Happy New Year

Yes, those are sheep, being herded down a street in town. This is an annual occurrence, every winter the sheep are herded thru town to get to their winter pasture.

It's also snowing quite heavily so I'm glad we are staying home for a very quiet New years celebration. I'll probably be sound asleep way before midnight. Have a wonderful New Year!

Blue Bird

I made the bird above as a gift for a friend. The pattern, designed by Terry Grant, was in a special publication, International Quilt Festival Quilt Scene, done by Quilting Arts. It was relatively quick, easy and fun to do.

More Christmas

These came in the mail today. Having an Amazon wish list pays off. I keep a running list of books (and sometimes other goodies like my ipod) that I would like to have. This year both my husband and my daughter used it. What a great way to get what you want! Now I have reading material to get me thru the multitude of bowl games this week.

Merry Christmas

Santa was very good to me this year, two of my gifts are pictured above. The gorillapod is just the cutest tripod I've ever seen. I have two serious tripods and never use them because they are awkward and bulky, this little guy is just so cute. I put the ipod next to it so you could see just how small it is. Of course, I haven't used it yet. I was plugged into the new ipod when I took the picture. I'll be spending some time getting my music downloaded.

I hope everyone has a very merry day.

Puzzled

One of the reasons I haven't been getting much done! I haven't put together a jigsaw puzzle in years, we don't count the daily addiction to jigzone. My friend Barb was going to donate this to our local thrift store, but it came home with me first, I'll put it together, then it will go to the thrift store. My other daily addiction is setgame. As a general rule I don't care for playing games, never have, even as a child. So now you know some of my daily time wasters.

new project

This is a glimpse at parts of a new project I'm working on. I'm doing several pieces that will all hang together, they will all be the same size, all the same image(a circle), but each one will be executed in a different way. Some will be the positive and some the negative of the image. I want to do at least nine different ones, but am aiming for more. They will hang in a grid formation. The group of them together will be one of four pieces that I need to have done by early February. They are for my final assignment of the Art cloth Mastery program.

I've really been having a difficult time focusing and accomplishing anything. I haven't spent anytime out in Studio B, of course the temperature in the studio is around 50 degrees, not exactly conducive to working with dyes and paint.

Snow, rain and fog

It must be winter in Weiser. Last week we had some sub zero temperatures, but beautiful clear weather. This week has been a bit different. On Tuesday it snowed all morning and into the afternoon, we had about ten inches of snow. Then it warmed up to 33 degrees and started raining and rained until noon on Wednesday, so we have a very wet, heavy, slushy mess outside. Today we have heavy fog, the picture was taken at nine am this morning and the streetlights are still on. The good news is that it's 33 degrees warmer than last week at this time.

Joy

This year I decided to make fabric postcards for christmas. For the past few years I have been making our christmas cards, but in a regular card format, so these are the first Christmas postcards. I've been reading Christine Kane's blog and last year at this time were several pots on choosing a word for the year. I had trouble choosing one word, so I choose two, joy and clarity. So I found it easy to pick a word to put on my christmas postcards, a word that I've been focusing on all year.

Clarity came thru this summer when it became crystal clear to me that I no longer wanted to vend at quilt shows. Joy has surprised me, I'm finding it in so many areas of my life. It shows up in some very simple things, like my morning walk with the dog and in some very deep profound things, like my son thriving after an extremely serious accident and lots of other occasions in between. Joy was what I wanted to share at Christmas with family and friends.

I'm still thinking about what next years word will be, but if you've read this far, I'm wishing you joy this holiday season.

X marks the spot #1

This piece is the first "X - Marks the spot". I did it a couple of years ago, it is silk habitoi cut into rectangles that were then stapled in a x pattern. Then the silk pieces were soaked in vinegar which allowed the staples to rust. Then the rusty pieces were hand sewn with copper metallic thread onto silk noil. The staples remain in the silk as embellishment. In January of this year it was juried into the exhibit Form, not Function. It also won the Award of excellence at the show.

X marks the spot #2

This is my most recent finished piece. I've had a hard time getting a photo that shows the true color. The top photo is a detail shot and is closest to true. This started as a table cover on my print table and after a few years of printing over it, the surface started getting interesting. This is about 50" square, a bit less than half the size of the original fabric. I did hand stitching on it and fused it to felt.

Fabric Postcards

Today I started working on Postcards for an exchange with the art2mail group. We have been exchanging for several years, in fact our group is the original art2mail group. For these cards I started with a couple of pieces of fabric that I had printed, put fusable on the back and cut them up into four by six inch rectangles. I then fused them to timtex that I had also cut to four by six. Then the fun begins - I pull out my container of scraps(the pile on the right in the picture) that have fusible on the back and start cutting shapes (usually circles) and adding them to the prepared base pieces. Next trip into the studio I'll start to add some stitching.

Black and White

I've been exploring working in black and white lately. I really like bold, simple images so have been playing with that idea. Also working toward some positive/negative images. These are all samples or works in progress. The smallest sample I seem to be able to make is about half yard size, so I usually try to actually do something with them. The top one will probably get some stitching on it, the bottom two will probably get another layer of paint.

new kitchen and new blog

The last picture is a before shot, the first two are after shots. We raised the ceiling a foot, took out an appliance garage, took out cabinets over the peninsula, put in all new lighting, painted the remaining cabinets, painted the walls, removed the old tile floor and replaced it with brazilian cherry hardwood, got new appliances and replaced the old mauve formica countertop with granite. Whew! A lot of work but worth every bit of it. The dining room and living room also got the same new hardwood flooring and a fresh coat of paint.

Although I seem to have difficulty keeping up with this blog, I've started another one that is just a photo a day. The new blog is dedicated to my Mom. My Mom chastised me when I got my first camera at about age ten for taking pictures of nothing. I was told that the film was too expensive to develop, especially the pictures that I was taking. So now I'm still taking pictures of nothing, but it's now free and I'm going to share them with the world. Besides that my Mom has been gone for five years now and it's time I stop listening to the things she told me over fifty yeas ago. The new blog is http://thrulindaseyes.blogspot.com/
I was inspired to do the photo a day by the one that Jane Dunnewold just finished, Daily Visuals. Jane did it for a year, for now I'm just trying every day - I'd be thrilled if I kept it up for a year.

wooden butterflies

One of my very creative sons built a bench for me a year ago at Thanksgiving. He and the wood he used are from the very wet Tacoma, Washington area. The bench and I live in an area that gets very hot and dry in the summer, in fact on the day that it was 106 degrees the humidity was 8 percent. My bench dried out a bit and developed two large cracks. So this year at Thanksgiving the bench was repaired with six butterflies, three on the seat and three on the back. Now it is really a super cool bench!

My other very creative son brought and installed my new granite counter tops in my now finished kitchen. They are fabulous-- I love them!

I had a very good Thanksgiving.

Autumn leaf

Every fall I pick up leaves as when I'm out walking. This year I was just going to take pictures of them so I wouldn't end up with a pile of dried up leaves in the studio. But this leaf just had to come home with me this morning. I love the variations of color and the shadowy edges.

The green monster

Not a very good picture, but I don't have a tall enough space to hang the top so I can photo the entire quilt. Actually it's just the top, I finished piecing it a couple of weeks ago but never got the picture taken. It's the top that I started in the Kaffe Fasset class I took a month ago. All but four of the fabrics are ones that I've dyed and printed myself. Dh thinks it's garish, my friend Barbara that I took the class with thinks it's serene, what do you think? I think it's very green and until I moved to Idaho four years ago, green was my least favorite color. It's still not my favorite, but I am liking it more.

Road trip

We had to make an unplanned trip to Nevada earlier this week and one of the ways I occupy myself in the passenger seat is to take pictures. So this is what I looked at for a little over seven hours each way. Where we're going and where we've been.

Actually I do some of my best thinking on long trips, I just kind of zone out and let my mind go. In the past I've come up with some of my best quilt and fabric ideas while sitting and staring at the desert go by. This time I was concentrating on the colors of the high desert, the very soft muted browns, grays, greens, yellows and purples. They are very difficult colors to match, but I may give it another try.

At different times of the day the shadows are wonderful. This time of the year the mountains look like very soft discharged velveteen. The skies can also be quite beautiful and I love looking at the cloud formations. Sunsets can also be quite beautiful, but we were headed in the wrong direction and I couldn't get a good picture of one. Sunrises are probably good too, but Don's never up and ready quite early enough for them.

This weekend we head east to Twin Falls, only a 31/2 hr trip. Then we should be home for the next two months, yeah!!! Maybe I can get something done. I've finished all the painting (my part of the remodel), so Studio B is calling me.

A morning suprise

These guys were hanging out over my house this morning. I took about 20 pictures, these were among the last ones and much more interesting than the first few when all I got was balloon and sky. It's rare to see hot air balloons in Weiser, I think this is only the second time in the four years that we've lived here.

Foggy morning

The view of Main Street on this foggy morning. I finally remembered to take my camera with when I took Buster for his walk. Every day I see something that I should take a picture of, but rarely do I have the camera with me. I'm going to change that!

Kaffe Fassett class

I did something totally different for me last weekend, I took a quilt class! My friend Barb and I went to Hailey,ID and took a class from Kaffe Fassett. His fabrics and quilt designs are always so very colorful and lush, very floral. Mine may be colorful but they are a long way from floral. I used four commercial prints and the rest were all fabrics that I had done. Maybe that's why he's holding is face during the critique. Actually he said that he loved that I used my own fabrics and made the quilt mine. It will eventually become a queen size quilt.

On the home front, the kitchen remodel is inching along. We will be picking out our granite this week. Thanks to a son in the business. I'm still painting the cabinets, they are taking forever. The new ceiling is done and should be painted today (if I get off the computer and do it!). As soon as I get all the painting done the hardwood floor will be installed. That also means I get to do some rug shopping! So I'd better go and get busy.

I'm still here

I feel like I'm not a very good blogger, it's been over two weeks since my last post. I think about doing it, but never really get around to sitting down and writing. I've actually been quite busy doing fabrics and a keynote presentation for the Mastery class. I've got two weeks to get it all together and then I'm off to San Antonio for a week of class. This will be the fourth week of five, so the end is in sight. I do feel I've made some huge changes to my work and can make even more.

To complicate things we are remodeling our kitchen and installing hardwood flooring thru the kitchen, dining room and living room. This means multiple trips to Home Depot(30 min. away) and the house a total disaster. I'm finding it hard to focus and actually get anything done.

The picture above is a 45 inch square of cotton that has been hand painted with dye. It took about four hours and it felt so good to be totally in the zone working. I've never done anything like this piece before and I love it!! This will most likely become a whole cloth quilt and hang in the dining room. While I was doing this piece I had it rotated so the big orange curve was on the right hand side, but I think I like it this way.

Currently there is a three yard piece of silk pinned to my print table, so I'd better get out to the studio and do something with it.

Thanks for reading.

Monoprints

These are 4 mono-prints I did yesterday, I love them. They are imperfect, messy and great fun to do. Each piece is about 22" square. At first I thought I would add a splash of red to them, but now I'm thinking of adding embellishment of some kind. Threads, beads, needle felting, foil - ah the possibilities. When done I"d like to hang all 4 together. It will take me awhile to make a decision, so I'll probably do some more while I'm cogitating on my next move.

Kimono Finished

I finally got the kimono printed, batched,washed out, ironed and sewn back together. I'm quite happy with the way it turned out, especially since it has been sitting in my stash of things to dye for more years than I can remember. Not the greatest picture, it's pinned to my designs wall, but at least you can get an idea of what it looks like. The whole piece was stretched out on my print table (I had opened up the side seams), and screen printed. then I used a squeegee and scraped the dye onto the bands. The orange circles were put on first, then covered with freezer paper to keep them untouched with the turquoise/blue printing. Unfortunately it doesn't fit me very well - probably why it was in the stash for so long.

Back to work

Here's a picture of Studio B. It's about 20' from the back door of our house. I spent most of the day there; and it felt good to get back to work. I went camping for a few days last week, it felt good to get away and do something entirely different. But now it's time to get to work and get the fabrics for my Master class assignment done.

After doing the sample pieces for the kimono (see last post), I've now changed my mind and am planning something different. If all goes well I should have pictures soon, if not I guess I could post what goes wrong. Today I did some smaller color samples and realized that I could make samples forever and not get anything done. The more samples I make the harder it is to make a decision. I've got to just do it!

Charmeuse tests

I've had a silk charmeuse kimono blank for a very long time and have decided that it's time I do something with it. So yesterday I did two sample pieces on half yards of silk charmeuse just to test a couple of different ideas. Doing the samples didn't really help me decide what to do, but I think I'm leaning toward a different colorway of the top sample. Both of these were screen printed with thickened dye.

This weekend will be my last Quilt show as a vendor. We setup tomorrow afternoon in Kuna, ID, which is about an hour and fifteen minutes from home. Which means some time on the road this weekend. After setup we will take advantage of being close to shopping and do a Costco stop on the way home. I'm hoping for a good weekend and a much smaller inventory coming home on Sunday night.

I'm taking a Mastery class from Jane Dunnewold and am working on fabrics for the 4th session (out of 5). The fabric pictured in the header above is one that I've recently finished. It's silk organza that I've dyed using squeeze bottles and screens. I'm trying for a looser, more spontaneous look for my art cloth, and I think I'm finally getting there.

The yellow,orange red cotton fabric above was done the same way. I entered this piece in the fabric competition at QSDS this year. It was the third place winner and it also sold. The new owner of the piece is going to turn it into a whole cloth quilt.

I realize I've been a bad blogger so far, since it's taken me two weeks to do my second post, but I promise to post more frequently.

Hello blog world

Well this is my summer for big decisions. The first decision is that after the first weekend in August I will no longer be vending at Quilt shows. Linda M Designs will be going thru some changes. I will still be dying fabric and more than likely be creating more than I'll be able to use, thus the second decision, to start a blog. I felt it was the ideal way to let everyone that used to see Linda M Designs at quilt shows know what I've been up to and what fabrics may be available.

My next to the last show will be this coming weekend in Reno at the National auto museum. It is put on by the Truckee Meadows Quilters, my former Quilt guild.

My last show will be in Kuna, Idaho on Aug. 1 & 2.

Studio B is a large room attached to our garage. This is where I spend my time dyeing and printing fabrics, teaching classes and just plain having fun. There's also a Studio A, it is my sewing space inside the house.

My goal is to post several times a week, with more pictures than words. I'm very visual and I prefer to read blogs with lots of pictures.

So if you've stopped by, thank you, and please stop by again.