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Archive for August, 2011

The Color Purple

Tuesday, August 9th, 2011

All of my studio work is stuff I can’t show you so instead, you will see photos of pretty flora from my neighborhood walk with Scooter and Mr. C. There seems to be an abundance of purple flowers.

I had a glitch with one of the pieces I am working on, today. I was fusing organza to a piece of silk and a little purple thread got stuck under the organza. Amazingly, I was able to use tweezers to pull the thread out with out it showing any damage to the organza – whew!

We are having such a chilly summer. The sun does not come out until the afternoon. It is great sleeping weather, but not weather for tomatoes or dyeing!!

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.

NW Vibe — High Fiber Diet

Friday, August 5th, 2011

We went to the opening reception for the latest High Fiber Diet show — NW Vibe. That is my Red Sky at Night up there, my rendition of Portland at night looking West from our side of the river. If you click on it, you can get a better view. That is Terry’s piece at the bottom which is a view out the window on a rainy day with her sewing supplies at the ready. Sorry, the photo is a bit blurry.

Here is another overview of the show. I am not particularly fond of venues where the quilts have to be stacked like this, but sometimes that is a necessity.

Here are some individual pieces:

The piece on the bottom has sold. So happy for Chris!

The venue is a cafe/coffee house with a gallery area and beautiful vertical gardens on the exterior located in Oregon City. There was very enjoyable live music — a nice coffee house vibe for our NW Vibes.

Here is Terry and her daughter and some other folks. Terry’s grandchildren are gorgeous children.

I was very enamored of the vertical gardens. I have always wanted a vertical succulent garden on the side of our garage.

This is a newly planted vertical garden. They put carpet padding on the side of the building and then cut into it to place the plants. They are watered from above.

 

 

There is a free seminar of planting and caring for vertical gardens on Sunday  afternoon, I may have to go!!

 

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.

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.

I hung it out to dry. The joists for the new deck make a great place for me to have a clothesline!

Tonight, I ironed them and had fun adding black markings. I used a tiny paint brush, a pipette, a chop stick, a syringe and a string.

This is the organza piece.

This is probably the last I will show you this as I create my imagined composition out of this fabric.

This little piece is going to a new home:

For a hanger, I found this in the belt making section of Mill Ends and stitched it to the back.

It is nice to have a few days o feeling great and time to be creative.