here at the studio). So how do I keep promoting the art?

We have come up with a program that I think is pretty unique, a lending program. When I talk to a scout leader or teacher who is planning to teach a group to quill . . . I tell them about our tool lending program. Most of these groups have a very limited budget (if any at all), so we send them the tools they need for their class at no charge, along with some other goodies (sometimes bookmarks or mat boards, whatever we have on hand). We also make sure they have links to our free patterns and instructional sheets which include things like a basic shapes chart and are all free and downloadable. We also encourage them to visit our blog http://www.quillingwithwhimsiquills.blogspot.com/ where we have all kinds of helpful info like teaching quilling. We have had an excellent response to this program.

Meeting Fellow Quillers in the Stranger Sitting Next To You

What are the odds of two strangers sitting next to each other on a bus and finding out that they are both quillers? Well I am no mathematician, but considering how few quillers there are in the world, I would assume the odds of that happening were very small. It happened in July. I had to spend some time with my mother and her husband who was recovering from multiple strokes. They live in The Villages, FL, which is an awesome retirement community (if you like Florida, which I do not, especially in July . . . UGH) When it was time for me to head back to Connecticut, I took a shuttle bus from the Villages to the Orlando airport. I was sitting on the bus reading, waiting to leave when a woman came over and asked if she could sit next to me. We got to chatting and I told her that I was going back home and needed to get back to work. She asked me what I did . . . (don’t you just hate that question, cause then you have to explain what quilling is to someone who never heard of it. Oh I just roll little bits of paper up and then pinch them into etc., etc., etc.-you know, you’ve all been there) Well, imagine how shocked I was when I told her I was a quiller and she responded that she was too! We spent a delightful hour and a half on the shuttle talking about quilling, how she got started quilling and how I got started. We talked about selling our work, and making quilled cards, who her teacher was, finding other quillers, the North American Quilling Guild and so on. You know the kinds of conversations quillers always have when they find each other. We exchanged email addresses and when I handed her my business card, she got so excited because she was visiting with Whimsiquills! So then the conversation shifted to my web site, and the blog and the different things I’ve done since starting Whimsiquills. When we got to the airport, we continued to “hang out” while we waited for our flights. She was heading to Long island, NY, so I let her know that the 2010 NAQGCON was going to be held there; she had missed the Tampa NAQGCON due to illness. One of the many things we talked about was a quilled doll she had made. I asked her to send me a picture because it sounded like a novel idea and I would like to post a picture on my blog. She said she used needlework canvas for the dress and placed the quilling on that. We’ve stayed in touch through emails and Facebook, and every time we “speak” we laugh about how we found each other. I guess it was just serendipity.

BTW I do have a page on Facebook and I have started a quillers group as well.