12X12 challenge | Crazy for Fiber

November 2024
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
	1	2	3
4	5	6	7	8	9	10
11	12	13	14	15	16	17
18	19	20	21	22	23	24
25	26	27	28	29	30

Archive for the ‘12X12 challenge’ Category

Technical Difficulties

Sunday, August 28th, 2011

My best laid plans went awry while in Tacoma for the APWQ quilt show. My brand new USB camera cord stopped working so I could not upload photos so I did no blogging. Truth be told, I was so sleep deprived and jet lagged, I am not sure I could have done it anyway.

It was a lot to ask of my aging body to get off a plane from the east coast, get reorganized and get on a train to another venue and not have some rebellion. I keep waking up on New York time even though I go to bed on West Coast time.

Anyway, we had a lovely train ride to Tacoma, all eight of us. Our first activity was to explore Tacoma a bit and so we walked around the Tacoma Glass Museum where you can see a beautiful icy looking installation,

We had drinks and dinner at a restaurant on the water — lots of fun.

We hit the quilt show the next morning. I have mixed feeling about it. I think the quality of the work that was entered and juried in to the show was not up to the quality of previous years. I had mixed feelings about pieces that were given ribbons — made me wonder what the jurors were looking at, especially in the art quilt categories.

This is a piece by my friend, Pippa, from Canada, who is a faithful blog reader. We were roommates at Art Quilt Tahoe one year. The title is — there is an elephant in my garden. I love it.

I also liked thi quilt by Cynthia St. Charles which was drawn with gel glue resist and then painted.

Theere were many other quilts that I loved, but I was to blotto to remember to take photos.

In the downtown area, we found this word game in a plaza.

There were some pretty funny sentences put together. Here is one that Terry, Beth and I did.

Tacoma is a place of architectural delights — a place where old meets new and manmade meets natural as in this photo of the modern bridge with Mt. Rainier in the background.

I am happily tired tonight. I had fun putting together a grilled salmon dinner for two of the twelves and their spouses — Terry Grant and Karen Rips. And, of course, I forgot to take photos, just as I forgot to take photos of our meet up with Nikki at the quilt show.

Anyway, I am off to bed. I will post more tomorrow.

Posted in 12X12 challenge, Quilt Shows, Quilting Friends, Travels | 4 Comments »

More Orange and Some Red

Thursday, August 11th, 2011

I painted some batting orange and I am using the painted organza to create something over it. I am taking this on our trip and I will be doing copious hand stitching on it.

After several false starts, I finally made some great progress on a secret project. It, too, will get lots of hand stitching so it gets to travel with me.

I have been getting studio work done every day, doing a lot of SDA database work for the new website and also getting ready for the visit back east coming up. Yesterday, I went in for some nice new red color on my hair. Today, Mr C and I went shopping. He got a new black sports coat and Keen shoes. I bought some red shoes to wear with my gray silk dress for my niece’s wedding.

I don’t usually wear a heel this high, but I really like these and they were quite comfy. I am so excited that we are spending a couple of nights in NYC — wish we could stay longer.

Tomorrow, our new natural gas grill arrives so I hope I can get some photos of the finished breezeway. We are really enjoying balmy evenings on the deck.

Posted in 12X12 challenge, My creations, Stuff I Buy | 4 Comments »

This and That

Sunday, August 7th, 2011

I am just about finished with an orange piece. I just have to finish the edges. Here is a sneak peek. And I have lovely bits of pieces like this in my studio. I might have to find a way to use them.

Today, the New York Times had a full page Starbuck’s ad — photography by my daughter, Stephanie.

This was taken on a photo shoot in Austin, TX. She was in the back of a moving top down Jeep when she took this photo!!

I also finished the Kayak in the Lily Pads. The lily pads gave me fits!!

I did some free motion quilting on this. It is the first time I have done that on my new Janome Horizon. It has a push button conversion system so that you can change the plate to a small needle hole which gives a lot more control when quilting. It took me some trial and error to figure it out. When all else fails, read the manual!!

I am making a lot of progress on my night time trauma. I was doing well until early this morning when I was sure I heard someone trying to break into the house. I don’t know what the noise was, but I couldn’t get back to sleep. I just hope I am tired enough to sleep well tonight.

Posted in 12X12 challenge, My Brilliant Daughters, My creations | 3 Comments »

An Eclectic Day

Wednesday, August 3rd, 2011

I went back to Pilates today after a week off. I am feeling it tonight. This morning, I decided I needed some black raw silk for the orange piece. I painted some with Setacolor. Now, I am afraid I have a total Halloween thing going on.

This afternoon, I started working on one of the other projects that I want to finish before our trip. I hope my sister will keep this under wraps. My niece had this really cool photo taken when she was in her kayak. I want to make her a little wall hanging of it.

I am afraid my lily pads are a little too dark so I have to redo those tomorrow.

My new monitor came late today. It was pretty easy to set up. I think I need to do a color check on it. It is so much bigger. I am loving it!!

I received my sketchbook for the 2012 Sketchbook project. I think I want to do hand and machine stitching this year. So I plan to cut some pieces of fabric the size of the pages and start working.

They did not send Moleskines this year and there was not a choice of colors.

We are blessed with some wonderful garden goodies from the CSA farm and the Farmer’s market. I made a wonderful shaved fennel salad with apples and fresh pecorino from a local sheep cheese maker. Tomatoes are just starting to show up. I love vine ripened tomatoes in the summer!

Remember way back at the beginning of this year when I said Steph had an exciting photography job. I can now tell you that she has made two trips to Savannah and Austin to do photo shoots for Starbuck’s. So if you are seeing bus, billboard, magazine or newspaper ads for Starbucks, chances are, it is a photo taken by Steph. I will try to post some for you to see.

Posted in 12X12 challenge, My Brilliant Daughters, My creations, Stuff I Buy | 1 Comment »

Really Orange

Tuesday, August 2nd, 2011

We are leaving for New York two weeks from today. In that time, I need to get three pieces finished — all small. Two are gifts and I probably won’t post much about them. The third is our last colorplay quilt for Twelve by Twelve. Terry chose orange. She gave us specific directions about the orange — “I want to see a strong, saturated orange ranging anywhere from cheddar to flame, but pure and unadulterated.”

I have some commercial batik oranges, but not much else. I decided that I wanted to play with this a bit so I went out to Art Media to pick up some orange Dynaflow. I also replenished by yellow and scarlet.

I grabbed some raw silk for the texture and a piece of shantung organza, which also has nice texture. I wet the fabric and painted with shades of orange with some yellow.