Evolution - 25 years of Turning - WBAW entry to the AAW Symposium

This is what the amazing people in my turning club put together this month for the 25th AAW symposium. There are 25 miniatures (1.5"cube max dimensions) representing all different types of turning. The carousel was also turned! It's hard to see the details of all the miniatures, but I got to see them in person at the last meeting and they are ridiculous! All of the lids to the boxes are removable and they are hollowed, there's tiny carving and burning on some. There's even a segmented piece in there with over 100 pieces! 

I've got a lot to learn from these folks! 

Mario and Princess Pillows

A year and two weeks ago some good friends of ours got married. At the time I had a bit of free time on my hands so I wanted to come up with something fun to make them for a gift. They are both Mario fans, to the point where the cake topper at the wedding was Mario and Princess, so I decided to stick with this theme and design a pair of pillows.

I found some small images online and messed around with them until I was happy with the size, layout and breakdown of the colours.

I then took my pattern pieces and traced them onto fusible interfacing.

I had some neat batik fabric that suited the cartoonish style, and I luckily found the remaining colours in a similar pattern at a local fabric store. I then started fusing the interfacing to the back of each piece. 

Here they are all fused together on the background

Next came the painstaking process of  slowly and carefully zigzag stitching all around everything.  

This was by far the most time consuming  and scary part, but it was worth it though, it makes it pop so much more!

They make quite a cute couple, especially with the checkered border.

Here's is Mario complete with piping!

And Peach!

They can look adoringly at each other from opposite ends of the couch. 

Or cuddle up next to each other!

Turning over a new leaf

As I mentioned in my last post, I was letting this blog slip; Well that was 6 months ago! I realized my main issue with the blog was that although I love woodworking, it isn't really what the majority of my projects are focused on at this time. I hope to make it more so as I get better at it, and have more time to focus on it. But over the past few years, I have found myself coming up and making projects as needs arise and they are in all sorts of mediums such as sewing, paper, photography, lego etc. and I'd like to document those as well. So as of now this will be a blog about all the random stuff I make! I have a bunch of cool things that I've been wanting to share somewhere so there'll be some catching up to do for a while, but it should be fun! So I hope you come along for the ride!