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Archive for the ‘My creations’ Category

Daughter Love

Thursday, September 19th, 2013

MomQACover

My daughter, Lisa, can make be cry so easily, but in a good way. She has a way of making me feel valued and loved unconditionally. Today, she wrote a blog post about my cover for Quilting Arts. You can read it here on her blog, Today is Going to be Awesome. If you go to her blog, you can click around on her website and see what an amazing artist she is. She got a few facts wrong. I actually only started art quilting about 11 years ago when I was 64.

We are meeting with the realtor in a bit and then I am heading out to NW Quilt Expo. I have work in 3 special exhibits. If you are in the Portland area, I hope to see you there.

 

Better Results

Friday, September 6th, 2013

bluemoon2shrunk

This photo is a bit dark, but it will have to suffice. I stitched the other indigo blue moon to prefelt today and did some shrinking. I was more careful this time. I started the washer on regular wash with hot water and then stopped the machine and reset it to drain and spin after it had tossed around for about 5 minutes. Then I threw it in the dryer. It has a bit of pilling of the blue prefelt, but is not nearly as felted as the last piece. Here is a detail:

bluemoon2detail

Here is the stitching on the moon before I did the shrinking:

bluemoon2stitching

Now, I need to do some hand stitching and get it layered and faced. I also have to decide if I want to try shrinking it a bit more. We shall see.

Yesterday was a bit of a hiatus from studio work. I was doing SDA work, mainly creating some photoshopped artwork for a new Constant Contact newsletter. And, it was our 49th wedding anniversary. It usually falls on Labor Day Week-end, but was later this year. Hear we are, 49 years ago.

8432_1126513522230_2952794_n

I guess we need to do something special next year! Last night we went to one of our favorite restaurants and invited Steph and Jack to join us. We had a great time. It is always more fun to share good food and wine with others.

Blue Moon # 1

Tuesday, September 3rd, 2013

BlueMoon1

Here is my wonky and fun Blue Moon 1. It has been a bit tortured — felted more than I anticipated, combed and brushed to remove extra fuzz, beaded and then unbeaded. It is not a quilt, it is fiber art and I am happy with it. We have spent days on end together and I have grown quite fond of this piece.

Here is a detail of the moon and stitching. (Click on photo for larger view.)

bluemoon1detail1

And here is a detail of the other stitching.

bluemoon1detail2

Now, I will move on to Blue Moon 2 and see what kind of torture it will encounter!!

Mistakes and Fixes

Monday, September 2nd, 2013

bluemoonstitchand bead

I have been stitching and beading the blue moon quilt. I really like the stitching, but today, I took off all the beads and am so much happier with it. Photos tomorrow. I have some little circles that were created with a resist when I dyed this piece. They have really faded into the background and I needed to do something with them. I used white beads, but it looked awful . That is what really precipitated the removal of all the beads! I just did some wonky stitching around them.

mooncirclestitching

In fact, a lot more wonky stitching is happening!

I tried to blog yesterday, but my website was down for some reason. We went to the annual Art in the Pearl in downtown Portland yesterday.

artinthepearl2013

I really was not impressed with most of the art and craft.

Even I have decided that Aspens are over done. They were in prints, paintings, glass, everywhere.

ubiquitousaspens

Most of the wearable art began to look like the same old things.

wearableartinthepearl

I did enjoy checking out all of the demonstrations. This guy who is weaving was lots of fun.

weavingdemo

I loved this fused glass art. Very quilty don’t you think?

fusedglassart

So besides beading, what other mistakes have I made. Well, I have had one intestinal bug after another for several weeks, sometimes much worse than others. I decided it was not catching because Mr C did not get it. We eat almost the same things except for breakfast when I make a protein powder shake with frozen fruit. I have purchased and picked lots of fruit and vacuumed packed and put it in the freezer. A few weeks ago, I found the freezer door open and every thing had defrosted. It was still cold so I just refroze the fruit because it was going into a shake anyway. Now, I think it may be the culprit. So I have stopped using it and hopefully, I will be aok. It was a very tiresome problem. The funny thing is, I am usually so careful about stuff like that. Mr C? Not so much so of course I get the curse. Thank goodness for Pepto Bismol chewables!

Here is your cuteness for the day. Paige on her new bike! Gaaaa! Isn’t she the cutest?

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Making Lemonade

Thursday, August 29th, 2013

defuzzedindigomoon

I went to work on this piece which looked like a piece of wool felt after I had blocked it and it was dry. I removed lots of blue felt fuzz from the surface.

feltfuzz

I had this tool with my felting supplies. I am not sure what it is for, but it worked perfectly to remove the fuzz from this.

feltingtool

defuzzing

You can now see the organza. I stitched the rows a little close together. I won’t do that next time. I am now doing some beading with seed beads. My first task was to bead around the moon shape.

moonbeading

Now, I need to get creative with the beads. I am hoping to get a more organic pattern going on the moon. I will do some stitching with perle cotton, too.

We had a great dinner on Tuesday night with two couples from our neighborhood. I did some great cooking. We enjoyed a nice evening on the deck, great wine and intelligent conversation.