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.