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Archive for July, 2013

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!

Having an Arty Week

Thursday, July 18th, 2013

trishhasslerwork

I have had a great couple of days out and about in Portland. The work above is by the uber talented Trish Hassler. She has had a very successful career blending steel which she cuts with fiber. It has always intrigued me. The turquoise piece is cut from an old Nash roadster that was donated to Trisha by a Columbia Fiberarts member.

Our local SAQA group was invited by Trisha to see her exhibit with a talk by her.

SAQAgallerytalk

A mixed media artist, Kathy Haydon, shared the exhibit with her and many of the works played nicely together.

nashramblersteel

The two pieces with the ivory steel are Trisha’s and are from another car donated by Marie. The darker piece is by Kathy. I love this orange piece which uses steel from an old Allis Chalmer’s tractor. The farm girl in me couldn’t help it.

AllisChalmerstractorsteel

I really liked Trisha’s new sculptural work which you see in the first photo. It has no metal. She has Parkinson’s and finds it difficult to work with the metal. This show is the last one she will be doing with metal.

Trisha incorporates handstitching in much of her work. It was fun to add a few stitches to this community stitching piece which she will incorporate into a future work.

trishacommunitystitch

I enjoyed lunch with a couple of friends.

This morning, I went to see Kevin who did his magic and made my hair nice and red, again. It had gotten bleached from the sun and had a lot of gray showing. This afternoon, Mr C and I went on an art date to the Japanese Garden to see the Noguchi exhibit. I have long been a fan of his lighting fixtures,  that are constructed from Washi paper and bamboo. They are so sculptural and etherial.

8725383_1

The exhibit had some of the light fixtures and tables and his landscape sculptures. I couldn’t photograph inside the pavilion, but these were in the garden outside the pavilion.

noguchisculpture

noguchi2

Then we wanderd around the garden. Here are some inspiration photos that I took.

japanesegardenscene

lilypads

koi

morekoi

I need to get down to business tomorrow. Have something I can’t talk about on the blog, yet. Deadline is looming. I want to get that top done – you know the fabric I bought and is now languishing on my sewing table. I am going to have a fantastic guest on Monday, you must wait to see who it is.

Life is still good.

Wordless Wednesday

Wednesday, July 17th, 2013

WW 07-17-13

This and That

Tuesday, July 16th, 2013

simplyredquilts

I went to a High Fiber Diet meeting tonight, and many of us turned in quilts to be juried for the Simply Red show. Here is a pile of them in their travel bags. The jurying happens on Saturday. For the first time we have a panel who are not members jurying the show.

Before the meeting some of us met for dinner at a Vietnamese restaurant. I love this cuisine and since they use rice noodles and wrappers it works well for gluten free.

Terry Grant and several others had a Vietnamese Crepe which is made with rice flour and a spice that turns it yellow.

Vietcrepe

I had rice noodles, pork and all those lovely greens to put in rice paper wrappers which are then dipped in the very flavorful sauce. The pink plates each have a wrapper on them.

vietnoodles

The very talented Bonnie Bucknam brought some of her handmade books and journals. They are so beautiful.

bonniesbooks

morebonniebooks

And that is about it for today. I spent much of today doing SDA Constant Contact e-mails. Tomorrow, I am going to a SAQA meet up at a gallery where Trisha Hassler has an exhibit and is doing an artist talk for us.

Summertime in Portland

Monday, July 15th, 2013

 

deckparty

We are in the midst of beautiful long, sunny days. My favorite time of year! This past week-end, we had a dinner party on the deck. It was the wrap-up celebration for the Artists Among Us team. I made buttermilk rolls and grilled pork tenderloin with corn confetti to make sandwiches. None of which, I could eat (except for the pork), but every one else enjoyed them.

buttermilkrolls

On Sunday afternoon, I hosted an SDA meeting. Everyone brings some food to share. I used the table runner I got in Jerusalem and picked some flowers from the yard.

tablerunnerflowers

The Rhodie Garden doesn’t have blooming Rhodies, now, but there are plenty of other summer flowers to enjoy.

rhodielily

rhodierushes

This quilt came home from its travels around the US and to the Netherlands. I was so happy to see it. Still love it

ritualsquiltcomeshome

I am also happy that Kelp Dance was juried into the Sur(face) Forward exhibit at the Corvallis Art Center. It just arrived home from North Carolina.

dancingkelpquilted

I have my simply red quilts ready to turn in for jurying. Here is our new hanging system.

Hanging wire is stapled to the center of the rod. I covered the stapled area with clear duct tape.

HFDrodsystem

Here it is inserted in the rod pocket. You can see that this makes it much easier to hand in those galleries that have a hook for hanging from the center of the art.

HFDnewrodsystem2

I made a muslin bag with French seams for each quilt. A plastic sleeve is sewn to the outside of the bag and has a photo and name of the quilt and my contact info. I blocked out my phone #!

quiltbaglabels

So that is what I have been up to. Busy and enjoying life.