I'm 4 years old!

I just realized that my blog is celebrating it's 4th year. Thank you to everyone who's commented such nice things! And thank you to those who just thought nice things too:)!

Here's some Valentines Day Love from LOLCats! (no, I do not have a new kitten)



New kitten: adoption fee $50.00
Cat food and litter box: $30.00
Cat toys : Several Million dollars (annually)


100% unconditional love: priceless

Thank you LOLCats for always making my day brighter!

What's Not To Love?

Totally OT!

Here is who has come to live with us for awhile. His name is Aspen. He is a Snowleopard Bengal. A bit ago as many of you know (all my fiend friends from Fablo's blog); I went barking mad and decided to become a foster mother for the Bengal Rescue Society. After much encouragement from Lorraine; I decided I could do this.

I wish you could see his fur in real life; it's silver (literally shiny like tiny silver threads throughout) He is gorgeous and loving as all get out. He will head butt you so hard and meow and purr and chirp the entire time you are with him. He's just met us; but you'd think we'd had him since he was a baby. He's the most wondeful animal! He came with two beds and his own blankie. Anyone want to take him to their forever home???

Moondance part II

The gal that commissioned Moondance liked it so well she had me design a quilt for her neice. Very simple design incorporating the flag t-shirt that she wore to all this neice's softball games.



The quilt measures 4'H x 43"W. The quilt back was made entirely from a fleece jacket the woman wore on camping trips. It had special sigificance for this family member so I wanted to keep it tact as much as possible. I had to use fusible interfacing on each peice and resew it back together leaving the buttoned up sections joined.



She also requested 4 separate pillows 20" each. for additional family members. The Scooby fabric was required so for each pillow I tried to make them somewhat color coordiated. On the back she requested I write a saying for each person & include their name and use the 'tye dye' flag material we had left over from the back of her quilt.

Latest Commission

In September of last year; I received a contact through a mutual friend. A lady she had met at a quilt camp was looking for someone who would take her families six wedding dresses and turn them into something else. I contacted the lady and we agreed to meet up and discuss what she wanted and what she had.

For the purposes of this blog; I won't go into lengthy detail about the planning stages & so forth. Suffice it to say I created a few designs & she picked one. I was to make 4 separate wall hangings using the materials from each of the dresses.

The deconstruction of those dresses took the longest and I will remember that should more commissions like this one come about (which would be wonderfully fun!)

The dress materials then had to be prepared using either (and most often both) fusible interfacing and wonder under. Due to the nature of the fabrics this was imperative I assure you. I felt rather like Charlie Chaplin when I was trying to iron on the fusible interfacing as I'd get one section held down with the iron the rest of the material rush off the other end of the ironing board and puddle unmercifully onto the floor mocking my attempts to be neat.

I had to enlarge my design onto freezer paper, then create a pattern off of it using tissue paper. I then cut out each bird section. I had six pieces of fabric (one section from each dress) and would then cut sections of each bird from each piece of material ensuring that each wall hanging would incorporate parts of each dress.

Once it was all fused down to the grey silk; I stitched it all down and added the background quilting. The sections that looks like trees is actually the bodice lace from one of the gowns. I removed it from it's backing; tea stained it and cut it in sections that I then couched down. Lastly, I took the assorted pearls; beads and satin covered buttons (there were 43 on one dress!)and added the embellishments.

On the backs(sorry for the bad picture); there is a pocket on each one; enclosed in it is the 'legend' which has the wedding pictures of each couple, their names and their wedding dates. I had them laminated on vellum.

I'm only sharing the photos of one whole one and not all 4 to eliminate the repetition(though they are each different in subtle ways).

I only wish I was better at photography, the silk reflection really is hard to deal with when trying to get nice shots. Even with my daughters new Canon Rebel EOS, blah, blah, blah, it was so much camera! I mean really; I try to aspire to be good at one thing, quilting... Do I need to be a professional photographer too? Obviously not; I will gladly pay someone next time.

Finished size was 24" x 36" roughly.

Lady of the House...

This is the calligraphy piece I made for the back of the frame.



In the box



Out of the box

Here is the gift for my boss' 60th birthday. Shehas many birds and keeps Lady Gouldian Finches. I hope she likes it. I've mounted it in a shadow box (size 8x10) the piece itself is more like 6"x8". It was fun; It's hand beaded & I painted the 'tree' as well. Originally; I was going to fuse fabric on for the tree; but in my haste; I had all ready beaded the leg & foot so trying to fuse fabric around that was out... The painting didn't turn out awful though I'm a self admitted 'non-painterly' person. (too messy for me)

Hope she likes it!

"Moondance"

This memory quilt was commissioned by a gal for her best friend. The mom passed away October 1 of this year. Our mutual hairdresser put her in touch with me to make a quilt out of the mom's clothing. After meeting with the daughter and learning more about the mom; I came up with this design. It's still a memory quilt in the sense that the border was created out of the fabrics from her clothes with a few brighter scraps from my stash. But it turned more into an art quilt in the middle :) She was a hippie of the 60's; loved dragonflies; flowers and frogs along with peace signs.

The dragonfly on the front was created out of the dress she wore to her daughter's wedding. I stitched the wing membranes in metallic opalescent threads & couched the silver frizze yarn as well as the multii-colored frizze yarns on the dragonfly. The frog is out of some great batik. The size is 56"long x 45"wide. The backing fabric was cut from a large backdrop fabric that was used at her 60th birthday. I quilted it from the back so the dragonfly appears to be crossing the moon of the peace sign from the front. The song "Moondance" kept playing in my head so that's what I've entitled it.

The poem that the family shared was 'I wish you enough' and I wrote the versus of that poem on the denim strips around the border in sharpie marker.

Her friend picked up the quilt tonight and was thrilled. I can't wait to hear how the daughter likes it. I agreed to keep the clothing for a couple months in case any of her family members want one also.

Finished Dragon Head

Still have to get him into the quilt but here's the final shot of his head with finished mouth.

New Beaded Dragon Work

As always; starting with 'storyboard' Dragon is 16" H x 10" W. He will be placed as an off-center motif in a larger wall quilt that I'm still designing. In the storyboard you see the scales behind his head; those are being made individually out of orange/red silk and will be 3-D. I have other silk & some beautiful heavy brocaide tapestery fabric that will finish the 'frame'. I've had much fun beading him and will be adding more of the peacock scales (sequins) around his jaw area to bring that color out. And yes; each bead (and or sequin) is sewn on by hand one bead at a time.





The teeth were hand sculpted with sculpey. I 'scored' them to give them more reality. Then played with painting them to match the gold beads.



Ellen's close up shots are the bomb!




Those sequins that are black with the stars are halographic. I hand cut each one from a circle to the 'eye' shape you see then hand hole punch an additional hole to secure both ends.



The bead that started it all: The eye. For mother's day this year Ellen surprised me with a trip to the bead store. On limited funds of my own I passed over this bead and when we got home Ellen presented it to me. She had paid for it out of her own money. My daughter is the best! (A plethera of other words come to mind but that will suffice)

Halloween '08

This is how much fun you can have with your teenage daughter, some tulle & masks. (& rollerskates/blades) We skated through the neighborhood scaring the bejeebers outta little kids! We passed out candy from our jack o'lantern buckets and silly stringed the older kids who seemed to love that more than the candy! We skated through the party in the cul-du-sac near at the end of our street & none of our neighbors knew who we were! We were asked several times through out the evening to stop for photos. It was truly fun! At one point I thought I had given away my phone as it was in my bucket that I was frantically tossing candy out of. Much later that eve. came home & called it and heard the dang thing ringing on the kitchen table where I had left it. (phew!) We skated across a major intersection (yes in the cross walks with the proper lights) and got honked at and a few cat calls from drivers. All in all, it was a night to remember. After all that excersize; I only had one small piece of candy (which sadly was probably the exact amount of calories I burned).

Hellooooooo Houston!

Journal Quilt 2008 17" x 22" are up in Houston which means I can now share my entry that was juried in with you! Out of nearly 200; only 36 were taken & you can believe me; I feel incredibly honored by my entries inclusion.

The theme was 'Elements'. I chose water and did an interpretation of recycling to save our wonderous wetlands. Here's my artist statement:

This quilt was inspired by my passion to conserve our natural wetlands. The materials used consist of recycled flower bouquet wrappers that are plastic. I won’t go into detail about the irony of wrapping something natural and beautiful like flowers in something that will ultimately destroy what is natural and beautiful like our wildlife. The flamingoes themselves are plastic drink stirrers. The buttons are plastic as well as some of the filaments in the decorative yarns.

I created this piece one Sunday morning with my 15 year old daughter Ellen. I had taken the fabric and cut it up and inverted the colors to give the best contrast and ‘pop’ the design. I then laid the flamingoes down & played with the ‘organic’ placement of the decorative fibers. I wanted to go with beads (my other passion) but Ellen assured me that what it needed was some of her beloved plastic button collection. So while she bent over the work table intent on placement and color of the buttons; I was able to stand there and be intent on watching her, in the soft morning light, hair strands falling gently following the curve of her face.

What will we be leaving our children? Something lasting or something shiny and plastic that will ultimately fail and pale by comparison to the beauty and grandeur that is the natural world?

Baby Blankets

These were easy, fast & fun! The backs are solid flannel. Tops are primarily cotton with one or two smaller squares that are flannel. The cat one came as a kit that I eliminated the 'minky' tourquoise & replaced with the batik; the Pooh Bear I had to create as there is no 'girl' Pooh Bear stuff; to which I say 'Duh!" all the characters are male except for the shallowly formed Kanga. Nothing against Pooh; Tigger is my favorite! The cat one is for my hairdressers new daughter Sadie; the Pooh Bear was commissioned by a co-worker.