Revisiting the Artist's Way

More pictures I should have posted awhile ago.

Here are some of my favourite Quilted Diamonds, trimmed and untrimmed.

Below is a picture of ladies working during our Quilters Dream Cruise.  I had the best time teaching Dear Jane to our cruising group, and it was wonderful to visit the beautiful islands of Bahamas, St. Thomas and St. Maartan. I can't wait to teach again on the cruise to Belize, Panama and Costa Rica this March. This time, it's Crazy Quilting. I've made a great little notions holder that participants will easily be able to complete during the cruise. Well, at least the crazy quilting ...

I don't want anyone missing beach time!

Here are the ladies working on their Dear Jane blocks during the cruise. The best part of hand piecing is you don't have to lug a big sewing machine on a cruise - you just bring your little sewing kit and fabric, and off you go!

So much for getting my studio in order. I've ploughed through lots of papers, magazines and books, and have thrown away quite a bit. Still lots to do, though.

I got a copy of the Vein of Gold at Chapters for a ridiculously low price, and am rereading it now for some inspiration. I'd worked through The Artist's Way three years ago; a particularly good time, it turned out, to have done it. Serendipity, or is there really serendipity?

The above two pics are from the "Are You a Glitz Goddess?" workshop I did last month. We had lots of fun with gold and silver pens, paints, and Angelina fibres, shown here. We used stamps with the fibres as well as embedding things within the fibres.

A week off to play

I've taken this week off work between Christmas and New Year's Day to relax and, I hope, get my studio in order. I got a terrific 6 basket wicker storage chest for Christmas, so I have to decide what to put in it. FQs will fit perfectly in the small baskets, but do I organize them by theme/colour/another way?

I'm thinking of lining them with muslin because I moved some baskets to vacuum the carpet and found some pretty horrible marks underneath them. We'd gotten them at Canadian Tire and they're perfect for holding our huge DVD collection, but these marks are in the MIDDLE of the family room since the baskets are underneath the coffee table.

Below is a picture of my Dear Jane quilt, FINALLY together!


I also got my upcoming classes posted here on the blog, with links to the shops or guilds for whom I'm teaching. I'll keep it up to date as more classses come up. I'm doing paper as well as quilting classes, and am having a blast doing them.

Another picture upload attempt

Back to attempt picture uploading. This time - success. I've vacuumed, puttered, had a massage, emptied garbage, had stilton, pears and crackers from Prince Charles' "Duchy Originals" (the oat with chives is terrific with stilton and pears), and I've played in the studio.

I do things a bit at a time, which explains why nothing is ever complete. I distressed some tiny manila tags I got at Staples by rubbing distress ink all over them with part of a cut up dollar store sponge. I can't see the point in buying ultra-expensive stuff like that at specialty stores (sorry, Cathy!). I also distressed an oval box that's been kicking around for years. I'm determined to do something with it and give it away at Christmas, ideally as a container for cookies. In the same wicker basket as some of my stamp pads was an old plaster of paris strawberry that used to hang in our kitchen. It's sure not lovely, but it's a memory of the kitchen on Wales Cres. and I like it. It's broke more than once, and I've just glued it together again. If it holds, I'll find a bit of wall in the studio for it. Mom made great cookies in the kitchen with that strawberry hanging nearby - I wonder if it'll improve my baking.

I applied some Krylon gold pen (one of my very favourite things) to a dollar store hardcover book I've covered in gesso and coloured with Adirondak inks. I then stamped it with a french letter stamp, applied gel medium and smoothed down one of the pictures I pulled from the LCBO book with packing tape. More gel medium over the packing tape, and I've stamped the top of the tape with the french letter. We'll see if it dries with the words showing. If I can ever upload, I'll post a pic. It's got graph paper inside, so might be a good present for Katie to plot out her garden. Not exactly garden related, but we took our French degrees together, and the picture and letter stamp are French.

More transparencies

I raided the LCBO catalogue last night and put packing tape over pics of lovely bottles, labels and found great photos of grapes which I plan to distress. Still no luck uploading pictures this morning.

I wanted to upload the pics of the rotary cutter case I'll be teaching on the cruise in March. It's an easy project and the class days will be more than enough time to complete the sewing and embellishing. The boys can't wait - their own room and 24 hour food! If you want to come with us - go here and then contact Louise or Carol. We had so much fun last year! http://www.quiltersdream.ca/quilters_dream_cruise.htm
I'll try later to upload the pics.

Quilting Arts

I love Quilting Arts magazine and Cloth, Paper, Scissors and now follow Patricia's blog. She issued a challenge a couple of months ago and I was one of the lucky few who got goodies from her to create with. I made a little memories box from the materials sent to me- I used a Blue Bird matches box, in part because the challenge was issued on the death of her father, and the matches reminded me of my late grandfather. He smoked a pipe and my sister and I would run to him to blow out his matches. There are lots of memories of my parents and grandparents I can keep in there; I miss them all.

What a great job Patricia Bolton has created for herself! Hard, hard work, I have no doubt - you never work harder and longer than when you work for yourself, but if you are doing what you love, then it's play. Her work is bringing us incredibly talented works of art and their creators. What fun!

There's a lovely fabric journal featured on her blog right now I'm thinking of making up for a friend. I haven't burned chiffon scarves, though, and hope they burn better than some of the materials I used for some ATCs. They're really cool, but not as clean looking as the pictures on Patricia's blog. I had a bit of blackish gunk, but that must have been the material I was using. My top layer was a polyester or something that I painted a dark blue. Perhaps the paint created the gunk.

I was going to post some pictures but it doesn't seem to be working right now. Perhaps tomorrow. (Note: it's tomorrow, and I've uploaded two pics of my challenge piece above) I want to go play with packing tape transparencies again. I'm putting packing tape all over my magazines now. It's just a terrific idea!

More updates

I went to the One of a Kind Craft show in Toronto today with a friend and was very inspired. Beautiful work there - an incredible amount of talent in Canada! I wish I'd been buying for me - I could have gone mad. I went as far as a beeswax candle for me. Maybe at the spring show..

http://www.oneofakindshow.com/xmas06/

Here are some of the artists I loved there: Tracey Martin's Martin House Garden Art, www.martinhouseart.com, Cora Brittan's lovely gilded paintings (I'm a sucker for gilding), www.brittanart.com, Studio Surette, www.studiosurette.com (I have a great piece of theirs from the Burlington Art Gallery), Morin Choiniere (I have a lovely mirror of theirs I bought about 11 years ago at the show)..more to come, but now to bed for work in the morning.

I did the 2002 Told in a Garden Angel for our tree. I did another year's below, but I'm unsure of the year. They're lovely works. I've got a Celtic Christmas pattern on stretchers and barely started.

I think I did the nice gingerbread cookies 3 years ago at Christmas. It was quite an assembly line but I had fun with it. No sign of inspiration so far this year.

I'll be catching up over the next while with pictures of older works.

I made this William Morris repro quilt during a workshop with Rosemary Makhan a couple of years ago, and sent it to my aunt in California for Christmas 2001. Sue Patten did a pantograph that echoed the acanthus leaves in the fabrics.

This Jacob's Ladder quilt, made in 1999 has since been anihilated by our cats. The pattern was from Fons and Porter's magazine, and was one of a number of patterns you could make from 2-1/2 inch and 4-1/2 inch strips. I made my sister a similar quilt in a colourway which she chose.

I made this Autumn Leaves quilt from a pattern in a Quilt Sampler magazine. I hand quilted it and gave it as a Christmas gift in 2000.

ATCs I made in a workshop I ran in October

I had a great time doing a paper ATC workshop at the Ink Spot Shop in Oakville. These are the ones I played with and traded out at the end of the workshop. I did a second last night at the shop and we did a few Christmas themed cards. ATCs are such a fantastic little way to test a theory, play with stitches (I also teach fabric ATCs) and just let myself play. I can't wait for the next one. My next fabric ATC class is in April at Ginny's in Oakville, and I think we'll do another paper class in January. I love seeing the creativity that just flows out of class members when they realize how quick and harmless these little works of art are. You don' need perfection, just inspiration.

First post

My first post. I've been inspired by other blogs, which appear far easier to do than webpages. So long as this doesn't become the sum total of my output going forward, I'll continue this. I hope it forces me to create things to post.