A great summer

I've been really enjoying my summer, my first full summer since "retiring" from vending at Quilt shows. I haven't even been to a quilt show in the past year! I sometimes miss the routine of daily production in the studio, but am much happier just dyeing and printing fabric when ever I want. The best part is doing what I want ,not what I hope will sell. When I was vending that was always on my mind, what will sell, what samples do I need to make to get something to sell. I don't miss that at all.

I will be teaching a class in Studio B on Monday evening July 26 from 6:30 - 9:30 p.m., on paintstiks. So if you happen to be in the Weiser, ID area and are interested let me know.

I've added more small pieces to my rust collection this summer. The photo below is stuff that I have found in the past 2 months, most of it from my garden area. I keep thinking about using some of it as embellishments on an art quilt. I have a rather large collection of rusty stuff and use a small part of it to rust fabric. For some reason I'm just attracted to it and keep picking it up.



I've also been working on my "This is not a sketchbook" project. These are some recent pages I've done.




I'm using scraps of fabric that have fusible on them already (I have a large box of them) and I have at least one circle in each composition. I like doing several at a time, so I'll do three or four pages several times a week.

My favorite thing I've been doing this summer is water aerobics. It's every afternoon at 5 p.m., the hottest time of the day and I'm in a nice cool pool. Today is suppose to be near 100 degrees so it is going to feel so good! The pool here is only open until the middle of August so I'm taking advantage of it while I can. Our instructors for the class are all about high school age, in fact all the employees at the pool are, that's why it closes when they go back to school.

My big bummer for the summer has been squash bugs. They have totally destroyed my squash plants that on Monday were looking very healthy. I had read somewhere to plant icicle radishes along with the squash to prevent a problem. I did that and things were looking good until the middle of this week. Oh well, I can buy squash at the fruit stand down the road a bit.

A road trip and a bit of stitching

We've been gone all week having fun with grandchildren. We were in Reno, my 17 year old grand daughter that lives in Washington asked me to take her to see Joan Baez on the first stop of her new tour. So we met up in Reno, stayed with my youngest son and celebrated his 40th, and saw Joan Baez. It was a fabulous show, attendees were almost all boomers and one very excited 17 year old. Also hula hooped with my 5 year old grand daughter and spent lots of time with her and her year old sister. A fun trip.
I did a little bit more stitching on the silk piece that I plan to paint with dye, it's been a very slow process. I sure hope my idea works after all the time I'm putting into it. Below are a couple of pictures of my progress.

I'm here and stitching

It's been awhile since I've posted. Last week was very busy, we had family visiting, some expected and others that weren't and it was Fiddle week here in Weiser so there was a lot to do. We went to several live performances and I "work" in one of the many volunteer positions available during the week. In general we had a very good time taking advantage of entertainment opportunities that we normally don't have.

I started doing my sketchbook project, small fabric collages fused into the book, my one rule I've set for myself is that each page has to have a circle. Below is the first page.



I also did some more stitched resist. This time I did circles and just put dye on the stitched part. Below you can see how they look with all the stitching gathered up and the dye painted on.



Then I took the stitching out and am now adding more stitching to the whole piece. I'm using some pre-washed flannel on the back. After it's all stitched I'll paint on more dye to color both the stitching and the fabric. I've never done it this way before so the whole thing is an experiment. This is how it looks now.



I'll keep you posted on the progress and results.