Ta Dah!

Over the last few days, I have undertaken a gargantuan task.  I have rearranged and reorganized my office/studio. 

The hugeness of this job is in direct proportion to the smallness of the room and the vast quantity of stuff I have in there.  It's a 10' by 12' standard bedroom ... not the tiniest studio I've ever seen, but given all the work I do in here and the supplies I have on hand, it's a space that presents a challenge.  The space has worked reasonably well over the 9 years we've lived in the house.  But the way I use the space has changed considerably.  Back then, I worked 20-30 hours a week at my desk, and my sewing machine in the corner was something I used from time to time.  Just having it up full time, in a space where I could close the door and hide the mess, was a luxury.  But these days I'm working far less at my desk, and making art in some fashion or another almost every day.  I not only needed a sewing space --- I needed a work table area where I could spread out and arrange fabrics or fuse stuff or paint or whatever.

So, while I would have liked to knock out a wall or two, or add a lovely Koala cabinet with oodles of storage, or even buy a house with a detached but massive studio, I limited myself to what I could change THIS WEEK, and I rearranged the furniture.  And it actually is an improvement.

I have now dedicated a table (which used to hold a cd player and cds and generally be a catch-all for miscellaneous papers) to the sewing machine.  I pulled a rolling cart out of the garage and it contains threads.  At the Container Store (oh, how I love the Container Store) I found the red metal mini-file drawer thingie, which holds scissors and rotary cutters and supplies, and I got the mini Elfa cart to hold projects in progress so that I could roll them out of the way under the table when I'm not actually working.

This leaves my wonderful office table (which used to be the sewing machine-work table) for spreading out and doing STUFF.  My goal is to keep it clear when I'm not actively working on something.  Hah.  We'll see how that works.  The Container Store also provided the pretty turquoise woven plastic bin, to hold more works in progress and stuff in transit.  (You know how there is always that stuff -- to do something with, to put away later, to remember to give to someone....)   I love this table -- especially how the rounded edges mean that I don't bang my thighs as I move around the room.  It'd be perfect if it were about 6 to 8 inches higher, and maybe one of these days I'll rig it so it is higher -- but for now I'm happy to have the work space.

And here is the desk area.  I like that I've segregated my work area and I still have the lateral files right handy for work purposes.  The downside of this arrangement is that when I sit at my desk, I look straight down the hall into Miss C's bedroom.  As she comes out of her room, I feel like I should say "Can I help you?"  So it's a little insurance-officey, but a small price to pay for getting the open work table.

There's a lot of visual clutter in this room.  I KNOW that, being in here, but it's even more apparent seeing the room in photos.  I may have to take some things down.  Hmmm.  I love the visual inspiration, but maybe it's part of what makes the room feel smaller?  Something to consider.

No wonder my back is sore.  All this tidiness makes me want to get to work on a project -- to mess it all up right away!

Ready for the Fun

I've been continuing in my exploration of using photos in quilts, and this is the most recent in the series.  That photo is me, at maybe age  2 or 3, somewhere in there.  (Looks like it was taken right before a birthday party or some such event.)  I was experimenting with inkjet transfer and for some reason when I transferred a black and white photo onto a pale lavender fabric, got an image that was a lovely shade of blue.

The background fabric is one I painted ages and ages ago, and then I fused organza on and added stitching.  It was a very fun process.

I'm looking forward to playing more with inket transfers... looks like many wonderful effects can result.

Good Reading Alert: The Forgery of Venus

If you're looking for some good summer reading, you might check out this novel: The Forgery of Venus: A Novel by Michael Gruber.  I finished it recently, and found it one of the most interesting novels I've read in a long time.

On the surface, it tells the story of a talented painter who is working as a commercial artist when he is approached with a proposal to restore an old master painting on the damaged ceiling of a Venetian palazzo.  The money is good, the painter needs money, and he's always felt that his talent belongs in an earlier century.  As the story unfolds, the painter starts to question his sanity.  Is he truly crazy? Or is he being manipulated for nefarious purposes?  There is much fascinating reflection on art and painting and history in this -- and lots of twists and turns that leave you uncertain about what will happen next.  Gruber's a very talented writer, and there is a lot of depth to this.

If you're looking for something a little different, a mystery/thriller that goes a little deeper than the typical book, then you might give this a try.  I enjoyed it enormously.

The Newest Addition to the Studio

Some months ago, I started thinking that it might be time to get a new sewing machine.  At the quilting retreat I went to in April, I cruised the room to see what my friends were using, and I even tried out a few machines.  The machine I use for most sewing is an older Bernina, and I didn't realize until I sat down at my friend Pat's Pfaff Creative Expressions machine how far sewing machines have come in recent years.  That got me thinking, and I set out on a research mission.

Gosh, the internet gives us so much access to information.  An overwhelming amount, actually.  Between manufacturer's websites, and blogs with folks raving (or complaining) about their machines, and yahoo groups where machine owners collect to share information and tips and problems, one can explore the subject for a long time!  I finally decided the thing to do was to go out and test some machines.

So off I went to a few dealers in my area, to explore the major brands and see how they felt.  It's also amazing to me how different machines can feel, too.  I guess it's like test driving cars -- on paper they can sound quite similar, but you have to feel them to decide what feels right for you.  I tried Janomes and Pfaffs and Husqvarna Vikings. 

At an area Bernina dealer, I couldn't help looking at the newest of the Bernina lines, the 830 and 820. They're made, I guess, to be the machines that'll do most everything.  They have a huge throat (12"), an extra large bobbin, one has embroidery capacity but both have tons of built-in stitches... and when the saleswoman invited me to give it a try, I sat down knowing I'd never in a million years buy a machine in that price range. 
It's like test driving a Lexus when you're shopping for a midpriced minivan.  Right off, I set myself up for difficult comparisons in later shopping.  Yes, I loved the Berninas.  No question.

But I kept looking, and kept researching, and kept weighing pros and cons, and kept assessing what machines seemed to have which ongoing issues.  As I started following the discussions on various yahoo groups, I was reminded that there is no one perfect machine.

And then an opportunity came out of left field at me.  I encountered a woman in the midwest, a total novice sewer, who was selling her Bernina 830.  Her husband had bought it for her to encourage a new interest in sewing, not realizing that this "computer that sews" is complex enough that it daunts the most experienced seamstresses and quilters.  The woman, Kay, was wildly overwhelmed and was discovering that she didn't enjoy trying to use it because it was too complicated.  She didn't like her local dealer and was unable to get help from them to her satisfaction.  So, in disgust, she put it up for sale at less than half of the retail price.

The short story is that she and I exchanged a lot of emails (with me thinking "this is just too good to be true") and we built in various contingencies for what happened if I identified any undisclosed problems once the machine arrived in California.  After much discussing and nail biting (and a phone call to a friend of a friend who has one of these 830s who told me I'd be insane not to jump on this opportunity), I bought the machine. Hugely exciting, but risky.  And, upon delivery, I did learn that there was an issue with the machine that needed fixing.  Aack.  Kay and I worked that out, I took the machine to my local dealer (Cal Sewing and Vac in San Rafael) where Sharon the Bernina expert and the rest of the staff were welcoming and incredibly helpful and totally willing to advise and help me even though I hadn't bought the machine from them.  The issue with the machine was an odd one which required a trip back to the factory (more nail biting and wondering whether I'd done the right thing) -- but the machine is home, has been cleansed and restored by the fairies at the Bernina Factory Spa, and has been thoroughly tested by Sharon, who assures me that it passed all of the most difficult sewing issues with flying colors.

So here is the new addition to my tiny studio:

I've been sewing on it this week and I am loving loving loving it.  It threads the needle for me!  It has a huge bobbin, holding almost twice as much thread as the typical bobbin, and the machine tells me when it is running low.  It lets me customize all sorts of settings.  The 830 will also embroider, which I've not tried yet -- not something I would have sought were I buying this directly from a store, but I'm thinking it'll be wonderful to have the option to explore some machine embroidery.

So the risky purchase has a happy ending and now sitting down to sew feels like a new adventure.  I feel the urge to make a BIG quilt just to take advantage of that big space on the machine.  I know from what I've read that it'll take me some time to learn this intricacies of this thing, but I'm armed with a thick manual, links to great tutorials online, and my guru Sharon.  Let the sewing begin!

Purple and Yellow together

Using complementary colors together can produce exciting effects -- and that was the seed of our challenge this round in our 12x12 "color play" challenge.  We were charged with using purple and yellow.  Click on over to the 12x2 blog: today is reveal day and it's wonderful to see what everyone did!

Me, I hemmed and hawed for a while as I wasn't coming up with any ideas right away. But eventually I started thinking about the simple #2 yellow pencil, and how much a part of my life it has been -- through school, required for tests, a new batch symbolic of the new school year, etc.  And that's what led to my piece.

What would you do if you had to use purple and yellow in a piece?

What If...

This week, I've been listening to legal education lectures to complete the continuing legal education credits I need annually to keep up my bar association membership.  Today I was listening to a really good program on intellectual property law for non-specialists while I was on a longish drive.  And while I was driving and listening, I was struck by how we lawyers have it deeply ingrained in us from the first day of law school to try to anticipate everything that might go wrong, and then work on planning how to avoid that.

It's that sort of cheerfully pessimistic thinking ("But what if the sellers try to back out of the deal? What if the product is defective? What if the person you hire absconds without doing the work?") that makes us lawyers so fun to be around.  We've gotten a lot of education and experience at imagining the bad side of "What if?"  And it's our professional obligation to anticipate those "what if's" and figure out how to avoid them. 

But it struck me today that the "what if" aspect of anticipating all of the things that could go wrong is not very far from the "what if I try X" creativity that so many quilt artists explore.  For a long time I have loved and followed Jude Hill's "What If" blog, where she explores some question with a bit of stitchy exploration.  It's probably the seed of creativity for a lot of ideas, wondering what would happen if we mixed those paints or combined those fabrics or tried to depict that image in fabric.

It is a more positive approach than the "what if the worst happens" that we lawyers go to automatically -- but I like to think that my "what if" training is helping me on the creative side, too.

* Photo: Neighbor cat bravely illustrating "What if I stick my paw into this hole?"

Self-portrait, with nap

Today was my Practical Design workshop, a monthly workshop that never fails to teach and inspire me.  Today, we showed the work we'd done on our year-long series, and then for the second half, we played with making quick collages.

We were told to do a 15-minute self-portrait -- or really, a portrait of us at the moment somehow -- and this is what resulted.  Go figure.  But it was fun.

On a totally unrelated note, I read this quote recently from Annie Lamott (said when giving a graduation speech): ""On my  last day on earth, I want to have taken a short nap and had dessert.  Since I don't know which day is my last, I can't take any chances."

Dad and the '49 Mercury

We're back from our various family adventures (Miss C at camp, R and me in SF) and we all had fun and are dragging ourselves around here with contented exhaustion.  It was good to get away and have some fun, and now it's good to be home.  I'll post on what we did later.

BUT... seeing as how quilt-related posts have been few and far between here lately, I thought I'd show you something I made a while back and gave to my dad last week for father's day.

I've been wanting to experiment some with different photo transfer methods.  And when I came across a great photo of my dad sitting on a beloved car (his 1949 Mercury, which he lovingly customized), I knew it'd be fun to play with.  When I asked my dad about what the car was -- because, to my dad, what the car IS is a vital piece of information -- he replied with the details about the car, and then went on to say that after my mom gave birth to my sister, he had to sell the car to get her out of the hospital and pay the bill!

So that was the seed of this little collage.  The picture below shows my mom holding up my sister Laura, who has a very funny tongue-sticking-out look on her face.  The text says "He traded the '49 Mercury Custom for the baby ... and never looked back."   My dad tells me he was wearing actual blue suede shoes, with a matching blue suede jacket.  Pretty cute guy, huh?  Not to mention a WONderful dad. 

This was a big hit for father's day and I was delighted.

It's a backpack, baby

Fourteen years ago, when Roger and I were preparing to travel to China to bring our baby daughter home, I looked far and wide for some practical travel diaper bag.  I finally settled on a wonderful black backpack from Eddie Bauer, with zillions of pockets, and it was perfect.  It looked like a backpack, so I didn't have to haul around a cutsie blue and pink bag with ducks and bunnies, and it held all of the requisite baby supplies PLUS all of the gear I'd have had in a purse.  It really was the ideal traveling bag.  (Eddie Bauer doesn't make it any more, and the one above is the closest picture I could find to what I carried.)

In the years since I carried that bag around China, it's doubled as the vacation bag to hold books and magazines and sketchbook on vacations.  It sits with me at the beach at Tahoe every summer.  And the dang things shows virtually no wear.  It's amazing.

I pulled it out of the closet today because Caroline has been packing for her first overnight summer camp, this coming week.  (She's headed off to a week-long camp to learn all about 3-D modeling for computer animation.)  She needed a pack she could carry around to hold her journal and her cell phone and her sketchbook and maybe a beach towel if they're going swimming.  She didn't want to bring a school backpack, and it occurred to me that "the China pack" is the ideal solution.  We've loaded it with her necessities, and it will be ideal.

So everything is perfect, except that Mommy is getting a little teary-eyed at the the thought of my BABY heading off for a week (her first time staying more than a night without mom and dad!), carrying the very bag we hauled around China to hold her diapers and bottles.  She's so grown up.  She'll be there with the other computer graphic obsessed kids, strolling around a university campus and learning new exciting things with other teens and even eating dinner without being burped afterwards.

Roger and I are taking the opportunity to have some kid (oops, I mean TEEN) free fun together with a list of things we've been wanting to do in San Francisco.  But I think the week will be harder on us than on her.  

All directions at once

I'm working on a list of things I'd like to get done, and I seem to be scattered in all directions, working on a bunch of different things at once.

But I thought I'd show you a fun project I ticked off the list.  For my City and Guilds course, I was required to make two box forms and decorate them -- one with lines and one with shapes.  I had a good time painting the papers and developing the patterning.  For the linear one, we were required to use wrapped string as the basis for the pattern -- a very interesting way of developing pattern and not one I'd have thought to use on my own.

There is something so pleasing about the chinese take-out carton shape, isn't there?  I love these little boxes so it was easy for me to choose this as the box shape to work on.  When I was creating the template and making these boxes, I was reminded that the very first time I ever took a watercolor painting class, the very first assignment was to draw and paint a chinese take out carton.  It was all about the shading, working with those angles and planes. 

It's still a pleasing form to me and I'm happy with how they turned out.  Gee, another place to store ribbon bits and empty spools and things!

That sound you don't hear

Shhhh.  Hear that?

That NOTHING sound?  That would be SILENCE.  And I've been basking in it for 24 solid hours.

Roger took Miss C off to the city (as in The City.  San Francisco.) to see Wicked (a second viewing for her, first for him) and to stay overnight.  Ever the thoughtful wife and mother, I encouraged them to stay as long as they wanted.  Another few nights even.  I'd manage here alone..... somehow.

I've been craving solitude.  What with C doing school at home for the last year and a half, and with Roger on school vacation for the summer now, I'm -- shall we say -- crazed.  And that's putting it nicely.  Not getting alone time makes me sort of cranky.

So what have I done?  I've finished THREE City and Guilds activities, which included creating painted papers, creating a box pattern, making two boxes, sketching and coloring an object to give a 3D look, drafting a 3d block design.  I prepared some dye paste base, mixed some dyes, and made a screen in preparation for a screen printing session.  I dyed a graduated batch of fabrics.  I sketched out two quilt designs.  I scanned some old family photos and experimented with inket transfers using inkjet transparencies and gel medium.  I watched a Jane Dunnewold DVD on screen printing.  I sat quietly (uninterrupted!) and leisurely read the newest issues of Studio magazine and Somerset Digital Studio.

And if that mini art-retreat time wasn't enough, I spent an hour sitting on the patio in the early morning with coffee and my current novel (A Tale of Two Sisters by Anna Maxted, quite good).  I blanched asparagus  and made lemon vinaigrette dressing for a fresh salad with field greens and toasted almonds, I made a batch of deviled eggs (Roger's favorite treat), and I did two loads of laundry.

It's amazing what I can do when I'm not interrupted. 

My family is now home, the dog is relaxed now that all of her pack is in sight again, and life is returning to normal.  I love my family -- but a day without them has done me a world of good.

Texture time

I've been working on a module of lessons on texture in my City and Guilds course (in which I make sporadic bursts of progress).  On a City and Guilds board on which I lurk, there has been a discussion about the value of pursuing these C&G courses, which has led to all sorts of people chiming in with the reasons they're doing it.  Me, I find that having assignments to focus on a specific aspect of art composition or fiber art technique does make me pay a bit more attention.  So, while I've been working away on these tasks that involve noticing and creating texture, I'm seeing texture ideas all around me. 

So, one task required me to collect images of interesting textures.  That's been very fun.  I've wandered around with my camera, taking pictures of things just for the texture. I've hunted through texture photos on flickr.com.  So many great textures, which leads to thinking about how to create them on fabric.

Another task involved making rubbings -- and isn't that always fun?  This was the bottom of a plastic strawberry basket.  I see good possibilities for that.

I have this very cool plastic sink protector with a pebble texture, and I used it for a rubbing with paintstiks and then a wash of dilute acrylic paint.  Fun!

But A+ for texture work goes to my friend Terry, who is making her own texture bases for rubbing.  Check out what she's done with lentils and hemp to create gorgeous patterns on fabric!  Makes me want to go dig around my cupboards to see what food I can glue to cardboard to make rubbing plates!

Reading for the start of summer

Here it is Memorial Day already, which is officially the start of summer, yes?  Which means it's summer reading season!  I thought I'd share a few books I've really enjoyed recently:

The Book of Air and Shadows
by Michael Gruber

      This isn't a new release, but it's one I bought some time ago and finally got around to reading.  What a delight!  It's about the discovery of a manuscript that hints at the existence of an undiscovered Shakespeare play, with a lot of wonderful stuff about old books and Shakespeare himself.  This was quite well-written and with a fair amount of humor -- the narrator never took himself too seriously, which I liked.  So think literary mystery/thriller, vaguely in the DaVinci Code style but without the sap, the improbable religious stuff, or bizarre demonic villains.

A Field Guide to Burying Your Parents
by Liza Palmer

  Admittedly, the title may be a bit off-putting (especially, if like me you're dealing a death in the family).  But truly, don't let that stop you.  It's worth getting past that.  This is the story of a smart-alecky woman, long estranged from her family and avoiding the pain of a childhood in which her father left them.  Required to reconnect with her siblings when her father suddenly becomes ill, she has to face all of the family drama she's been avoiding.  This story is beautifully written, and I loved the humor in this.  (And don't we all have family dysfunction that allows us to appreciate other families' dysfunction?)  It was a different sort of book, but just lovely.  Very worth reading.

No! I Don't Want to Join a Book Club: Diary of a Sixtieth Year
by Virginia Ironside

I stumbled on this at the library last week and I loved this book.  It's the diary of Marie, just turning sixty, and her delight in finally being "old" so she has the excuse to just do what she wants.  No, she won't start learning a foreign language or take a cooking course or join a book club.  She's honest and very funny and struggling with aspects of getting old that (I'm afraid) I'm starting to relate to -- feeling stylish and then catching a glimpse of oneself in a mirror and seeing reality, discovering a disconnect with what the "young people" like these days, etc.  It's quite charming.

What's on your summer reading list?  What have you read lately that is worth finding?

Librarians Do Gaga

The rose and its thorns

I sure have been a neglectful blogger lately, but once again life is getting in the way.  We've had a few weeks of more ups and downs, but I'm hoping that this week we'll get back to some semblance of normalcy around here.  This photo -- taken in the garden last summer -- seemed appropriate to life recently.  The beauty of roses, and some painful thorns, too.

The thorns?  My dear uncle, among my favorite relatives, died last week.  We knew it was coming, and in reality we'd lost him a few years ago as the result of  Alzheimer's.  Still, his passing has been sad, and I will miss him.  He had a big impact on me, and I'll always treasure how proud he was that I became a lawyer.  We spent this past weekend visiting with my aunt and cousins, attending a memorial service for him, and generally gaining some solace from being together.  On the heels of my mother-in-law's death, this has plunged me into a lot of thinking about what it means to be at this stage of my life.  I am grateful every day for my parents' good health.

But the roses have been sweet!  My sister has just moved into a new home, an adorable house in a great neighborhood with beautiful hillside views.  I've spent a few days driving between her old place and new place with carloads of her stuff.  It has made me remember that delicious feeling of moving into a new space and organizing everything tidily -- and that has caused me to engage in a few closet-cleaning and purging binges.  It's always satisfying to get more STUFF out of the house!

And, after bringing stuff out, I'm going to bring something new in -- I've been in the process of buying a new sewing machine!  Gosh, they sure make fancy machines nowadays, and the machine I think of as my "new" Bernina is well out of date, not to mention the fact that there are things about it that I've always been dissatisfied with.  So I've been exploring and trying machines and reading online and I've made a purchase -- but more on that soon!  Very exciting! I swear, it's like buying a car -- there are so many choices and features.

So, this week is about getting my sewing room organized, and catching up on household stuff, and doing a few City and Guilds exercises, and doing some fun stuff with Caroline.  I'm ready for a boring, no drama week!

Oh, I forgot to add: I had a nice surprise today!  I was out running errands today, and stopped into a store and came across this lovely little book, Spirit Animals:

This is just the sort of thing Caroline loves, so I grabbed it (thinking Christmas stocking) and as I flipped through it, I came across illustrations by the talented Lisa Congdon, my friend and daughter of my friend Gerrie Congdon!  What a delightful surprise!

Field Trip!

 

Yesterday, I had a very fun field trip with my buddies Janet and Pam.  (Another friend, Sandy, was supposed to join us but she was home with a bad cold.  Hope you're feeling better, Sandy! We missed you!)  We headed south to San Francisco to see the exhibit of Amish Quilts at the DeYoung Museum.  

And what a gorgeous exhibit it was.  (Is -- it will be there through June 6 in case you haven't seen it yet.)  Who doesn't love Amish quilts -- the bold colors, the graphic designs, the perfect meeting of simple design with complex quilting?  It is one thing to see gorgeous pictures of Amish quilts, but seeing them in person was a different experience.  The colors just glowed.  I couldn't help thinking of the unknown quilters whose hands had created those beautiful quilts.  Imagine what they'd think to know that their work was hanging in a museum as art! 

 This particular quilt was one of my favorites from the exhibit.  Funny, it doesn't look as gorgeous in photo form, but in person it had a stunning glow.  I'd never seen this quilt block or pattern before, and it seemed unusually complex for an old Amish quilt.

Of course the exhibit made us want to gather up solid fabrics and make one or two.  Or five.  I went through an Amish quilt making phase when I was first learning to quilt, before I understood the connection between bias triangles and getting a ripply mess of a quilt top at the end of the process.  Sigh.

If you can't get to San Francisco to see this exhibit, you might be interested to know that the museum store has a beautiful hardback book (90 color photos) available for online ordering and ON SALE for $19.95!  Bargain!

After a lovely lunch at the museum cafe, we headed to Union Square to visit Britex, the famed 4-story fabric store.  Pam and I had never been there, which Janet couldn't believe.  And it was extremely impressive, I must say.  It's a dress-making fabric sort of store, but the sheer quantity of fabrics was wonderful to see.  I was especially taken with the notions floor, which had every sort and color of trim you could ever want.

And the buttons!  Cases and cases of all colors of buttons!  I had this urge to pull out a box or two and just sit on the floor and run my hands through them. 

But we headed home without making a single purchase, overwhelmed by the selection as we were.  But we were happy nonetheless.   Having a quilt-filled day with good friends is a wonderful thing.

Putting Pieces Together

I go through periods of time when I crave the simplicity of sitting at my machine and piecing bits of fabric together.  Usually it's time when my mind is occupied by difficult or stressful things, and sometimes, I notice it's when I'm just feeling overwhelmed by life stuff.  The zen of sitting at my machine, feeling fabric under my fingers and hearing the hum of the machine is my meditation, I guess.  And, for whatever reason, I seem to be in one of those moods right now.

Today, cruising through my favorite blogs with my morning coffee, I came across a link...which led me to another link... which led me to another... I'm sure you know how that happens!  I stumbled down a bloggy rabbit hole of delightful yet simple pieced quilts that, today, just speak to me.  It started with this quilt, "Chocolate Stars," designed by Vicki E. of Spun Sugar Quilts:

Turns out it's a Moda Bake Shop quilt (you know, where they use their jelly rolls and "cake squares" and charm packs). so the Moda site has the full directions for this one.

So then I had to go cruise the Moda Bake Shop site, where you can sort (under "recipes") their offerings -- with full directions -- by quilts, stuffed things, home dec, etc.  Very handy.  When I went to "quilts," I came across this gorgeous thing, "Welcome Spring," designed by Cherri House:

 
I need to make that TODAY.  You could be looking at my afternoon's activity, people.

But I kept going, and found this cutie, "Let Your Imagination Bloom," designed by Natalia of  Piece N Quilt :

And this one, "Sunday Squares" wallhanging by Charlie of It's Just Me:

And another, "Candy Buttons," back around to Vickie E of Spun Sugar Quilts where I started!

I tell you, I feel happy just having found these.  That Moda Bake Shop is almost as good as a real bakery for cheering a girl right up!

No Small Peanuts

Seems like my days have been occupied with all sorts of mundane errands, and nothing exciting enough to warrant a blog entry.  Amid the usual family stuff, I've been trying to weed out some of the stuff that accumulates around me.  As I write this the back of my car has a few bags and boxes for Goodwill, and the garbage bin is half-full.

In my closet-tidying, I came across some packets of pre-cut quilt squares that my local guild puts together for assembly into charity quilts.  And yesterday -- a gray, rainy day -- I had a peaceful afternoon stitching up three (count em!  3!) quilt tops to be donated to a community charity.  I enjoyed the rhythm of feeding squares through the machine and am pleased to have another thing out of the closet.  And of course the Peanuts fabric was fun to work with, even if it wasn't anything I would ever have chosen.  Very satisfying! 

And speaking of Peanuts, I just learned about a program in California organized by the California Association of Museums to get a California license plate with Snoopy on it.  You may recall that Snoopy was born in Petaluma (about 30 miles north of San Francisco -- about 30 minutes south of where I live) at the Daisy Hill Puppy Farm.  His creator, Charles Schultz, lived in Santa Rosa which houses the Charles Schultz Museum (which is totally fun) and Snoopy's Home Ice Arena.  So it makes me happy to think that one of these days I could have Snoopy doing his original happy dance on my very own car.

Sophisticated Clothing -- the good old days

In my working lawyer days, I wore a lot of scarves.  Actually, I took pains to learn how to wear scarves, because it seemed to me that women who wore scarves seemed so professional and pulled-together.  I discovered that it's not an easy thing to do, wearing scarves.  When it's done well, it looks effortless.  But it's all too easy to end up having a wad of fabric hanging inartfully around your neck. When I got comfortable with wearing scarves, I felt like I'd truly grown up.

So here I am, years later, not dressing up to go out in the working world, and still I have all those scarves.  Today, in purge mode, I decided to clear out the scarf drawer and make room for some other things.  It's not like I wear them any more.

But oh, how hard it is to get rid of some of them, and I finally end up with a small assortment of the ones I couldn't bear to part with.  This one, for example, I bought at the actual Liberty of London's on my one and only trip to England.  I love that scarf -- not just because it's gorgeous, but because it makes me remember standing in Liberty's fondling the silk and feeling so cosmopolitan, and all the times I wore that scarf after that too.

And the scarf my friend Mela gave me for Christmas, that went so beautifully with the winter white wool suit I had.  I'd sewn the suit myself, in my just-out-of-law-school days when I didn't have much money to spend on buying clothes.  One of the few female judges complimented that suit when I wore it to court early on, too, and asked where I'd gotten it.  The suit is long gone, but I adore that scarf.  I could wear it with jeans and a turtleneck.  And the one another friend brought me back from Paris... how can I get rid of that?

Each scarf I pulled out reminded me of the dresses and suits I'd worn it with, and where I was when I got it, and how I'd hunted for something with just that color combination before I found it.  And each one reminded me of the life I had as a single working woman, when I took great pains each morning to dress carefully and match my handbag to my shoes.  Ah, it's a far cry from now, when I throw on jeans and my most active clothing decision is whether to wear the Merrill clogs or the Ugg boots.  I wasn't just sorting through scarves: I was sorting through memories.  

So I'm keeping a few that I've not worn in years, with the vow that I will try to wear them.  I love them!  And they hardly take up any room at the bottom of the drawer now.  The rest will go off to Goodwill.  I had a brief moment of wondering whether I should keep them to use them as silk fabric in a quilt ...  Hah -- another way to keep them -- see how sneaky my mind is at resisting the need to clear stuff out of the house?  But I put them in the give-away bag, and this way there's the chance that someone will wear them to work, or give them to their little girls for dress-up, or otherwise give them a new life out in the world.

Oh dear, I'm contemplating the new lives my scarves will have once they escape from my home.  It's no wonder I have a hard time getting rid of things.  But I'll carry on with my sorting -- have to stay a few steps away from those Hoarders folks, you know.  And besides, I need to make room for fabric.  

The colors of Kilauea

Today is reveal day over on our Twelve by Twelve blog!  Our theme this month, designated by Hawaiian resident Kristin, was the colors of Mount Kilauea.  It presented a veritable challenge but the results are amazing.  Go see what everyone did!

Eucalyptus Road

One of the projects I worked on last week at the ranch retreat was this small abstract landscape.  I applied a layer of tulle over it, machine quilted it, and applied a facing finish.

So it SHOULD be finished...and yet I'm feeling that this needs something more.  I think what is bugging me is that the values are not quite right -- there needs to be some lighter light somewhere, maybe?  Maybe the judicious application of neocolor crayon or colored pencil?  I'm not sure, so it is sitting on my wall where I can comtemplate.

Any suggestions?  Why does this seem not-quite-right to me?  How would you fix this?

Something to make you smile

I am busy as a bee (well, I will be when I walk away from the computer) tidying my spaces and purging junk and otherwise trying to whittle down the STUFF that seems to surround us in this house.  So on this breezy Saturday, you can picture me rummaging through drawers with a big trash bag at my side.

But in case that doesn't cheer you, I thought I'd pass on this wonderful blog that always makes me smile:

That is Priceless, subtitled "Art's Greatest Masterpieces, Made Slightly Funnier." It's written by Steve Melcher, a Hollywood comedy writer, and he applies captions to great paintings ... and those captions are always spot-on funny.

Okay, back to my trash bag!

Return to Normal

I am back home after 4 days of delirious fun at the ranch retreat.  Pictured above is the main house at the ranch.  We used to sew there, but now there's a gorgeous new pavilion that can hold all of us, our machines, irons, lights and cutting tables, so we are there.   Some of the attendees still stay overnight in this gorgeous old building.

It is hard to describe the utter delight of a retreat with women you adore.  We chattered, sewed, laughed, showed-and-told, and ate delicious food.  There was much hilarity, many hugs, and I am already looking forward to October's retreat.

Each April, we do a challenge where someone chooses a fabric which the participants must incorporate in any way they like into a quilt.  This April's challenge involved two fabrics-- a black and white print, and a red tone on tone.  Here is my entry:

I used Susan Carlson's "Free Style Quilting" method to make this fellow and had a very good time.  The lettering, you might remember, wasn't the smoothest process but the result was okay.  And, remarkably, the resident artist at the ranch, the very very talented Lisa Thorpe, wanted this guy so we arranged for an artwork trade! 

Oh -- Hello to Elaine!  Elaine is a blog reader who attended the retreat for the first time and, I hope, will return for more fun in the future.  It was great to meet you!

Now -- off to unpack and make some sense of my sewing room...

Off Again

I promised you recently that I'd show you how far I got on my smaller piece in the workshop with Patty Hawkins.  Here it is so far -- needs some work, but I like it.

Now, I'm off for another fun time!  It's April, and that means I'm off to Bishop's Ranch for a fun, fabric and friend filled retreat for 4 whole days.  I've packed up a bunch of projects and I know I'll have a grand time.

Hope you have a fun week!

Simply A Mess

So I'm working on this challenge project -- can't show it here until the challenge is revealed on my retreat next week -- and I decided I wanted to add some words.  I thought about all of the different ways I could get them onto fabric, and then remembered a fabric spray paint I'd found while roaming the aisles at a craft store some time ago.  It says it's made to be used on fabric, preferably cotton, and that it works like airbrushing.

"Simply Spray," it's called.  I thought might be useful at some point, and yesterday I decided to give it a whirl.

I printed out the words on the computer, then made a stencil by cutting the letter shapes out of freezer paper.  I ironed the stencil firmly to the background fabric I was using.  And, following the directions of the spray, I tested a tiny bit first and it seemed like it would work fine.  I sprayed, waited for it to dry, and peeled away the stencil.  And here's what I got:

Aarrgh!  A total mess!  Look at how it bled!  It totally ruined the background fabric and made the lettering look like huge black blobs.  As far as I'm concerned, makes this product unusable UNLESS you want to just fill in a big area of color and don't need to worry about edges.  AARRGH!

Luckily, I'd bought the background fabric (which was perfect for my purposes) at the shop in town, so I hopped into the car and bought another piece.  And, while I was driving and seething, I realized I could just apply wonder-under to the mess and cut out the letters.

So, that's what I did, which led to this:

When I was cutting the stencil out of freezer paper, it had crossed my mind that I could just be cutting the individual letters out of wonder-undered black fabric, instead of using stencils and paint.  But the stencil and paint idea seemed so much better! And then I had to cut them individually anyway.

The good news is that I was able to rescue the project and get it to be where I wanted it with only a few hours' extra work.

But I chucked that "Simply Spray" into the trash and won't be buying THAT again.

Consider yourself warned!

Patty Hawkins

I have just finished a three-day workshop with master quilt artist Patty Hawkins.  What a wonderful, wonderful experience it was!  I am tired but energized and I really learned a lot.  If you don't know Patty, go check out her work on her website.  She makes the most gorgeous abstracted landscapes, and is most well known for her aspen scenes.  I can now verify that she is just the loveliest woman -- an excellent and encouraging teacher, too.  I was repeatedly struck at how clearly she gave feedback, but with constant positivity and generosity.  (Here is Patty with my friend Diana in the background.)

She had some wonderful exercises to help us with abstractions, one of which was to compose a mock-up of our chosen image using 5 values of ugly colors of construction paper.  We were to focus on value and shape, not color ... and using that paper was very freeing because had we been working in fabric, we would have been so distracted by the fabric color and pattern.  Here are some of the results:

(You can see mine on the top right, next to the waterfall one -- it was a scene of Eucalyptus trees and a curving road.)

Then we moved on to making smaller pieces in fabric, working in part from our value studies.  I was having such a good time that I didn't take many pictures, and totally forgot to take a picture of my own!  So here is my friend Marion's, which was turning out beautifully...

I came away with a small piece ready to be quilted, and a larger piece started.  I never used my "ruby beholder" and my reducing glass so much!

So, it was a very fun time.  I've yet to unload the car, but I'll take pictures of my results when I get them inside.  Now it's catch up time for laundry and household chores, not to mention tidying my studio from the mess I made when I was pulling stuff out to take to the workshop.

I just can't recommend Patty enough as a teacher.  If you ever get the chance to take a class, DO it.  Just meeting her and spending time with her and her sweet, generous, and funny person is worth the price of admission.

Too Much, All the Time

Many of you know that my daughter has Asperger's Syndrome.  This was diagnosed when she was about 10 years old, and although we've had some years to learn and understand how this affects her, we are always seeking ways to understand how she experiences the world and how we can help her learn to negotiate the world in a way that is comfortable for her.  We know that Miss C has some extreme sensitivities -- super-sensitive hearing, so that someone grating a fork against a plate in a restaurant will make her jump, or the high pitched, dog-whistle like ping of fluorescent lights will make a setting unbearable; high sensitivity to smells, so that eating in a cafeteria and smelling everyone's lunch smells mixed together could make her gag; extreme reactions to light flashes, so that someone taking flash pictures across the room in a restaurant can bring on a migraine... It's got to make the world a pretty unfriendly place at times.  When Miss C was younger (and we didn't know better), we thought that she was being sulky or rude or just tantrumy about being somewhere she didn't want to be.  Now we understand that certain settings -- which might seem perfectly lovely and tolerable to everyone else -- can be extremely overwhelming and/or downright painful for her.

You may well know someone who is on the autistic spectrum, and chances are they experience the world with some of those sorts of sensory sensitivities.  This short video provides an interesting example of what sensory overload feels like to someone on the autistic spectrum.



 Now, when I see a kid acting tantrum-y in a store (knowing, now, how malls with all of their smells and lights and sounds and echoy noises, are torture for Miss C) I think that maybe the child is just overwhelmed and can't cope.

It makes you wonder how you would cope if you had to experience the world this way, doesn't it?

Saying Goodbye and Letting Go

We are having a family excursion, mainly to come to Southern California to attend a memorial service honoring my mother-in-law Beverly who died in February.  Her passing was sudden, although not unexpected, and we have all found great comfort in knowing that she went exactly as she wanted to -- very quickly, with no pain.  What more can one ask, really?

So.  We headed south from our home and stopped about half-way, in San Luis Obispo.  We stayed at an amazing and famous old hotel called The Madonna Inn.  It's built in an over-the-top victorian style, and until recently the whole building was painted a vivid pink, with tons of white gingerbread trim.  We were surprised to find that it is all white now, looking a touch more sedate than it used to.  Each room has its own theme --we stayed in the China Flower room, which was decorated with a lot of (shall we say, tacky?) asian furniture and the walls and ceilings were painted gold.  The heart of the place is its restaurant featuring steaks.  The whole place was vivid, vivid, pink.  Pink floral patterned carpets.  Lush banquette seating upholstered in pepto-bismal pink naugahyde.  Fake flowers and sparkly lights everywhere.  A lot of pink food, in fact.  We were fascinated by their Madonna Cake (which we couldn't bring ourselves to eat but boy, was it PINK) -- white cake with pink tinted bavarian cream inside, we were told.  The restaurant was also full of old photographs from the place's hey-day-- John Wayne was apparently a business partner with the Madonna owner in the cattle business (hence the steak house, I guess) so his face was evident in lots of pictures.  If you are passing along highway 101 in California and want a kitschy but fun stop, this is THE place.

So, now we are with Roger's siblings and going through those mixed emotions of dealing with my mother in law's house and belongings.  Much laughter as old photos are found and stories are told, and of course tears as she is missed.  I am hearing stories that I've never heard about her.  This makes me think that we should have life celebrations for our loved ones while they are alive and can join in --- I've learned so many things about Beverly this week that I wish I'd known and could have talked to her about.

In the midst of this sad time, we are entertained by our new niece Buitumelo (from South Africa, you might recall).  She is thriving and growing and her english is highly entertaining.  She's quite insistent on shaking your hand and whispering "Pleased to meet you" each time you enter the room.  Buitumelo came into the family just after a nephew died suddenly, and her presence at Christmas boosted everyone over what could have been a very hard holiday.  Once again, her being here has given all of us a reason to laugh and chase balls around the backyard.  You should of seen all of us run outside when we heard the tinkling music of the ice cream truck approaching up the street!

There is a definite strangeness to sorting through someone's belongings after they are gone.  It makes me wonder what someone would think looking through my closets and drawers.

I think I'd better do some cleaning when I get home.