Sneek Peek

Saturday is reveal day for the Fiberactions group. The challenge word for this round is 'environment' and I am almost finished with my quilt. This may be my favorite of the 8 I have created for this group. Stop back on Saturday to see the entire piece.

Record snow in Atl

Nice day to stay home. This is the most snow I have seen in the 13 years we have lived here. Lucily we still havd a snow shovel from when we lived in NJ. Now it is sleeting which is much more common for this area. Even more amazing is that we actually had a white Christmas....the first in over 100 years! Think I will make some homemade vegtable soup.

Missed deadline

"Holiday Ham"

I had fully intended to enter the Quilting Arts calendar contest this year. The deadline for having pictures of your entry in was today. This years theme was 'feeling petty' and above is my would have been entry. I finished this on Wednesday..... 2 days 2 late to get it to MA in time. I am really upset with myself. I have been sick for the last 2 weeks and have been having a difficult time getting anything done but still this is no excuse. My procrastination has always been an issue.

Now I do think that this quilt would have had a slim chance if any to be selected as a winner since it is so holiday focused and would have to had been chosen for December. I still did just want to enter. So water under the bridge and lesson learned. Now let me tell you about the quilt.

While enjoying the holidays at my brothers house a couple of years ago, he brought out the smallest member of the family dressed in her best holiday outfit. Skipper is one of the funniest dogs I have ever seen with a personality to match and added even more joy to the day. She loved ‘hamming’ it up and really made us laugh.

This quilt is based on a photo I took. I posterized and printed the photo and then used 3 commercial fabrics to create Skipper. I did heavy thread sketching for the dog’s hair, eyes and nose. I placed Skipper in a night winter scene to complete the quilt.

Here is a detail shot of Skipper.

Does this background look familiar? I knew I would be cutting it close on time and also knew I had to put Skipper on some sort of background. The above photo is of a UFO that was hanging around from several years ago when I was just learning to quilt. I cut off the dancers hair and then placed Skipper on top. I stitched her down, added the thread painting. quilted it, cut it to 12" x 12" and zigzagged the edges. So maybe in 100 years someone will ex-ray this and see the dancer underneath..........just like one of the old masters paintings........ I am still mad at myself!!!

Thread Sketching

All last year I have been following the thread sketching articles in Quilting Arts magazine by Susan Brubaker Knapp. I love the detail she adds with thread and though she did a great job with the series. I did this small (6"x 7") piece to practice my own thread sketching. I love to make small pieces from my scrap box and use these little experiments as gifts also.

I did purchase Susan's DVD, Master Machine Stitching, from Interweave and actually thought it was quite good. The quality of the DVDs has really improved from the first ones that they put out. I bought one a couple of years ago (won't say which one) that was awful to say the least. A couple of my friends thought the same of videos they purchased. At the time I was shocked that Quilting Arts would put out such a poor product. Have any of you had any experience with these DVDs?

Transfomation Reveal

Here is my transformation piece for the Fiberactions group. I had a picture that I took while I was in India last year of the elephant god Ganesh. You can see the original photo in the next shot. It's not a great picture and I am surprised that I did not just delete it.

I cropped a portion of the photo that I thought had an interesting look and then rotated it 90 degrees. I think I like it better in a landscape format but one of the rules of the group is that all of the pieces be in portrait orientation.










I printed out a black and white picture of the cropped section and then sketched it on cloth. I painted it using my own color pallet and Stewart Gill paints. These paints are so easy t use and love the vibrant colors. I must have used at least 15 different threads for the quilting. It really is more heavy tread painting then quilting. I love heavy tread work and feel I need to add even more.















In this next shot you can see the details of the foot. I love the red Byzantia paint with the small silver thread stippling. Click on the photos and ou can see the details more clearly. Sorry for this crazy format but I can't get blogger to behave!

I will have a small presence in Houston

Even though my art output has been low this year, I will have something at the International Quilt Festival in Houston next week. My photo titled 'Reflections of the Past' has been accepted for the Eye of the Quilter photo exhibit. I took this picture a couple of years ago when we were in China.

I will be going to IQF next Thursday and Friday with my friends Suzanne and Vickie. Does anyone else have plans to go? Would love ot meet some of you.

I will get back to art soon.....

We have been at our house in NC since last Wednesday. It is really beautiful here right now and this first picture is of the view of the river from our house. The weather has been perfect and we have spent most of the time working outside in the yard.

we planted 3 blueberry bushes, mums, a couple of rhododendrons and a tree. Still so much to do. Not to mention that we don't have furniture yet...

Today we took a day trip with some friends to Dollywood! Tickets were free and we did have fun. The trip took us through the Smokies and I took this next picture just a few hours ago on the way back.

Tomorrow we are going home and I have 2 projects that are calling me. First is my challenge quilt for Fiberactions that is due on 11/15. Next I want to create a new landscape quilt. I love landscapes and haven't really done a significant one in quite a while.

So I will be hopefully back to posting on a more regular basis with new art soon.

'Stretch' Challenge Reveal

Here is my 'stretch' quilt for my Fiberactions challenge group. Make sure and check out everyone's great quilts on the Fiberactions blog.

I must admit that these last 3 challenges have been a real 'stretch' for me. For the last 4 months we have been building a second home in NC which is about 2 hours from our home in GA. My time at home has been limited but the flooring was put down last Friday so I may be back to a somewhat normal life soon!

For this piece I started with a fabric that I created about a year ago. I loved the colors but I thought the front was too bright so I turned it over and used the back. I just started adding layers of fabric and paint.



The green leaf on the upper left actually is made up of 11 layers including the quilting. Here is a closeup. The layers are: backing fabric, 2 layers of wool/cotton blend batting, background fabric, orange fabric, red felt covered with organza with designs created by using a soddering iron, green leaf, painted misty fuse, black tulle and finally the quilting.


One of the things that always takes me forever is deciding on how I want to quilt a piece so this is really where the 'stretch' comes in on this quilt. Usually for the background quilting I do some sort of all over consistent pattern. My crutch seems to be stippling.

After starring at this pinned to my design wall for an hour or so I decided to just start some real random allover quilting with no real pattern in mind. At first I thought I would just use clear thread in case I didn't like it but at the last minute I selected a variegated that I had never used before. In this picture you can see the results.

Yes....I'm still here!

Tomorrow is carpet day at the new house!!!!! Could this really be the end and I will be able to get back to some sort of normal life and art? Now I don't want to get too excited since last Satruday was also carpet day...... however when they cut the pieces for the great room the 2 pieces, even though cut from the same role, were different colors. So back to the carpet store and select new carpet.

Truthfully I like this carpet better than the first so maybe it was not a bad thing. Wish me luck and watch this space for my resurgence in art.

It is starting to look like a house!

Here is the reason that I have been so neglectful of my art and blog the last couple of months. Our house in NC is actually starting to look like a house! We think it should be finished in another 5 or 6 weeks and then maybe things will get back to normal.

I have actually been home this week and have been working on trying to catch up on a few projects. When I went downstairs to my studio I spent the first 2 hours cleaning up from my last rush of overdue projects. To say it was a mess is really an understatement. Not that it is really organized right now (not even close!) but I can at least see the floor and my work table. So here I am again behind the eight ball with my Fiberactions challenge quilt. The word for this round is 'Memory' and I like what I have started. My goal is to have it done before Monday since this week the house is being dry walled and we will be painting the finish coat on the walls ourselves. I hate to think of how many rooms I have painted but I actually enjoy it. I love the feeling of accomplishment and it is amazing what a little color can do for a room. I don't do pastel walls and love bold colors. I will try to do better keeping up and thanks to any followers I may have left! Enjoy the holiday weekend.

This Months Round Robin

Here is this months round robin. I actually like it and think this has potential to turn out as a decent piece. It still has 5 or 6 people to go through before it is finished so we will see what happens.


















I am still behind on my art commitments so I really feel I took the easy way out on this one. I had an Asian print fabric in my stash and just cut out this bird and fused it to the quilt...... Not exactly anything innovative or spectacular but I think it works. Maybe I will be caught up with things in a couple of weeks.

Convergence Reveal

Here is my 'convergence' quilt for my Fiberactions challenge group. Make sure and check out everyone's great quilts on the Fiberactions blog.

To say this was a challenge is an understatement. Over the last couple of months we have been in the process of designing a second home and going through the contracting phase of building it in NC which is about 2 hours from where we live in GA. My time for art has really been limited.

This was my third attempt. The first attempt was about 3 weeks ago. I saw the date looming ahead of me and in a panic cut up about 6 different fabrics into 1 1/2" squares. I thought I would make some cool converging design and have an opportunity to practice my piecing which I have said several times that I am not very good at. Look at this

really ugly pile of fabrics....what was I thinking. I hated the colors and everything about it!

Next in even more of a panic I saw Ricky Timms book on Convergence quilts on my book shelf and thought I could at least do a simple one. I picked 2 really cool fabrics and did a curved convergence design that I really liked after the first convergence. I thought of stopping there and finishing the piece that would have been about 30" x 20" (wish I would have taken a picture). Since I had not other ideas for a convergence quilt, I decided that I should try to slice it and dice in some other way so I could meet the challenge deadline.

After more cutting and sewing I then decided it was too ordinary and decided to do some extensive thread painting on the top before quilting. I used 2 layers of stabilizer which was not enough and the top became so wonky that in total despair I cut it in pieces, arranged them on a piece of black felt and went for a bike ride with my daughter and granddaughter ! This was on Tuesday of this week....

I got up early on Wednesday, now in full blown panic mode, and went down to my studio. I looked at my now ruined quilt and started to look through my fabrics for the third time. I found a stack of my hand-painted skies. I love to paint fabric and the sky is one of my favorite subjects. I selected 5 different ones and after a couple of hours of playing with the arrangement I fused them in place. I did an overall cloud pattern for the quilting and with 2 trips abound the edges with a zigzag stitch I was done. If felt like I had just lost 20 pounds (wish I could really lose 20 LBS!!). This was really a great lesson for me since I tend to over think most things and am not know for someone who does things in a hurry. The funny thing is that I really like this quilt and it was done in a day.