Fun with friends

It's been a busy week, as we've had our friends Silvia and Paolo visiting from Guatemala. As I've mentioned here before, we met them when they lived here in town and became fast friends. They returned to Guatemala about 3 years ago, and luckily Silvia's visa requires that she come to the US every year to keep it active.

Silvia is not only fun and funny, she's very talented. I am THRILLED that she brought this watercolor for me:



Interestingly, the project up on my design wall when they arrived is some fuchsia blossoms I started in a class with Jane Sassaman a few years ago. I finally arrived at a solution for finishing it, and had it up on the wall to get the thing done. So the arrival of these painted fuchsias was startlingly appropriate.

As always, Silvia was eager to shop and get started on a new project. Her ability to buy commercial cotton is limited in Guatemala, and the mailing costs (and likelihood of disappearance en route) makes online shopping and mail delivery unrealistic. So, we spent one morning perusing quilt books and magazines for Silvia to get ideas and make plans, then we headed off to some local shops for fabric purchase. I am not one to buy all the fabric for one project in one fell swoop, but Silvia doesn't have the choice not to do that. Once she gets home, what she has bought here is what she will have to work with.

At any rate, she successfully got fabric for two different projects. This is a close-up of the one above in progress.


Nice, eh?

She also fell in love with the fruit and vegetable fabric I've used on 2+ quilts so I happily gave her most of what I had left. After all, I don't need another fruit and veggie quilt. I'm happily handing that obsession over to her.

I also gave her her birthday present (for her April birthday, so as to avoid that mail problem) of a set of Tsukineko inks and a great how-to-use-them video by Patt Blair. I figure that with Silvia's painting skill, she can do a lot with these cool inks.

They left yesterday, so life is back to normal around here. But we had a grand time and there is nothing like sharing creative fun with friends.