I am still pacing myself after the frenetic work I had to accomplish earlier this year. I can hardly remember what I did yesterday!! I leaned my desk, trying to find a missing credit card bill – no luck. I guess the USPS has missed delivery once again. Our postal carrier retired and now we have had a variety of people, never the same one. We have also had lots of missing mail.

Last night, we went to a wonderful service at church  — a Eucharist liturgy set to Bruce Springsteen music. It was very well attended. I enjoyed it immensely. He is a poet and a champion of the downtrodden.

Today, I did some neatening of my studio. Stephanie is coming over tomorrow to help me take some studio photos for the Twelve X Twelve book. She is very good at staging and has a great eye for the interesting shot.

I folded some fabrics to neaten my wire basket storage. I found that I have quite a bit of dupioni silk in many colors — two wire baskets full. I used to use a lot of silk dupioni before I started dyeing my own fabric. I am thinking of washing it and making a quilt for our bedroom. But some of those colors will not work.

I took this photo of my print table before I put a clean sheet over it. I just love it.

I do a lot of fusing and while I was in the cleaning up mode, I cleaned the soles of all my irons. I have lots of options! I love my Panasonic with the titanium sole. It takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’. I can’t tell you how many times I have dropped it.

I was itching to do some more small roots/weeds pieces, but never got to it. I have a few deadlines looming. I need to make a couple of new pieces for our Japanese Garden show. I want to use some of my vintage textiles. I need to make a 15 X 15 piece for the Quilt Art @15 online show. I want to make some smaller pieces for the Artists Among Us show. I did not get into Visions, so I have two more pieces that will be available for that show.

I am getting excited about going to SF next week for the SDA/SAQA conference and to spend some time with my children. Life is good.

It was nice to play around with the smaller format this week. It is nice to get the instant gratification my finishing a piece in a couple of days. I played some more with skinny bits for this and then made the commitment and fused it. I let it percolate for awhile and then quilted it this afternoon. It is clickable to see it larger. I am considering using this for the SAQA auction. I am going to do a larger one this week-end – not sure if it will be roots or grass.

Here is a detail:

Have a great week-end. I am wondering if I will get my skinny envelope from Quilt Visions tomorrow. Seems like a lot of people have gotten theirs yesterday and today.

After a three days out of the studio, I just had to get in there tonight and play with some scraps. I have some slivers of the fabrics I used in Mother Lode and I got this idea of using them in a 12 X 12 quilt. I think they look like tangle roots. This is not fused or stitched, yet. I think I like that background for this – sort of rich soil looking.

Today was STASH (Some Thursday at Someone’s House). Today it was at Gale’s home. We had a good time chatting and sharing our work and especially hearing all about Terry’s adventures in Cleveland, taping for the Quilting Arts TV show. She prepared a great lunch for us. Always nice to spend a few hours with my friends.

I took these mossy photos in her front yard. I love moss and Portland had a plethora!

Mr C and I are still fighting over which green paint to use. I will keep you posted. We have to make the decision tomorrow.

I had back to back meetings today and both were fun and inspiring. First, was the quarterly meeting of Columbia Fiberarts Guild. We had a program which featured members of the guild doing demonstrations and showing their work. We capped it off with a delicious catered lunch.

This afternoon, we had our first Portland area SAQA meeting, with a great turn out and several guests who may decide to join. The highlight was seeing part of the SAQA @20 trunk show. I was excited to see that this group had my piece. It is up there on the left. I used my handpainted silk and did lots of hand stitching. We are going to have our first Oregon juried show, titled Oregon, State of Diversity. To cap off the day, I won this door prize, The Transformations:  Reflections Catalog.

One of the demos today was by a paper collage artist, Susan Schenck, who is not a member of the guild. I loved what she did so much, I thought I would share some photos.

Here is one of her pieces. A detail is below.

She started a collage of this dog photo during her demo.

She has tons of magazine pages sorted by colors. She told me that she is partial to text on color to give more interest and texture.

She uses wall paper for the background because it can stand up to the dampness of the glue. She told me she finds it at yard sales. That is where she gets many of her frames, too.

She does a sketch of the photo on tracing paper and then does the collage under the tracing paper, filling in the background first. She uses a paste glue called Yes!. The old phone book is her pasting station. Brilliant.

Hope you enjoyed sharing my day with me.

As I mentioned yesterday, I have been on a whirlwind of activity since January — working on the Twelve X Twelve book and challenge, creating my Bird’s Eye View quilts, and most recently, finishing up Mother Lode. There have been lots of other things taking up my days, and  you know, it is all good. For me, at my age, to be on this path is just plain fabulous. Now,  I am contemplating starting the next pieces that I need to have done by April; and more for May.

Today, I sent Sunset Composition off to NC for the PAQA South Illuminations show and I burned a CD of Mother Lode and sent it off. It was nice to tick off some things.

The photo up there is the Tote Tuesday goodies from Jane Davila that I won in the auction fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. It arrived today, and I am looking forward to checking out Jane’s book, Surface Design Essentials. I have never used Liquitex products and that will be fun to try.

Here is an assortment of green paint chips. That is a lot of green variety. Earlier this year, we painted my office and now  it is time to finish the hallway and my studio. I am thinking I would like a green paint. The Marmoleum tile has alternating green tiles. The  color on the left on the bottom is closest to the tile. It is a nice soothing green and plays nicely with the turquoise in my office. I wish I could have one of those citrusy greens, but, I have to be sensible.

Tomorrow is a big day out and about. I have to preside at the Columbia Fiberarts Guild and luncheon tomorrow, and then, we are having our first ever Portland area SAQA meeting in the afternoon. The Oregon group is going to have a show: it has been a long time coming.