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Archive for the ‘Quilting Friends’ Category

Such a Good Day

Thursday, August 22nd, 2013

moonstitch2

Some days are like that, you know. The stars align or your karma is on the upside. I did some SDA work in the morning and then hit the studio. I want to get started on another moonstruck quilt with the indigo organza. The first thing I do is get the organza pinned to the wool pre-felt. Then I stitch around the moon shape to define it.

moonstitch1

Then I do the stitching vertical and horizontal for the texture when it is shrunk. I am using a  blue to white to yellow variegated thread. I think it will give some nice color to the moon.

Tonight was the opening reception for the Sur(face) Forward juried show at the Corvallis Art Center. It is housed in a sweet building, a former Episcopal Church. This photo is a bit blurry, but it was raining and I was afraid of melting.

corvallisartcenter

There was a large turnout for the show, many of the artists were there as well as local art lovers.

surfaceforwardreception

My piece, Kelp Dance, was at the far end of the room on the stage area. It was very well lit and I was happy with how it hung. It is the one on the right.

kelpdance atsurfaceforward

There were many pieces juried into this show, all of high quality and such a wide variety of textile work. It was exciting  to see. I do love being in a show of this caliber, meeting the other artists and feeling so good about it all.

Here are three of my friends with work in the show: Jae, Barbara and Janet. That big piece behind them is a weaving.

3friendssurfaceforward

And here are two good friends from Portland, Bonnie and Jill.

bonnieandjillsurfaceforward

Here is Bonnie talking about her work with the delightful juror, Barbara Pickett.

bonnieandbpickett

After the reception, Mr C and I went out for a nice dinner before our hour and a half drive back to Portland. When we left the restaurant, we were treated to this beautiful sunset.

corvallissunset

Blog Malaise

Thursday, August 8th, 2013

multiplecomplements

I can’t seem to get back in a productive blogging rhythm — probably because I am not doing anything very creative which is also a problem. I really need to get some work done for upcoming shows and I know that if I get started, I will get in a groove.

I love the table an chairs up there. They were on the sidewalk of a Mexican cafe on Valencia St. where we had dinner one night. They served small plates of delicious food.

Something else I love, this kind of California landscape with sculptural golden hills dotted with live Oaks.

Californialandscape

I have been working on this very easy Vogue blouse pattern. I tried it on last night, unfinished, and I need to do some altering.

sewingblouse

I did some work in my garden – weeding, pulling out overgrown lettuce and oops!, found these enormous squash that went into the compost.

megasquash

I have also been diligently stitching the 3×3’s together with beads.

3x3progressaugust

Today, I went on a road trip with my STASH group to McMinnville which is a charming town in the Willamette Valley wine country. Here is a shot of the window with a cool quilt from strips of modern fabric.

mcminnvilequiltstore

Terry and I did some bead shopping at a bead store.

mcminnvilebeadstore

We had a terrific lunch at a French restaurant. This is a selfie I took of Terry and I — ia m in the sun, she is in the shade – I am not really that pale.

Terrygerriemcminnville

Here are Suzy and Reva — you can see that we were having a great time.

suzyrevamcminnville

I will leave you with this funny, very Portland chain link fence installation which is on the way to the Rhodie Garden.

postnobills

 

A Special Guest and Some Quilt Talk

Tuesday, July 23rd, 2013

funkyhousequilt

I have been missing, but I have been busy! The best thing was having my art quilt daughter, Kristin La Flamme, come for a visit. She is one of the Twelves, but I first met her when we took a workshop with Sue Benner at Art Quilt Tahoe. I was so impressed with her work and told her she would be an art quilter to be reckoned with. I also adopted her as my art quilt daughter! She is a brilliant artist just like me real life daughters. She told me about a new series of quilts that she is going to do and I was so blown away by the idea and the intelligent thought and creative ideas she has developed for them. I can’t wait to see them.

Yesterday, I picked her up at the train station. She left the rest of her family in Eugene with her parents. We headed for Terry Grant’s house and hung out with her for most of the day. She brought 20X12 quilts from herself and Deborah Boschert. So we had fun looking at them in person. I am collecting all of the quilts so that we can prepare them to be displayed at Quilt Expo in September.

20X12quiltcollection

This morning, before I took Kristin back to the train station, we went to Mill Ends.

kristinmillends

She has done a lot of quilts for her Army Wife series using camouflage, and they were stationed in Hawaii recently so she was quite amused to find Hawaiian camo.

kristinandcamo

The quilt up at the top came home yesterday. I had forgotten about it. I made it as a sample for The African Fabric Shop in the UK.  The owner sent Terry and I fabric covered notebooks as a thank you. They are made by a Primary School and use the batik fabrics from the shop. I love the fabric on this one.

africanfabricnotebook

I had good news last week. My quilt, Kelp Dance, was juried into Sur(face) Forward at The Art Center in Corvallis, and Moonstruck was juried into the Simply Red Show.

It has been a good week. On Thursday, we are heading to San Francisco to spend some time with family, especially, Paige. It is also Jayme’s birthday. We are going to stop in Grant’s Pass so that I can see the SAQA Sightline’s exhibit. Looking forward to that!

Having an Arty Week

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

trishhasslerwork

I have had a great couple of days out and about in Portland. The work above is by the uber talented Trish Hassler. She has had a very successful career blending steel which she cuts with fiber. It has always intrigued me. The turquoise piece is cut from an old Nash roadster that was donated to Trisha by a Columbia Fiberarts member.

Our local SAQA group was invited by Trisha to see her exhibit with a talk by her.

SAQAgallerytalk

A mixed media artist, Kathy Haydon, shared the exhibit with her and many of the works played nicely together.

nashramblersteel

The two pieces with the ivory steel are Trisha’s and are from another car donated by Marie. The darker piece is by Kathy. I love this orange piece which uses steel from an old Allis Chalmer’s tractor. The farm girl in me couldn’t help it.

AllisChalmerstractorsteel

I really liked Trisha’s new sculptural work which you see in the first photo. It has no metal. She has Parkinson’s and finds it difficult to work with the metal. This show is the last one she will be doing with metal.

Trisha incorporates handstitching in much of her work. It was fun to add a few stitches to this community stitching piece which she will incorporate into a future work.

trishacommunitystitch

I enjoyed lunch with a couple of friends.

This morning, I went to see Kevin who did his magic and made my hair nice and red, again. It had gotten bleached from the sun and had a lot of gray showing. This afternoon, Mr C and I went on an art date to the Japanese Garden to see the Noguchi exhibit. I have long been a fan of his lighting fixtures,  that are constructed from Washi paper and bamboo. They are so sculptural and etherial.

8725383_1

The exhibit had some of the light fixtures and tables and his landscape sculptures. I couldn’t photograph inside the pavilion, but these were in the garden outside the pavilion.

noguchisculpture

noguchi2

Then we wanderd around the garden. Here are some inspiration photos that I took.

japanesegardenscene

lilypads

koi

morekoi

I need to get down to business tomorrow. Have something I can’t talk about on the blog, yet. Deadline is looming. I want to get that top done – you know the fabric I bought and is now languishing on my sewing table. I am going to have a fantastic guest on Monday, you must wait to see who it is.

Life is still good.

This and That

Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

simplyredquilts

I went to a High Fiber Diet meeting tonight, and many of us turned in quilts to be juried for the Simply Red show. Here is a pile of them in their travel bags. The jurying happens on Saturday. For the first time we have a panel who are not members jurying the show.

Before the meeting some of us met for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. I love this cuisine and since they use rice noodles and wrappers it works well for gluten free.

Terry Grant and several others had a Vietnamese Crepe which is made with rice flour and a spice that turns it yellow.

Vietcrepe

I had rice noodles, pork and all those lovely greens to put in rice paper wrappers which are then dipped in the very flavorful sauce. The pink plates each have a wrapper on them.

vietnoodles

The very talented Bonnie Bucknam brought some of her handmade books and journals. They are so beautiful.

bonniesbooks

morebonniebooks

And that is about it for today. I spent much of today doing SDA Constant Contact e-mails. Tomorrow, I am going to a SAQA meet up at a gallery where Trisha Hassler has an exhibit and is doing an artist talk for us.