I saw an ad for a retro Cosco red stool at our neighborhood discount store. Being vertically challenged, I can always use a step stool in the kitchen and I thought this would fit right in with our 50’s house.

I opened the box and found the parts:

Last night M & M spent the night and so while they played Nutcracker Ballet, I assembled the chair. We have a large collection of classical music. Mia said. "Gramma, you have a lot of ballet music!" So we decided that we need to have a second set of ballerina clothes here for her to perform in. She really wanted something special to wear, so I told her that when ballerina’s practice they dress just like she was dressed. That seemed to satisfy her. She was the princess and Milo was a Knight.

Here is Milo trying out the chair after it was assembled:

And then Mia gave it a try:

Did you notice the new rug in the background? We bought it yesterday. It is a Pakistani rug and I just love the colors. Here are a couple of other views:

And here is the new carpet for Mr. C’s office:

We are making progress. Tomorrow will not be a good day for getting work done. We have church in the morning and then we want to stop by Crafty Wonderland to see  how Steph is doing. It is her first foray into the craft show circuit. Then we are going to Cirque du Soleil at 5 pm.

It is good to be home and sleeping in my own bed. Today, after Mr C went through lots of frustration dealing with his change of address with GE and a non-functioning laptop which he uses for his consulting job with GE, we went to get signed up with Kaiser here in Portland. We  do not live very close to any of their facilities, but we finally figured out which one would be best for us. I had a slight melt down over the fact that women doctors are refusing to take women patients because they have been overwhelmed by the extra work of caring for women.

Because of my deformities from breast cancer, I just feel more comfortable with a woman. There was one new young female doctor taking new patients, so we will see how that goes. The Northwest Kaiser is the highest rated HMO in the country. They have an excellent program for seniors.

We decided to have dinner out tonight since M & M are coming over tomorrow to spend the night. We went to Caprial’s and had fabulous fish dishes and salads. Caprial isn’t there a lot right now because she and her partner, John are taping shows for PBS.

Now about the mail. While I was gone, Mr. C said that two packages came. They were upstairs in the kitchen. I opened them. One was my Myth’s and Legend’s quilt coming home after traveling around for two years. The other was this wonderful little quilt that I purchased from the Second International Invitational Miniature Art Textile Exhibition curated by Joanie San Chirico. It was made by Virginia Spiegel. It is only 12 X 12 inches.

This morning, I was poking around in my studio boxes looking for a coupe of unfinished quilts that I want to get done when I saw an unopened package. What is this, I thought? I opened it and a quilt fell out! The label on the back says Spider Season and it was made by my great blogging buddy, Mary Manahan. Then I remembered that Mary had told me to be on the look out for a package from here. This is the quilt. Just looking at this will warm my heart on cold, damp Portland days! Thank you, Mary!!

I am still overwhelmed with the unpacking and arranging and hanging of art work that needs to be done, so I take one day at a time and know that I will get there eventually. Thaks to all of you who made such nice comments on my  work in Jane’s class. I got an e-mail from Jane today and I will be doing a year long correspondence class with  her.

It is aways so sad for me to see the workshop rooms get torn down. After four days, you develop strong attachments to others and it is hard to have it end. Now for some answers to questions. My dear daughter Lisa wanted to know where the desserts are. We have actually had beautiful and delicious desserts, but have not had my camera at dinner with me so now dessert photography.

The lovely screened background in the cross quilt is thermofax screen that Jane brought with her. Lots of us enjoyed using it. It free clipart that she used. Speaking of the cross quilt – here is the final piece with copper foiled crosses. I screen printed the glue with a freezer paper cut out:

Here is a close-up:

For this piece I screen printed some black graphics and gave it gold foiled spirals for a final touch:

Here is a close-up:

This piece was conceived and executed this afternoon in about and hour and a half. (The glue for the foil has to dry for an hour!) I used the same stencil that I made in three ways: discharge, paint and foil. The back ground is rayon that started in a yellow and was over-dyed with olive green. It was folded and held with rubber bands:

Close-up:

For this piece which I showed yesterday, I stamped a larger linear design over the surface using reddish orange textile paint and then foiled with turquoise with the same stencil that was used in an earlier layer:

I started this piece this afternoon. It has only two layers done. I covered the background with the same stamp as above, using a paint that I mixed. I then stenciled the circles in the blue-green. Not sure what I’ll do next!!

Here is Liz’s design wall – beautiful stuff – of course!

Deb R came by for a quick visit today, but didn’t hang around long. Liz didn’t even get to see her, she was in and out so fast.

Let me say that I am so glad that I took this class. It was so worth it and I see my work going a new direction. I am going to do a year long follow-up correspondence course with Jane. She also does a class on developing your own personal imagery which would be a great class to take.

Is it really day three? This is what Katie, Terry and Judy (our fearless leader and founder of AQ) had time to do today:

But not me.

We started the morning with a lesson on textile paints. I learned soooo much. We then practiced stamping, stenciling and screening with textile paints on black and white fabric. Here are my practice pieces:

Then we had a lecture on what is good art and art principles and talked about layering to make art cloth have depth and good design. We were to select our least favorite pieces to begin with.

On this piece I had to make a background, using one of the carved stamps, forming an all over pattern, with discharge:

I then added a stencil design using paint – mixing red with bronze metallic:

I will add more to this tomorrow.

On this piece I made a stamped background using white metallic paint. The larger circles occurred during the dye process:

I then discharged the spirals and painted them with yellow setacolor:

Tomorrow I will foil this piece.

On this piece I had to randomly print a background by using a piece with a grid as a guide or pressing a grid. I stamped with one of my cross stamps:

I then discharged larger crosses in a random pattern using a stencil that Liz made:

I then screen printed this lovely grid over the whole piece. Oooh! I love it. tomorrow I will foil some more crosses:

I did a fourth randomly printed background with discharge but no photos. I did play with this piece by stamping and stenciling discharge over the fabric that had tyedyed circles:

Time to say goodnight – I am still on the old time!!

Yes, I am at the Claremont in Berkely and it is the Golden Gate Bridge not bride! Just want to see who is paying attention. I am so tired you would think I crossed 3 time zones.

Losing an hour’s sleep has not helped our situation and everyone was a little cranky today. We started the morning learning about overdyeing our previously manipulated and dyed fabric. We were told select 5 of the ten pieces and given criteria for what would work well. Unfortunately, one of mine disappeared and now I only have four – boo hoo. Here are the pieces that I did:

This was yellow, refolded and dyed in purple.

This was yellow, refolded and dyed in olive green.

This was turquoise tied with rings and dyed in olive, I think!

This was red refolded and dyed in rust. Very subtle.

We then learned how to make a permanent silk screen by drawing a simple design on the mesh and then painting around it with latex housepaint. After it dries and is heat set, you have a permanent screen for embellishment.s

We then went on to discharging. We had to practice on black. We quickly learned that Clorox on rayon will make holes if you do not wash it right away. We used pure Clorox, Sunlight dish washing detergent and discharge paste. The sunlight must have been old because it did not work well. We had to do more fabric manipulation and practice using our stamps, stencils and silkscreen.

That is a stencil made with fusible interfacing, tulle and latex paint – magic!!

Here are Liz’s discharges:

Here are mine:

The second one down on the right is using my silkscreen with discharge paste.

The top left are my tree stamps and tree stencil which I love, but the Sunlight did not work very well. Here is a close up:

It is fun being with an overachiever like Liz, who says hi to everyone. I am off to a good night’s sleep. Tomorrow we get to work on our overdyed pieces, adding textile paint, foiling, etc. Should be more fun in store.