Painting Class - Week 2

Wow, your comments and emails about my upcoming book have just been so wonderful. I truly appreciate all of them and all of you. Thank you so very much. I still am finding it hard to believe and am finding that I keep checking the Amazon site to make sure it's still there and it's real. So far it's always there when I click the link, so I'm thinking I'm not dreaming. I'm betting I'll be checking it everyday anyway, just in anticipation of the cover art appearing. I have no idea what the cover will look like.

I showed the following pieces of work last week. These are from my mixed-media background class and this is the second week's progress. More layers have been added. I think there are three more weeks to go, so I'm thinking by the time these canvases are finished there will be a bajillion layers on them.

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

MY BIG NEWS

Have you heard the song - "Walking on Sunshine" by Katrina and the Waves? Well that's what I'm doing right now, and probably will be for a while.

I WROTE A BOOK!
Creative Paper Quilts: Applique, Embellishment, Patchwork, Piecework

I just found it on Amazon. And at Lark. And at Sterling.

It looks like it is going to be out in paperback. They aren't showing a cover yet. Can't wait to see that!

Oh my gosh. My heart is beating 10,000 miles a minute. I've been waiting for the day I'd see it at these websites. The whole project just didn't seem quite real to me, but now it does.

I've been working on the book since October and it's been so hard to keep it all a secret.

The book is about paper quilting and there are lots of projects. There is a beautiful variety of projects that were contributed by some fabulous artists. The contributing artists include: Sue Bleiweiss, Zana Clark, Cathy Collier, Carol White, and Colleen Kong-Savage.

I don't think I'll sleep a wink tonight.

Painting Class - Week 1

This week was my first weekly lesson in the painting class I'm taking. The class is given by Paulette Insall and you can find more information about it here. This particular class runs 5 weeks (5 lessons) and is geared toward creating mixed media backgrounds...although we are supposedly creating a finished piece of work even though it is a background class. Here are the three pieces I've done so far. I will probably only work on these three for this class. I'll show you the changes to them as each week's lesson is applied.

Creative Time

I found a little time to create a couple of things I've been wanting to make. First up is this box:


The box pattern is from the Fibre&Stitch web site and is found on the freebie page here.

The next photo shows a homemade journal/sketchpad/notepad that I made. I've been so inspired by all the wonderful journals that Sue has been making, that I thought I'd try one out. This is the very first time I've made something with signatures.

Oh You Naughty People

I've been targeted by two blogger friends (Carla and Marie) who picked me to be included in a meme. I don't normally play along with these but thought I'd make an exception this time. Here are the rules:

1. Link to your tagger and post these rules on your blog.
2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog, some random, some weird.
3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they are tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.

Here are the strange/weird/random facts about me:

1. I like ketchup (catsup), I like salsa, and I like tomato products cooked into foods, and I'll even eat a tomato on a burger or salad - but don't give me a plain old tomato to eat all by itself - YUCK!
2. I hate feet. Except my own of course. I hate it when hubby puts his feet on me. If he is barefoot and starts wiggling his toes, it grosses me out. I can't give him a foot rub unless he has socks on and even then it's a struggle.
3. I can't grow my fingernails to any length whatsoever. It seems they all get to a certain point and then start cracking and breaking. Like they have a conference and agree "OK, now let's all break".
4. After I eat a meal, I feel like my throat is coated in goo for about 15 minutes following and am constantly clearing it. You know, like if I had a frog in my throat or something.
5. I owned and rode my own Harley Davidson for about 7 or 8 years. Sold it about a year or so ago now. My hubby and I just don't ride as much as we used to and it seemed like a waste to let it just sit in the garage and not get ridden.
6. I hate it when the toilet paper rips unevenly off the roll. I have to take another square until it is nice and even.
7. I have a collection of cat-themed decorations and trinkets throughout my house. Here are just a few:

Now I'm supposed to tag seven more people. I never can decide who to pick, so if you read this, consider yourself tagged.

The Latest

Last evening I felt like doing something. So I decided to make a hat.


Tee hee, just teasing. It's another bowl.


This particular bowl will be winging it's way out to the west coast. Battle Ground, Washington to be precise. Battle Ground is located north of Portland, not sure how far exactly, but when I have traveled this distance it seems about 30 minutes or so.

Who's in Battle Ground, you ask? Well my Auntie Jude, of course. Hey Auntie Jude??? Are you reading this? If so, I guess this won't be a surprise when it arrives. In case you are wondering, Auntie Jude is indeed my aunt. She used to comment here, but lately she hasn't (hint, hint!). I know she's recently had some surgery/medical type things done to her foot so that she can enjoy life more fully without foot pain. So maybe my little bowl gift will cheer her up....and ahem....bribe her into commenting again.

Pretty in Pink

Yay! I finished it. My materials finally cooperated. Are you wondering what the heck I'm talking about? You'll understand if you read the previous post.

This quilt measures approximately 11.5" x 15.5". This piece started with the center. It's wool roving that I needle felted on my machine. I then created the background. I added some running stitches by hand to the wool area. I used free motion quilting in the center area and a combination straight/zigzag stitch in the outer area. The flower was fused with raw edges and then stitched. I added some beads in the center of the flower.

The part that caused me the delay in finishing was in the center area surrounding the wool, I had applied dots of glue. This is the glue that is used when foiling. I let the glue dry for the minimum amount of time suggested on the bottle. When rubbing the foil over top of the glue some of the glue dots came up with the foil. Argh!!!! The foil dots are quite small and I'm not sure if you can see them in the picture.

I'd like to take a moment and thank all of you who visit my blog. Your visits are much appreciated and I'd love if you'd take a moment to comment...but I understand if you don't have time or prefer not to.

I'm very excited for Monday (2/18/08) to get here. I'm signed up for an online painting class as I'd like to learn some new tips and tricks and improve my skills. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful Valentine's Day. I was hoping to have a small quilt to show here today, but my materials weren't cooperating. Don't you hate it when that happens? So I've had to redo and wait for some stuff to dry and then I'll tackle it again. Hopefully tomorrow it will be ready for showing here. In the meantime, I leave you with these sketches.

Painted Daisies

I finished! I spent most of the weekend painting on this quilt and finished this evening. I really like how it turned out. But I gotta tell you....there's a lot of paint on there. I very much enjoyed this process and I think I'll probably explore it some more.

Here's something else I made this weekend. Mmmmm yummy! Hot fudge cake.

I've Been Influenced

I'm a huge fan of Deidra Adams work. I love the abstractness, the textures, the colors and the entire look of her art. I had the pleasure of seeing some of her work in the flesh while in Houston in November. Beautiful! She started a blog this year and you can find it here. She also has a web site, link on her blog. She talks briefly on her site about how she executes her work. Following is my interpretation of that technique.

This is an abstract quilt collage. The background is entirely machine quilted in spirals and then painted. I added dimensional applique (blue noodles) and raw edge applique (black triangles). It is available in my etsy shop.


Here is a work in progress using the same technique. You can kind of make out in the picture, looking in the lower area that it is first quilted, white on white. I really liked the white on white look also, but wanted to proceed with my original plan of painting it. I started the quilting a week ago, Sunday. I met with Amy, Jenny, and Sandy (Hi gals!) and we had a free motion quilting session. I started this quilt during that session.


I hope you are all having a great weekend! Thanks for stopping by.

Finished

I finished this fabric collage today. It measures 11" x 14 3/8". Raw-edge applique, hand-painted cat, hand and machine stitching.

It is available for purchase in my etsy shop.

I also spent a good part of the day putting the final touches on issue 3 of Fibre&Stitch, due out on February 27. It's a great issue and there are many great articles by some special guest authors...Linda Stokes, Debra Jo Hardman, Marylin Huskamp, Jill Dian Izzard, Helen Suzanne Alexander and Virginia Spiegel. Visit the Fibre&Stitch web site for more information.

Chocolate Quilts

Today is the unveiling of 12 chocolate themed quilts over on the Twelve by Twelve blog. I am honored to say I'm a member of this group and here is my quilt.


The quilt is 12" x 12" and I started out with a fabric background and border. When I started this quilt I had intended to create it all in fabric, but as I proceeded and became frustrated, I switched gears. I ended up painting the plate, chocolates, mug, vase and flowers directly onto the fabric. As I was painting I wondered how well I'd be able to free-motion quilt through the paint. The fabric had become a little stiff because of having to paint on a few layers of paint. But I didn't have any problems.

I named my quilt Choco Latte. I love looking at all the fancy chocolates behind the glass in a candy shop. They look so elegant, artistic, and expensive. I also love mocha lattes and when I got to thinking about it...I decided that the word "chocolate" should have been spelled "chocolatte". By the way...it's dark chocolate for me, hands down.

Be sure to go over to the Twelve by Twelve blog and check out all the chocolate quilts.