Boxes and Bags

I know it is the day before Thanksgiving and here I am going to mention Christmas. I don't usually like that, but it is somewhat of a necessity here. We live in Idaho and the rest of our family lives east of Missouri. To avoid the mail rush, I like to try to have presents wrapped, packed and shipped before or just after Thanksgiving. I managed to do that today (take note family boxes are headed your way!). Some of the boxes contain bags like these below.

At one of our local quilt shops, they had an example of a gift bag that was very cute and very similar to these. I asked to look at the book which had the pattern. I think it is called Strippin' Time. I would have bought it if there had been any other projects in it that I was interested in, but there was not. I was pretty sure I could figure it out on my own (I'm pretty good at that). Mine are a little different but basically the same idea.

I did the piecing and quilting as I went along. I had not done that before but I understood the concept - put the pieces on top of the batting and backing and sew them together while you are also quilting. The seam lines are the quilting lines. And since I wanted to make these fast, I did not do extra quilting. I also was using up some fusible batting which made them a little stiffer than if you use regular batting. I made them specifically to fit the gifts they hold, but I might make some more to have on hand. I was trying to use up some old Christmas fabrics I've had for a while (I've made Christmas fabric envelopes and fabric buckets in the past).

I like using these because the recipient can re-use them to give to someone else next year. Or after I looked at these, they could be stuffed with something and used as little decorative pillows!

Morning Surprises

Yesterday as we walked to school, we saw a big rainbow. It faded pretty quickly but we enjoyed it while we could. The sun was just rising and there were many clouds in the sky. They were ripply and had a greenish color to them. Anna said it looked like an upside down ocean. Also, the sunlight hit one building downtown that just made it glow but none of the buildings around it. Some very interesting weather special effects. That's why I enjoy walking Anna to school. Otherwise, we probably wouldn't notice those things.

Today we woke up and the roofs looked frosty. Anna said she thought it was snow, but I didn't see it anywhere but on the roofs. However, when I looked out the living room window, there was a trace of snow in our yard. Anna said she wished it would snow more and about 5 minutes later we look out the window and it is snowing! Anna was so excited.

"I can't believe it's snowing!"

We walked to school in the snow and there were some pretty big flakes. By the time we got down to the flat part, the snow started slowing down. Anna was jibber-jabbering the whole way about snow because she was so happy about it. But by the time I had walked back to the house, it had stopped.

Oh my darlin' clementine

They are back in the stores, the yummy clementine oranges. These are great because most of them are easy to peel, don't have seeds and have bite-size segments. A great snack. Even Anna likes them. I've been waiting for them.

Here's Cocoa! (and Anna)

Cocoa is quickly getting used to us, albeit she's still a little jumpy. We let her out to run in the pen last night and after taking about 20 pictures, I managed to get a couple of good ones. She moves very quickly and it's hard to focus on her. In this picture you can see her white paws and a little bit of the white stripe that goes from her chin down to her chest.


Isn't she adorable? She is much taller than she looks in these pictures.


And here's Anna in her Halloween costume from two years ago. The fourth through sixth graders gave a musical performance at school today and they could dress up as Americans throughout history. Anna wanted to be a Native American. Isn't she adorable?

As we were getting Anna's backpack after the show to get ready to leave, a woman asked me if Anna was my daughter. I said yes. She said she likes watching Anna sing because she has such rhythm and really gets into it. She can pick her out every time. I said yes, she does and I think it is great. Most of the kids just stand there and sing without expression because they are suppose to, but you can tell Anna really enjoys it.


Frank is out of town on business so I was planning on videotaping the performance for him. I arrived at school and found a good standing spot for seeing Anna. When they started the first song, I turned on the camera and taped some of it but the battery indicator started flashing. I turned it off to save power. Yes, I did charge the battery last night!(and our back-up battery died a while ago). When Anna's class started singing their song on their own, I turned it on again, but alas, it was done in two seconds. Oh well, Frank missed out.

I think the battery has had it and it may just be time to get a new smaller, lighter, digital video camera (we are still using the old fashioned tape kind). I did think about bringing my pocket camera as a back-up as it does some video, but I really didn't want to have to mess with two things.

Ready for Winter

The weather has become more autumn-like with cooler temperatures and some rain. Winter is on everybody's mind. Anna is wishing for snow already. While we were out shopping this past weekend, Anna found a "Heidi" hat that she liked. How could we not buy it for her when she looks so adorable in it!? It does have the ear flaps which will be nice on cold days walking to school. Her fleece hat didn't cover her ears.


Frank is ready for snow and winter as he has bought himself a new pair of skis and has properly pumped his anticipation by watching this year's Warren Miller ski movie.

I am ready to re-focus as well. It doesn't have much to do with winter except that I don't feel as guilty staying inside and working on projects when the weather is cold. I am in the finishing stages of getting the rest of my graduate school application and portfolio ready to send in. Below is my very unprofessional set up for taking pictures of artwork (I really need some light stands!) Once I finally have everything sent off, I'm ready to work on holiday projects, finish up some old projects, work on some house projects and other stuff. I might even finish the flannel quilt I started several years ago for Anna's bed. (My sister, niece and nephew all have a bed quilt I made for them. My mom has a twin size quilt to put at the end of her bed, but poor Anna has none. Neither do I, for that matter. Maybe I'll work on that. I already have the fabrics.) There are lots of misc. things I look forward to doing now that I can re-focus my attention for a little while.

Artistic Interlude

We now interrupt our regularly scheduled program to bring you Anna's Art. I think this "squares" piece is a big deal because usually Anna wants to do things fast. I know this took her a long time to complete (she only had regular lined paper and had to make the perpendicular lines).





This is an appropriate picture to announce our new furry addition to the family, Cocoa, the hamster. She does not look like the picture above. Will post a picture of her after she adjusts to her new home.

At first, Anna didn't want to get a new hamster after losing Misty. But I told her we could never replace Misty, but we could make room in our heart for a new furry friend. Plus, we didn't have to get a new hamster right away. After a while, Anna decided she would like a new one and started getting excited about it.

Two More

Despite the fact that I have finally caught the cold that has been going around Anna's school and I feel quite horribly, I managed to put this together this weekend and finish it.


As I have been following the artists of the Twelve by Twelve group here, I thought I might play along. There are twelve artists that will be making 12" x 12" art quilts with different themes. I guess they will eventually end up with 12 different quilts. Their first theme was dandelions and it was interesting to see all the different interpretations. I had an idea for the dandelion fluff and thought I would try it today.

Here is what I started with - a piece of light yellow cloth. I sandwiched it with batting and stitched on the "fluff" with white thread. It's a little hard to see in the picture.


Then I did the paint roller technique over the stitches. After that I added the background swirl stitching as I didn't want to see the yellow fabric with those stitches. Here is what it looked like.


Then I added a little more color with oil crayons and some slight shadows on the fluff. Here is the finished piece (without the edges finished yet).


As you can see, since I'm not in the 12x12 group, I decided not to use the 12" format.

Finished Experiment Plus One

I recently purchased this book by Linda and Laura Kemshall. I need more time to study and read it but it has a lot of great ideas. One of them is the technique they use of painting a quilt after it is already quilted. I wanted to try it.


As I was working on other stuff and thinking about this technique, an idea popped into my head. I thought I would just try it and not worry about the outcome. Below is the quilt I call "Black and White and Red All Over." The stitched words are the quilting and after I was done, I rolled red paint over it with a brayer. It left an area around the quilted words. The words are a list of all the things we read. There were many more words that didn't fit on the quilt. The words on the white part are "poetry, fine-print, notes (just the end of it because I wanted to run some words off the edges), hieroglyphics, blogs, postcards.


The black words are a little hard to see in the above picture, so I took a picture from an angle. The words in black are "instructions (partial), maps, email, newspapers, zines, magazines, textbooks, pamphlets, flyers, posters, letters (partial), tombstones. I'm excited with the possibilities of this technique. I also realized when making this how different the world is for someone who does not know how to read.


Plus here is one more piece I have finished. This one used the monoprinted fabrics again. Originally the three pieced sections in the middle started out together with another pieced section and no mustard color in a completely different configuration. It was all sewn together and sat around for about a week before I decided it wasn't working for me and I un-sewed some sections and decided it needed solid fabric in between to give the eye some rest from the business (busy-ness) of the pieces. Here it is now and I like it much better.

Another finished piece

This was a piece I created at Nancy's workshop. I have finished the quilting on it. I made it in the vertical orientation, this way...

...or this way...

...or maybe it should be horizontal. What do you think?

Here is what some of the quilting looks like on the back. Very dense again. I also used a striped fabric on the back.

Chairs

Anna was a snow leopard for Halloween this year. Yes, we made the costume and painted on her "spots". She went trick-or-treating with her friend Lauren and Lauren's little sister.


This morning I did another art lesson with the kids. I had them make chairs out of twigs, string and model magic. There was some frustration but they turned out well. Below are just a few.

Happy Halloween!

More Finished

Another quilt finished using the mono-printed fabrics, again. The stitching mimics the scribbles of the mono-printed fabric. I like to call it "Basket Weave."



I also managed to finish the bicycle that I had started earlier. It started out o.k. but the results ended horribly. It actually looks better in the picture than in real life. I wanted to use a thicker black thread to do the "sketchy" outlining on the bike, but could not get it to work. So I used a thinner thread and went over twice. I learned that it is very hard to do long lines of free motion quilting on a conventional machine (I guess that is why people get long-arm machines). The quilting looks sloppy and I am not very pleased with it. I don't think this is the best way for me to work.

Losing Focus

Ever since returning from the Nancy Crow workshop, I have given myself the task of really focusing on creating and finishing new pieces. I have been doing very well at focusing and keeping to the task. But I have done it for several weeks now and am to the point where it is becoming laborious as opposed to creative work.

I am getting new ideas while I work, but those have to be pushed aside to hurry and complete what's already in front of me. Why hurry? Because I have also set myself a deadline as I am trying to get a portfolio ready to apply to the Master of Fine Arts program at Boise State University. (I have already sent in the application form and had letters of recommendation sent).

At this point, I feel as though I'm just rushing and producing crap (pardon the expression). They want a portfolio of a "current cohesive body of work". Which I did not feel I had, and still don't. It may be all moot anyway. Their areas are the usual traditional areas of drawing, painting, sculpture, photography and alternative media (I think here they are looking at things like video, etc.). Fiber is not listed, but you can draw and paint on fabric and make sculptures from it. Therefore, even at the start (no matter how much I try to spin it), my work doesn't even fit the categories at which they are looking.

I mentioned my intentions to Nancy at the workshop and she said it was very hard to get into a MFA program as a "fiber" artist. She wasn't trying to discourage me, but give me the reality of it (which I have already realized). Another strike against me is the length of time I have been away from school. It's been 17 years since I graduated from college. My BA degree is in drawing but that's not what I'm doing now.

Despite all these strikes against me, I still have to try. I am a very good student. I would be a professional student if someone paid me. I'm interested in lots of things and want to learn more. And I can work hard. But the catch-22 seems to be that before you can go to the masters program and learn more and get guidance, you already have to be somewhat established with your work and have some direction of where you are going. If I already had that, I probably wouldn't need to go back to school.

And I don't really need to go back to school. I want to. And I keep telling myself if I don't get accepted, then, oh well. I'll go on to plan B (which I haven't figured out yet). But in reality, it would really mean a lot to me if I was accepted. Therefore, I guess I should get back to work!

In Memory of Misty (2005-7)

It's been a hard day today. We had to put Misty, Anna's hamster, to sleep today. Around noon, Anna heard her making strange noises. I took her out of her cage and saw her eyes were swollen shut, her nose was red and she was really struggling. Since it is Sunday, our pet clinic wasn't open so we had to take her to the emergency vet. The doctor said she had the pneumonia and was very weak. She said from her experience, they probably wouldn't be able to save her. So we made the decision to keep her from suffering.

We held her and snuggled with her and gave her kisses before they put her to sleep. Anna was extremely upset. I thought that I could not be strong for her and not cry. I then thought that I could be strong for her and cry. Why not cry when someone you loves dies?

It was very hard to be the one to make that decision - to be holding this cute little furball that is still trying to climb around on you and know that you are ending that life. Even harder is watching your ten year old's heart break.

We brought Misty home, wrapped her up in a bit of the blanket she liked to chew on. Put some treats with her and buried her in the back yard. Anna wrote on the stone with her chalk, "Misty, 2005-2007, R.I.P." We'll miss her.

Monoprinted fabric quilt #2

Here is another completed quilt with the mono-printed fabrics. It is fairly small so didn't take too long to quilt.


I guess I am liking this dense quilting because here it is again (back view).

Monoprinted Fabric

For a while, I have wanted to try mono-printing on fabric. A couple of weeks ago I did a bunch of small pieces of fabric with mostly scribbles. Here is a piece I recently finished using some of those fabrics. I also did the dense quilting on this one as well. I like that the dense quilting makes it somewhat "flat". The second picture shows the quilting on the back.

Abstract Chairs Black and White

Here is another piece I recently finished. I did the dense quilting again. The second picture shows the back.

Re-do

Last week I managed to go to the museum one day, teach Anna's class art one day and still make 3-4 new pieces. I'm really trying to focus. Can you tell?

This week I am working on getting the new pieces and a couple other pieces quilted. I was being overly optimistic that I could get them all done, but I have not. I have three quilted and I will be working on another one today. I have the edges finished on one and almost done on a second. Will get the third one's edges ready to hand sew today and hopefully finish quilting on one more.

Here is one of the pieces. This might look somewhat familiar. I re-did the piece I did in the workshop which I showed previously here. (It's the green and black one on the bottom). I cut it up and reworked it and here's how it came out.

I haven't decided which direction I like it best yet. Which do you like?


Here is the back view of the quilting. It is densely quilted, which I don't usually do, but thought I would try. The green thread is actually slightly variegated but you can't really tell.

The Last Exercise

This was the last exercise I did at the Nancy Crow Workshop.


What I learned from this workshop:

- I don't have to use a ruler to cut fabric.
- How to construct the sewing for the pieces.
- I can focus and work for a long, concentrated time.
- You can get a lot done when you have a focused, concentrated time to work.
- More awareness thinking about how figure and ground work in a piece.
- How to experiment with strip sets.
- Several ways to jump-start myself when I'm stuck for ideas (I don't usually have this problem. I usually don't have enough time to do all my ideas.) or to just do something spontaneously.
- That I still have a really long way to go!
- I would love to do it again.

Autumn Leaves

Today I had intended to sandwich quite a few of the quilts I had from the workshop and ones I've been working on this week. What really happened was a beautiful autumn day with warm temperatures, a cool breeze, bright sunshine and falling leaves.

First, we went shopping for some shoes for Anna. Then I went to look at some fabrics at Craft Warehouse hoping to find a particular color/theme. Instead, Anna and I probably spent a half an hour picking out beads from their assortment that you can put in a container. Lunch at Baja Fresh and then to the quilt store to buy lots of threads to quilt the quilts I was suppose to be sandwiching.


Back home, I have managed to pin three quilts and then got distracted by Anna and leaves. Too beautiful to stay inside the whole day.


Here's Anna getting a pile ready over in the neighbor's yard (they get all the good leaves).

This is only the beginning. The pile ends up much bigger than this.


And who can resist a big pile of leaves?


Not Anna. . .

Not me . . .

. . . only the grumpy old 40 year old who was too busy working on his rockets!