If there's one thing I have found out for certain recently its that its so easy to get sucked in by the dazzle of it all.  After all, the  ~WOW~ factor is huge.  Also is the idea that it is very much possible to recreate this oneself.  You don't have to have an art school degree to have this kind of beauty in your life, just time and patience and some skill with a needle.  If you aren't up to generating your own patterns, there are certainly plenty of patterns out there that you can fill in with your own colors and sense of style.  The allure is enormous.  And I have certainly been out there on the internet, trawling for pictures and ideas, collecting images of inspirations like a high school girl collects pictures of movie stars.  Now I'm at the point of working to get the skills to match up to my aspirations.  Taking quilting classes at the quilt shop helps a lot - getting the skills.  Joining a quilt guild helps too - lots of nice folks there to encourage a newbie.  I managed to make that blue and green block myself - unsupervised.  Now I need to actually dig into the tiny stash I brought home from Houston and start on a real quilt.  Although I've been an artist all my life, and have designed embroidery patterns and jewelry for years, I am really excited about doing this.  I have fabric, a sort of a pattern, a good sewing machine, and friends who will help if I get in too deep - who could ask for more.  The center panel is Laurel Burch's Celestial Dreams.  What could be more apt than a lady with a cat dancing in a sea of celestial rainbows and flowers

The Houston Quilt Show - Nov 3-6

Hoffman Challenge - first place, Ann Faustino of NJ  "Butterfly Dance".

After years of hearing my friend, Karen, talk about the Houston Quilt Show, I accepted her gracious offer to come see for myself.  She sent me a link to a web movie so that I would be in some way prepared for it, but truly nothing could have prepared me for it all.  Imagine a space roughly the size of an air craft carrier devoted to nothing but color, form, pattern and all things fiber arts.  Yes, I was truly in little piggy heaven.  And although nothing had anything really to do with hand embroidery or cross stitch, that made no difference at all.  My eyes are filled up with the shear magnitude of color and pattern.  I can say for sure that this certainly isn't your grandmother's quilt anymore.  And yes, its bee over a week now that I've been home from this.  It will tell you a little something that its taken this long for my brain to settle with this because 2 days wandering around in all this give a whole new meaning to the ideas of "overstimulated" and "brain overload".  Magnificent - extraordinary - amazing - delightful.

Am I going to give up embroidery for quilting - well, probably not.  Although I did get some quilting books and buy a number of irresistable fabric samples.  I will probably make a quilt or two here and there.  I think the real lasting impression this is going to make on me is that it has completely blown the doors off my idea of what is possible in terms of color theory. I think that is going to be my next avenue of research.  I need to look into this color thing.  I don't do too badly as it is just following my instincts, but taking a short side trip into the academics of it may well open a few doors.  It may also give my overheated brain a way to file and sort all the rest of it.

Meanwhile I am excited and delighted and grateful beyond measure to my dear friend who opened up this whole new world of art to me.

Thoughts from Last Week - Butterflies

I’ve been working on the Butterfly series for a while now and liking the design more and more. I never thought of myself as a butterfly sort of person – all that fussy lightness just doesn’t feel like me actually. But there is something about this design that just resonates (well it should because it is, after all, my design – butterflies seen through my own particular lens). I’m not doing it because I thought commercially butterflies would be a good idea (which they are and it will be). This started as a design with an antique border pattern of flowers that I found in a very very old pattern book, and, by the time I was done, it was flowers and butterflies and antique monograms. The more I developed it, the more I enjoyed it. I am calling the pattern “Butterfly Memento” – because what I see is that its a moment in time – a summer day – poised and perfect with flowers and that butterfly – the butterfly itself is a moment – poised so briefly transforming from one state to another. A day, no matter how perfect, is always changing – like the flowers and the butterfly – you can’t press them or hold them – but you can remember them at that one perfect moment. So the colors are clear and bright, the frame and background are antique – the lettering and monogram are quaint. Even the blue flowers are Forget-Me-Nots.

Butterflies Again

The longer I work on the butterfly series, the more I like it.  There is something that comes from the heart about it and I think that, even once its done, I will enjoy using the pieces I’ve made.  The final piece to any series is the etui (stitcher’s wallet, huswif, whatever you call it).  It will be sold as a separate pattern because not everybody wants one and it sort of duplicates the functions of the needlebook and scissors sheath.  I will still include a scissors fob with it, though, just for fun.  I have been toying with it for some days now.  first fiddling with the size.  Being a geometric border with a fairly long repeat, any increase in dimension is done in substantial increments of about an inch.  I got it all done and decided that at 4 x 5 inches it wasn’t quite large enough.  I got the initials changed and then they didn’t fill the space right.  etc etc.  but this is the fun of designing anything – like working puzzles.  Playing with the elements until I feel that little *click* in my head that says it just right.  This morning it finally all came together.  The larger monogram filled the space just right and the font style is beautifully compatible with the other elements.  I shaded the foreground letter (the M) and added the little blue flower to pull it all together and *click* – Ta-da! It’s a definite YES! 

Now there’s a lot of busy work to be done charting the rest of the alphabet – that will be  couple of days of picky eye-strain.  Taking the antique letters and adding the flowers and shading and outlines to each one to match the ones on the design copy.  The added joy to this will be that I will have another beautifully charted alphabet to use again later.  And the butterfly etui panel just makes me happy all over.  When it all comes together like this, its better than chocolate ice cream.

Make A Wish

wishes