Catching Up

It has been almost 10 days since I last blogged, and then I didn't show any pictures...just talk, talk, talk. So, now it is time to get caught up and show some pictures.

No matter how hard I try, I just don't seem to get the pictures loaded up in the right order so that I can go from last week to this week, instead of the other way around. And rearranging them gets a little tricky so we will go backwards in my life for the past 10 days.

Yesterday, Saturday, I was down at my studio to paint some more fabric which I had started the day before. Well, I decided it was time to play...you know...PLAY!. So I pulled out two of my rubber-like pads and carved two 4x6" stamps...one of a house and one of trees and then played with them.

You can see the fun that I had. I have a forest, I have houses around the block, I have assorted colors of houses, and then I have printed suburban landscapes...house, woods, woods, house, house, woods, etc. This is really fun!


The entire time I am doing these and having fun with them, I start to think about what I could do with them. Of course, I can use them as a border. But then I started thinking about the 50's and women as the perfect wives in their suburban homes...heels, hair just so, pretty dress and cute apron putting food in the oven for the father who is coming home after work. I have a bunch of old magazines with perfect images so now I am thinking about transferring some of these onto the suburban houses and making collages. Just more fun!


I've about decided that I want to make some more pieces like California Dreams, my yellow gold and blues piece with the palm trees. So I have been painting fabric.


And more fabric.


But before you knew it, the circles started to appear so I guess I will continue working with circles but in some different ways.


Thursday I took my cute little Saturn in to get a special finish applied and the windows etched as a means to make it a little harder for the thieves to dispose of my car parts. This was an all day affair so the dealership gave me a loaner...I big, bight red Hummer 3. If any car was not me, this is it. I really felt funny running around in this!


See, I told you I couldn't get the order right...a close up of part of a suburban panel.


Earlier this week I had the commission out and did the foiling along the cross piece. Then, it was time to trim it to size. For the first time I was a little apprehensive. Instead of just making a quilt, I was creating something to a specific size. Not only that, but I had no where to lay it completely out flat so I could be sure things were straight. So I worked on my 4 x 8' table with two other tables supporting this thing. Cut one edge and then the next and then before I knew it, with lots of grunts and groans as I moved this thing around, checked the measurements lots of times, and worried about if it would be square, I was done. Whew...

Then, cut bands for the facing, and loaded the piece on to the big table and pulled out the sewing machine and started sewing. About 36 feet of facing.


A close up of the sparkle in the orange from foiling.


Some of the copper foiling with little dots of turquoise foiling in the cross piece.


And getting ready to sew.


Endless facing. I sew the band face to face, then turn it and finger press it, and then top stitch right along the facing, catching the seam allowance of the quilt at the same time. I do the opposite sides and then do the same thing again on the other two sides.

Brought it all home and spent a couple of nights with it sort of falling out of my lap as I stitching the facing down in the back. Took it back to the studio, made sleeves for hanging and for the bottom to be sure it hangs well, pinned the sleeves on and then bundled it up again for me to hand sew the sleeves down. Should be able to get that done today and tonight and then it is finished! I even remembered to sign it!

Now the anxiety is beginning to build about if the buyers will like it...and, how I am going to ship it off. Got to order a long, heavy duty box for this!

Also so this week I send out the announcement postcards about my new body of work, got everything up on the website and worked out a couple of kinks. Things are looking good.

This coming week I will start putting together solo show proposals...I have a stack of places that have requested proposals so now the hard work comes in, to put it all together with the current resume, artist statement, bio, slide list, etc. A whole package ready to go but it will be on CD. Some more learning to do!

So, here I am, enjoying the Sabbath.