A New Art Quilt

I finished this piece today and even got around to taking photos......AND I even updated my etsy shop. Wow, I guess that's what a girl has to do when in the midst of a blizzard warning. Yes, you read that right.

Dreams are Teal

14.5" x 14.25"

Mixed-Media Art Quilt

You can read more details about this piece in my etsy shop. I also added some other paintings that I've finished recently to the shop. You may notice that most of the paintings are of kitties. I guess I'm obsessed.

Painted Fabric

This is what is on my painting desk today. I spent a good part of the morning quilting on my orange tulip quilt and then took a break from that to do some painting. I was in the mood to do a painting on some fabric scraps.

I started out by taking some neutral colored fabrics and fusing them with Mistyfuse to a medium-weight interfacing. Then I used some #8 perle cotton and added some hand stitching. Next I gessoed over the entire surface. Oh and I did all that yesterday.

So today I drew my design onto the surface and started painting. I'm not quite done with this yet. I need to figure out how I will finish this. Do I want to attached it to a frame, fuse it to some stiff interfacing, or ???.

And before I end this post....I just wanted to take a second to say thanks to all of you who are reading. And thank you also if you've left a comment. I do enjoy your comments.

Blue Kitty

Blue Kitty (SOLD)

6" x 12" gallery wrapped canvas

Mixed media and acrylic

Here is another painting I finished today. I think I started this late last week. I don't normally pick blue as my first color choice when I am contemplating color, but I really like how this turned out.

I had to order some new photo editing software and it probably won't arrive until next week. Once that gets here I hope to get some good photos of a few things I've finished recently and I plan to add this painting and a few others to my etsy shop. So in the meantime, I'm using an online photo editing site called Picnik.

In quilting news, I have quilted on my quilt three days in a row. Woo hoo!

Art and Life

Happy Cat Trio

8" x 8" acrylic on canvas panel

Hi! I've been a bit absent from my blog here lately. Sigh! Not that I wanted to be, but because I was working through a personal issue.

As I think about life and art lately, I'm finding it interesting how when we deal with the things that life sometimes throws at us, that we all react and act differently. For example, I have seen or read where some artists really dive into their art and create some of their most amazing work when faced with difficult problems.

For me, during the past two weeks, I found that I could not work on any quilting, whatsoever. As I was processing and working through my personal issue, I just couldn't go into the studio and quilt. No matter that there was a quilt right under the sewing machine needle, just patiently waiting, waiting, and waiting.

But, I did find that I wanted to paint. Painting helped me in some way that quilting couldn't. Strange? Maybe. Maybe not.

How about you....do you turn to art or away from art when coping with difficult life whammies?

Page spread in my journal

Anyway, things seem to be getting back to normal. I went into the studio today and quilted on my quilt for a while. It felt good!

Seeing Spots

Here is my progress on the third quilt in my gradient panel series. I have finished piecing the top together. The white spots you see are paper circles I have pinned to the quilt. I drew some spiral shapes with pencil and then cut them out. I am deciding if this is the quilting design I would like to use on this quilt. I am thinking I will quilt the spirals and then do some dense quilting around them so they pop.

In other news, my laptop finally died on me. I can't boot it up at all anymore. It served me well and I am really missing it these past few days. I ordered another laptop and now I wait until it arrives. I could have bought one locally, but the models that were offered in the brand I like weren't giving me features I desired. I can't afford a top of the line computer with all the latest and best technology, but I don't want one with a low end processor either. One day I hope to try a Mac, but right now that isn't going to happen. I've got too much software that I need that will only work on a PC.

So in the meantime I've been using my old desktop computer. Just getting the photo above ready for this blog post was a challenge as I don't have my usual Photoshop software to prep photos. I am having to use an old version of Photoshop elements and while many of the features are the same, the interface/workspace/location of everything is much different. This desktop computer is AS. SLOW. AS. MOLASSES. also, and that makes for even more frustration. Sigh! I hope you are having a great weekend. I've been busy quilting on my poppy panel quilt. Yay!