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Archive for the ‘12X12 challenge’ Category

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!

The Visitor from Down Under

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

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Brenda Gael Smith, one of our Twelves from Australia, was here in Portland for a quick visit with Terry Grant and I. Terry picked her up at the train station. She had been in Seattle visiting friends. We all met up at a fun restaurant and had dinner. This morning, Terry brought Brenda over to my house. We spent the morning looking at quilts and just talking about the Twelve project. We are going to show the 20×12 quilts here in Portland at Quilt Expo in September.

We then went in search of a food truck pod so that Brenda could have that quintessential Portland experience. After enjoying some Mexican fare, we went off to Powell’s book store, another necessary experience. The photo up there of the three of us  was taken there in front of one copy of our book that we found on the shelf. I snapped this photo of myself with the book.

todayatPowells

 

Next, we stopped in at Josephine’s Dry Goods, a wonderful, upscale fabric store. No money spent there. Around the corner is The Playful Needle, a great place to pick up embroidery type thread for hand stitching.

yummythreads

 

I did spend money here.

morenewthreads

 

And these that I think will work with my current project.

newthreads

 

Here is a detail of the stitching I have done so far.

landscapestitching

Terry dropped me off at Whole Foods where Mr C met me and she took Brenda to the train station for the next leg of her journey, visiting friends in the Tri=cities area of Washington before she flies home at the end of the week.

It was a lovely day and a nice day away from the computer and my current work load.

Tomorrow, I am heading over to Terry’s house for lunch with our friend, Del Thomas, who is passing through town on her way home from a workshop on Whidby Island. She is bringing some new art quilt acquisitions to show us.

 

 

All That Jazz

Wednesday, December 12th, 2012

 

Today must be 12/12/2012 because it is reveal day for the latest Twelve by 12 theme, sweet. You can check out the blog and see what sweet things await you. When Terri announced the theme, I went to the dictionary and found the last definition was:

pleasing to the ear; making a delicate, pleasant, or agreeable sound; musical.

So, I knew back then that I wanted to interpret the sweet theme as jazz music. I stayed with the batik theme, too and didn’t have to buy any new fabric. The trumpet auditioned several fabrics before I settled on this one. I had a lot of fun cutting the music notes and placing them. Click on photo to see a larger version.

I found a beautiful hand-dyed thread that I bought 3 or 4 years ago that was a perfect blend for this.

I did simple straight line stitching in a diagonal pattern. The size of the quilt made it a bit awkward to arrange the instruments. This was a fun, no brainer piece to do. I enjoyed it.

Here is a detail:

Here is Tuesday’s 3 x 3.

Today, I am going to the Columbia Fiberarts Guild meeting and then out to lunch with some friends. Janice Arnold who does gigantic felted installations is our guest speaker. It should be a great day.

A Festive Week-end

Monday, December 10th, 2012

The week-end flew by as we busied ourselves with decorating, cleaning, partying and entertaining. On Saturday night, we attended a party in the neighborhood. We were greeted at the door by our host in a tux and top hat. Our coats were whisked away and we were handed a glass of champagne. We looked around and didn’t see anyone that we knew. We were invited to this annual shindig because Mr C is on the Eastmoreland Homeowners Board.

Many people were dressed to the nines and others, very casual. I suddenly saw someone that I recognized, but I had never met him. He is a Facebook friend and the newly elected mayor of Portland, Charlie Hales. We got a chance to chat with him for awhile and it was nice to know that he was such a down to earth guy.  His wife is so cute and really sweet. One of our senators, Ron Wyden, lives in our neighborhood, and was invited, but didn’t come because they have a brand new baby.

We met some people who come down from Seattle every year for the party. The champagne flowed and the food was great, but even though a small tent was set up in the backyard, it was very crowded and difficult to get around and meet people. I got into a bit of an argument about architecture with an architect who is on the board. He is an old curmudgeon and does not like modern architecture.

On Sunday, I hosted the first every Oregon SDA meeting. There were 25 people in attendance. Every one brought some food to share. We shared our work and our frustrations with marketing work. Mr C was surprised to see so many young women. I said SDA is not old quilting ladies, and it is one reason that I love it so much. Many of the younger women are in to clothing design and production. One person, from Eugene, brought several of her felted garments to show. Other members got to model them. I wasn’t fast enough with the camera to get pics of all the garments.

The woman modeling the scarf came with her husband. They have a business making floor cloths that are painted and finished with polyurethane and wax. They had a catalog of their work – really beautiful.

Marci McDade, who is the SDA Journal editor, asked to see my articles in the Art Quilting Studio magazine. She was very impressed with the quality of the publication, the photography and how most of the ads are in the back. I was really happy to hear her positive critique!

Today, I have been working on the sweet themed 12 x 20 piece which will be revealed on Wednesday. Here is a sneak peek at the back.

I had fun showing the SDA members my studio and my 3 x 3 pieces. Here are two more from the past couple of days.

O’ Tannenbaum

Friday, December 7th, 2012

Today was the day for the annual excursion out to the countryside of Oregon where they grow Christmas trees.  Oregon is the leading producer of Christmas trees in the US so we don’t have to wonder where we will get a tree — they are everywhere!

We go to the same farm every year as they have beautiful Noble Firs, our favorite tree. This is the one we picked out.

It is up and has lights. I will post a photo when we get it decorated.

I also worked on the Sweet piece some more.  Here is a sneak peek of what I did today.

Tonight, we had dinner with friends who wanted us to meet another couple who has recently moved to our neighborhood and shares our very liberal political leanings. It was fun and delicious food.