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Archive for the ‘Quilting Friends’ Category

This and That

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

These are three of the quilts that Jane Sassaman brought with her for her lecture at Columbia Fiberarts Guild tonight. She is so talented and a genuinely funny woman. We had such a great time hearing her artistic journey. Here is a bad iPhone photo that I took before the meeting.

Before the lecture, we had a SAQA gathering for dinner and lots of chatter. Here are Terry Grant and Suzy Bates waiting for the guild meeting to start. I will be seeing them tomorrow morning for STASH. It is my quilting friends week!

I finished cleaning up my studio and office. Now, I need to have some inspiration strike. I need to get a studio practice going once again. I have been in a slump. Wish me luck!! It would help if I stayed home. LOL!

Mental Health Day

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Three of my friends, Terry, Suzy and Gale, joined me for a mental health break today. Terry, my intrepid chauffeur on so many Oregon jaunts, drove today through some rather nasty rain. I appreciate so much that she is willing to do this!! Above is a view of our destination, Cynthia Corbin’s exhibit at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center.

Our first stop was at the Blue Heron for a delicious lunch and tasting of cheese and other products.

Then on to the Latimer:

Here are some more shots of the show. They are not my best photography!

Cynthia creates beautiful abstract compositions from her delicious fabric. Many of them used oil paint sticks in big swooshing designs – like those big X’s.

This charming alpaca was staring at me in a fenced in yard near the center.

Our next stop was at the Tillamook Cheese Factory. I had a delicious single scoop of Utterly Peanut Butterly ice cream. I didn’t buy any cheese, but I couldn’t resist these ice cream buckets for 50 cents each for dye pots!!

And here is a shot of the ubiquitous Tillamook cows.

Tonight, Mr C and I went to Trinity for Wednesday night dinner and a class on medical and end of life forms and programs like advanced directives and hospice care, etc. It was very interesting.

Tomorrow, I start the big studio clean up so that I can find the space to make some fabric and art.

Spicy Beads

Saturday, May 28th, 2011

I received a shipment of machine felting needles yesterday that seem to be working very nicely in my Bernina attachment. I got a lot of work done on one of the collages yesterday without too much  breakage.

Today, I went to a bead store to look for some spicy beads for further embellishment. I like the colors and the assortment that I found. I am not sure if or how much beading I might do, but I wanted to have something on hand just in case.

It has been a catch up day here at our house. We did some neatening and cleaning. I did three loads of laundry. Mr C used his new power washer to clean out gutters and clean moss from the roof shingles. We are beginning to wonder how much longer we want to have this place to take care of. It is a lot of work, but we love the benefits of having a home large enough for entertaining and my fabric habit.

I am so excited and happy for my friend Bonnie Bucknam, who won Best of Show for Quilt National 2o11. She is an accomplished quilter and artist. On top of that, she is a very caring and sharing member of our High Fiber Diet group and the Columbia Stitchery Guild.  She has been a driving force in HFD, getting us to create traveling shows every year and improving our professionalism. I am just thrilled that she has been given this honor. You can see all of this year’s special award winners on The Dairy Barn FB page.

When I was walking Scooter with Mr C this morning, I came upon this scene that I just had to photograph. I guess we can call it fuchsia snow!

Enjoy your week-end. I am looking forward to some family time tomorrow, with sunshine!!

Life’s a Beach

Saturday, April 30th, 2011

And a bitch! The early morning burglar struck again. This time he got my purse. I had to spend Tuesday from 4 in the morning until I went to bed, recreating my life and preventing the theft of my identity — driver’s license, checking account, credit cards, etc. And, yes, he/she got the new electronics. The insurance company is not happy with us and I can’t blame them. I have been so vigilant about locking the back door without any help from anyone else who lives here. Monday night, I was exhausted from the week-end festivities and getting up early to get Lisa to the airport. I went to bed early and forgot my routine of hiding my purse and locking the door.

In all of our other recent houses the garage was connected to the house so if the garage door was shut, we didn’t worry about the back door into the house. Here, it is detached and there in lies the problem.

Yesterday, we had a state of the art alarm system installed which we can put on a timer. It makes a very irritating and loud sound when the house is entered and the alarm is set. The police are also notified. I hope this works. Enough is enough.

Wednesday, I left for Seaside, on the Oregon Coast with my STASH friends. The houses we stayed in are next door to each other and on the promenade, a walk way the goes for a couple of miles along the ocean front.  So we had beautiful views of the ocean. The views included copious amounts of rain and some sun breaks — all beautiful. The photo at the beginning was our first day. That evening we had a brief respite from the rain and had a sunset.

Thursday morning, the rain stayed away for awhile and people headed out to walk. You can see a couple with their black labs in this scene.

To the left, we could see Tillamook Head. We drove up there in the afternoon. There are some gorgeous homes and a hiking trail.

On Thursday night we drove up to Astoria for dinner at a Bosnian restaurant. The food was great. As we left, we could see another beautiful sunset.

The six of us had such a fantastic time. We visited a wonderful quilt shop in Canon Beach. We sat around and gossiped and did hand stitching. Terry finished fusing her next Twelve by Twelve quilt. On Thursday night, we played Apples to Apples accompanied by a couple of bottles of wine and much hilarity. It was all very therapeutic for me.

Today, I helped with the Columbia Fiberarts Guild booth at The Gathering of the Guilds at the Convention Center. We were rented space from the Handweavers. There was so much beautiful stuff — glass, beads, metal work and ceramics, in addition to the fiber stuff. I had sold a couple of shibori scarves by the time I left today.

 

So, now you know why I have not blogged this week. I hope you are having a nice week-end. It is really beautiful here in Portland.

SAQA Critique Sessions

Sunday, April 17th, 2011

This is Sandra Sider, SAQA Board president, who is staying with me for a few days. She is critiquing work by SAQA members in sessions today and tomorrow. We are having a great time. Laura Jazkowski and Georgia French, our state reps are here in town, too, and doing a lot of the driving and coordinating. Sandra arrived yesterday, after a delay in Minneapolis and a change of flights. She got in at 6 pm instead of 1:30 in the afternoon. I cooked a delicious meal for everyone last night. We had a good time getting to know each other.

I stayed home and worked on my sunset quilt this morning and joined in the afternoon critique. That is my Prairie Fields getting critiqued and it was quite good.

I thought you might like to see the other work. There were some spectacular quilts like this one by Jean Wells. The iPhone camera does not do it justice. This is a gorgeous quilt, with many of Jean’s signature design elements. This was the first critique and she set the bar very high.

Next was Mary Goodson who is my art quilt group. She paints whole cloth quilts and stitches them exquisitely.

Another Sister’s area member showed this quilt with mega pieces of fused fabric and divine quilting. The work on this is mind blowing.

This was when I popped up and asked if they would like to see something minimalist!!

Carol Heist, who is also in HFD, showed this piece which is about Blue’s Music. She said she started it with blue fabric and it was not working for her. The music is laminated sheet music.

I always admire people who bring quilts because they need help. This member is from Corvallis and she had made this large gingko leaf on a beautiful blue background. She said her photographer said it looked like a broom.

Sandra turned it upside down and you can see that it looks so much better.

Laura also brought a quilt which she felt needed help.

Sandra suggested she introduce some of the light color to the lower left area.

This is another member from Eugene with a piece she made by abstracting a photo of an old building. Her problem was the pink object over on the right which was making the eye go off the edge. Sandra suggested covering it with organza or smudging or stitching it to tone it down.

This is a lovely wet felted piece that needed something more. Some good suggestions were made for making a couple of the flower bits more of a focal and to only do machine stitching in the green background.

So, that is what I have been up to for the last couple of days. I have been sneaking in time to get two quilts ready to turn in for out next High Fiber Diet jurying. The theme is North West Vibe. I don’t really like the theme, but the committee says it can be anything that makes the NW a unique place.