Whew!

My week must have been busier than I thought! It seems like just yesterday (well, maybe the day before) that I dropped off the quilts, but it's been a whole week. The kids are all back at college and I'm getting some actual work done. We're off to Nashville on Friday for the big quilt show. Strangely enough, I don't have any plans to spend a lot of money, even though I have to confess the vendors hold more attraction for me than the quilts. And specifically the ethnic fabric vendors. No place around here to get kimono silks, or African mud cloth so I love hitting those booths at the big shows. Gadgets and doodads don't do much for me either, and I've been moving rapidly into a whole new spectrum of the type of fabrics I use in my work (nothing planned, I've just noticed it in the last year) and doing a lot of my own fabric, so the cute prints and commercial patterns just don't do it for me any more. That doesn't mean I won't grab some of every "new" music and Mardi Gras fabric I come across, it's just not a priority. And I will stay away from the heroin.....errr........bead dealers this year. Except maybe small tubes. And just a few. And only the ones I don't already have. And a couple of color ranges I need to fill in gaps on....At least my fiber supply is well stocked now (Thanks Vicki!!!) so I can stride quickly past those booths. The ethnic and hand-dyed stuff will be where I spend my time. Oh yeah, and I'll look at some quilts too.

Thank you all for the encouraging and supportive comments. I was sort of wigging out with the self-doubts about applying for the guild. Even if I don't get in, I can look back at the comments and feel good about at least trying.

Finally! Time to breathe.

No big secret really, just a hesitation to publicly announce it for fear of sabotaging myself, but I turned in all the pictures and documentation and quilts yesterday for jury consideration for the Mississippi Craftsman's Guild. Either I'll be in or out by the end of Sept, so telling people I've done it now won't change anything. At least the volunteer who checked the stuff in liked it. And I like it. Two of the three pieces I submitted to the guild will also be shown at the quilt show. I'll pick them up on Saturday at the guild and drop them off on Monday at the show. As quilters are so fond of saying, my quilts travel more than I do. At least the deadline for submission got me off my butt (at midnight, and at 0' dark thirty am) to get the pieces finished and not just add to my growing pile of it-only-needs that seem to be taking over my space. Three or four more that need to be finished and I'll be sort of caught up to a manageable pile of UFOs. Of course, this is the day I wake up with a whole new piece in my head that will probably sidetrack me before I hit a lick at a snake on the mostly finished ones already in existence.

We had to submit 3 finished pieces and photos of 5 other pieces, along with a resume' and artist statement. The resume' looked more impressive than I expected, and the artist statement sucked. Fortunately, I'm not being judged as a writer, but as a quilter. Hopefully my quilting skills will overshadow my (lack of) writing skills. So without further ado, the 8 pieces that went in for consideration.

The three actual quilts I submitted:

And the five photos of previous work:

The largest of these pieces (the 3-panel) is 40"x144" each panel, and the smallest (the guitar and keyboard) is a postcard 4"x6". Not sure if including the 2 together is a good thing or a bad thing, although I love both pieces. Just tilt your head to see Bird Parker correctly. At least looking at them all together makes me believe that maybe I do have a particular style and cross your fingers for me that they decide it looks like a "body of work" when seen as a group.

Dear Mr. Johnson,

Perhaps you can explain to me what my obsession is with you. This is probably my 4th or 5th Robert Johnson quilt, and the first I can actually exhibit and sell. The only two existing photos of him are both under copyright and I'm not going to pay a use fee, so that's out. I had it in the quilt shop yesterday looking for the background fabric and a woman from FL is already interested in buying it. Can't beat that for moving them out. It's going in the Jackson quilt show next month though, so if she's truly interested in it she'll have to wait. Commercial batiks and black cotton fabric, fiberglass window screen. 40x46. It will ultimately have a brick wall quilting pattern and probably black binding.

more work (since I don't have enough already!)

This is the beginning of a Pinetop Perkins piece I have in my head. It's turning out much less dark and brooding than I expected it to, so it may morph even more than it already has. Regardless of how it turns out, I'm liking the beginning. It's amazing how many black/metallic gold fabrics I have too. Funny how you don't always realize something like that until you start pulling fabrics. Or maybe it's only funny to those of us who use the closest-flat-surface method of sorting and storing fabrics. As always, the disclaimer that the terra cotta behind the shape of the piano is actually my dining room wall color. And the piano really is square with the stripes....I just hung it crooked.

May I have your attention

It occurred to me after seeing that last post that nobody in their right mind is going to slog through it all the way to the end, and I'd REALLY like input on the workshop idea, so I'm pasting that part to the top of this post.

Rust dying (you knew I'd get around to that eventually) is going well. I'm in the process of playing with different fabrics, as opposed to turning out yardage right now. I did some bleached burlap and khaki colored linen yesterday and I LOVE both pieces. I have a silk chiffon scarf and a piece of raw silk out there right now and can't wait to see the results. I'm also trying to come up with a way to set up rust dying and gelatin plate printing and maybe some other surface design techniques as a workshop. Fortunately, most of my stuff only requires space and not an actual studio. I'm considering limiting it to maybe 5 people at the time on someone's driveway. That would be do-able for a one day class. Any ideas or suggestions? Any special requests for surface design techniques? Any takers on the workshop? I guess my next thoughts should probably be in the direction of letting people know the classes are available. Hmmmm, wonder if they'd let me post notices on the MQA board? Anyway, feel free to leave comments about this idea, or any others you have.

And the best way to get someone's attention on a blog is to post a picture, so here are some in-progress shots of Gye Nyame. This first one is a truly pitiful full-on shot of it. Pieced African cottons around the dancer, the mask, and the stars at the top. Commercially printed Gye Nyame symbols on the left and bottom.

The dancer is a faux leather fabric and the skirt is ripped strips of some of the fabrics around the border, twine, and some of that gorgeous recycled sari silk from my friend Vicki in Miami.

The mask is free-hand cut scraps of the African fabrics that are fused to a piece of heavy black. The drawn lines you see on the rust dyed brushed denim background of the dancer are patterns drawn on Press-N-Seal to be auditioned for the quilting lines. I'm happy with the djembe drums but the masks definitely need some work. Simple diagonals probably in the pieced borders and relatively heavy quilting over the fused mask at the top.

This and that

Random thoughts about nothing in particular. The GSQA http://www.gulfstatesquilting.bizland.com/ meeting was Saturday and it went so smoothly we couldn't believe it. It sure beat driving to Baton Rouge or Houma too. Less than 1o minutes from my house so I didn't have to set out at the crack of dawn to get there. I worked on the "Gye Nyame" African piece and got some good feedback on it. That's one that's definitely going into the Jackson Quilters http://jacksonquilters.com/ show Sept 15-16 at the new MS Crafts Center, which is an incredibly beautiful building, in a gorgeous setting. I have 2 others submitted also, none of which are actually finished, mind you, but far enough along to get pictures for identification to submit with the forms. Judy Spiers http://www.judyspiers.com/ did a great talk on her miniatures. I can't even begin to describe the effect of her quilts up close. An 18" quilt might have 6,000 or more pieces in it. A little block less than an inch wide had 16 pieces in it alone. Words fail me (alert the media) at her work. It was a real treat to sit with Linda and Caren on either side of me even though Linda warned my ribs might be bruised by her elbows throughout the meeting. She wasn't kidding either, since we managed to chuckle (quietly, of course) and nudge our way through it. It's funny how much I have grown to like this group of women, who are all smart, talented, funny and generous, since re-joining the local guilds. There are a few women who have individually paved the way for that, starting with Jackie, who contacted me to do a talk for the guild a year or so ago. I think that sort of led to my acceptance by the group a bit more than it had been. Linda, with her instant and total support, Dorinda and her HUGE circle of friends, the women who have bought and examined my work (and decided maybe they are real quilts after all) and all of the women who have opened their minds and accepted my work. I am also seeing a MUCH larger contingent of members adding embellishments and 'stuff' to their quilts. All in all, I'm pleased and proud to be a member of their groups.

A funny story from my sister. My niece apparently borrowed a pair of boots from my sis to wear, and then had trouble getting them off. They struggled with one and finally got it removed. The other one was just NOT coming off. She finally went to bed with one boot on, and didn't get it off until the next morning. Talk about a great mental image. All I could think of was the nursery rhyme about "one shoe off and one shoe on" and visualizing her in a frilly nightie with a single cowboy boot on.

Local elections are next Tuesday, and I'll be standing around at the polls. I figure that will give me bitching rights for the next term when some complete moron gets elected (and probably indicted) and does something incredibly stupid. I can at least say I did my best to not put them in office. The mayoral election can't get here soon enough, although at the rate our current nut-in-charge is going, tomorrow might not be soon enough. Our only hope is that he keeps doing insane things and ultimately at least one of the felony charges against him sticks so we can get him out of office.

Off to training this morning to be a scribe for the judging at the JQ show. It sounds very interesting, and something I've never been involved in and know nothing about. I have great faith in Dorinda (oh, to be so organized!) making the process as easy and clear as possible for us neophytes.

Rust dying (you knew I'd get around to that eventually) is going well. I'm in the process of playing with different fabrics, as opposed to turning out yardage right now. I did some bleached burlap and khaki colored linen yesterday and I LOVE both pieces. I have a silk chiffon scarf and a piece of raw silk out there right now and can't wait to see the results. I'm also trying to come up with a way to set up rust dying and gelatin plate printing and maybe some other surface design techniques as a workshop. Fortunately, most of my stuff only requires space and not an actual studio. I'm considering limiting it to maybe 5 people at the time on someone's driveway. That would be do-able for a one day class. Any ideas or suggestions? Any special requests for surface design techniques? Any takers on the workshop? I guess my next thoughts should probably be in the direction of letting people know the classes are available. Hmmmm, wonder if they'd let me post notices on the MQA board? Anyway, feel free to leave comments about this idea, or any others you have.

It must be 6:45. The neighbor's car alarm just went off. At least the puppy across the street hasn't set to howling like it's being shot yet.

Thank you for your patience.

I know you were all sitting around waiting with bated breath for my next post. My mind is still reeling from Sonji's class and the entire Tougaloo Art Colony experience. My mind reels anyway, just more now that it's crammed full of an entire week spent with real artists though. I felt like an absolute fraud being surrounded by MFAs all week, but I just sat back and laughed at the appropriate (and frequently inappropriate) times and nodded sagely at their pearls of art wisdom. The food was incredibly bad (and expensive) and the classes and interaction were incredibly good. My "Bird" Parker quilt sold almost immediately at the auction and I was SO excited! My biggest fear was that it would just get Vanna'ed around the room and then have to slink off quietly to sit in the corner by itself with no takers. Fortunately, Isaac Byrd showed up and he collects bird related stuff. I'll sit here in the early morning quiet and believe that he just loved the piece so much he HAD to have it for his own, and ignore the fact that he was probably as taken with the fact that there was a bird on it as he was with the actual artistic merit of it. Artists tend to be a bit self-delusional anyway I think. I did catch a glimpse of him at one point talking to another auction goer and gently stroking the quilt as he talked. He wasn't doing that with the other non-textile pieces either!

Surprisingly (at least for me) was what a big hit my rust dyed stuff made. I had a lot of interest in the pieces I brought and some inquiries about doing some workshops on it. I also sold a few pieces (along with a canvas drop cloth I went all Jackson Pollock on and then polyurethaned for a floor cloth) at the open studio on Friday. The attention the rust stuff got made me sort of look at it in a new light too. There may be more of it in my future, in more ways than me just deciding I need a certain piece for my own work. The good thing is that rust dying is something I actually enjoy doing, and it's not terribly labor intensive so maybe I won't get tired of doing it right away. I finally broke down yesterday and ordered a book on compost dying (don't hate me Rissa!) even though I fully expect it to be a battle royale with the author to get the damn thing in this lifetime. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any other source for the info I'm looking for than her book. At least I used PayPal so maybe they'll get on her ass if she doesn't follow through as agreed.

What to say about Tougaloo? Too much stuff and not enough brain-organization to think coherently yet. The instructors and students were unbelievable. I could natter on at great length about what an experience it was to meet Sonji, but suffice it to say we connected immediately. That connection held throughout the week, and I wanted to cry when she finally left. Thelma Smith was another student in our class and that was a HOOT! I think I spent more time with her last week than I did my own husband. And I didn't have to cook for her! Margaret brought in some gorgeous, luscious yarns she hand dyes through her company heritageyarns.com and I had to get a table as far away from Debbie as I could. No WAY I wanted to be in a position for people to be able to compare her work to mine. We were all begging/bribing/pleading/bartering trying to get a piece of her fabric to bring home with us. I'd have just hung it up on my wall as is and danced around laughing maniacally saying "Mine. All mine!" if I'd been successful in talking her out of the big piece I coveted. Alas, the silly woman actually followed directions and cut it up! Of course, the stuff she made with the cut up pieces was gorgeous too. There's not much she could have done to make it anything other than beautiful. I haven't even mentioned Gwen Magee and her independent study studio, where I spent half my time simply absorbing her working process and chatting (at great length, of course) about this and that and politics and Katrina and whirled peas and anything else that flitted across our brains.

OK....I'm tired of typing now, so I'll just call this Installment One of the Art Colony Report and come back to it after your eyes have healed. Lots more to report on but it will have to wait.

Y'all just wait!

Class is incredible. Sonji is incredible. The whole atmosphere is incredible. I'll have pictures and commentary (you knew I would) as soon as I can catch my breath and absorb it all. Well, that might take months, so I'll rephrase that to say I'll post about it as soon as I have a few minutes to sit down and get my thoughts together. I'll try to have pictures too, although I've taken the camera every single day and so far have taken a big ZERO pictures. Too much other stuff going on to distract me and I just never think to grab the camera. I promise I'll try to get some shots tomorrow, at least of all the fabric hanging around the room. I am in awe of some of what the other students are turning out. And they seem to do it so effortlessly too! I build colors and shapes and ideas in my head all night long, and once I get to class and have the paint in my hand (literally, in and on my hand....it's like finger painting for adults for me) the ideas just zoom out of my ears or something. I just start laying down colors that I like, or am curious about, or that Thelma has mixed too much of, or whatever is handy to slap on there next. I just go with the flow, and see where my inner Jackson Pollock takes me next.

Back up to the college tonight for the instructor's talks, and I'm still covered in paint. Wish me luck that I don't come home tomorrow night covered in fusible and burn marks. I am NOT a neat worker.

Paying it Forward

From Terry Grant's blog (http://www.andsewitgoes.blogspot.com/)
For the first 3 people who leave me a comment, I'll send a hand-made something-or-other. I've done a couple of these in the past and they are a lot of fun. I got the cutest postcard and a felted wrist pin cushion from JenClair at http://bayouquilts.blogspot.com/ and a couple of other postcards from other people.

EDIT: And you have to post the same offer on your own blog! I forgot that part of the deal.

Of course, now my worry is that there aren't 3 people who read the blog who want something made by me!

"Bird" Parker

Elvis lives!

This quilt was originally made for the "Why is the Sky Blue" challenge from the quiltart list. I didn't really have anything in mind for it once it was made, and it just sort of languished around for a while, occasionally being dragged out for a presentation or something, including a show and tell in my living room to a friend who came by to pick through some fabric fairy stash I had no need for. That was probably a year or more ago, and I recently got a call from her asking if I still had it. I did, and she asked about the possibility of acquiring it for the Embroiderers Guild of America for their convention next June in Memphis. We worked out the details and they now are the proud owner of the quilt, and it was officially unveiled last week at their regional meeting, to be used? Shown? whatever, for the next year until the actual meeting in June '08. It was well-received enough for the local chapter to be interested in purchasing another one for the silent 'tea cup' auction, and possibly one for their "Chicago national this Labor day." I'm putting all this stuff in quotes because I'm not exactly sure what it all is, I'm just pulling it verbatim from the emails back and forth working out the details. Some other discussion about doing a presentation to their group and possibly a class if they have enough interest. I'm actually pretty excited about the opportunity to work with another group and crazy quilters seem like a good fit for my style of embellishing.

Hardy Orange

We have a volunteer tree/shrub/hedge/bush along one side of the fence in the back yard that has thorns longer than my index finger. We've let it get out of hand the last couple of years, and since it's a fast-growing thing it's gotten about 12' tall. We HAD to get in there and trim it back before it took over the entire right half of the yard. It was already impinging on the grotesquely over-sized nandina the dog uses as a scratching post. It's one of the few plants that are surviving the drought this year so I almost hated to whack it back. Almost.



It's green and springy so we can't burn it (ignoring for a moment the burn ban we've been under for months) and with those thorns it's a major ordeal even considering trimming it to 3' or less pieces so the garbage will pick it up. Even if we trimmed it to size and bundled it, I don't think they get paid enough to actually pick it up once they see the size of the stickers. It looks like something from the walls of Cinderella's castle. Was she the one with the castle fortified with brambles?



Anyway, we got it cut back with a minimum of injury and only a little blood, but we now have a 10' wide, shoulder-high tangle of the stuff just sort of lying there threatening us. No idea how we're going to get rid of it short of buying U-Haul boxes and packing it up so we can put it out for the garbage. Maybe we'll just leave it there until it composts back into the earth. It would be just my luck it would re-seed right there though and then we'd have a million of them to deal with instead of just three. I was considering intentionally planting some along the other fence line though where the really ugly fence is but I'd rather have wisteria. Too bad it's only the scary, dangerous stuff that roots so easily and grows so fast. The hardy orange took root and thrived in way less time than it took the mock orange right next to it to even set blooms.


By the way, in case there was any doubt that Southerners were strange, this plant is commonly called a gumdrop tree, and people actually use it as a centerpiece with gumdrops stuck on the thorns. "Hey honey, it's Little Becky's third birthday! What say we chop off a hunk of that deadly weapon plant in the back and stick bright colored candy on it to camouflage the thorns for the kiddies!"


At least it has too many off-shoots to make a good switch.

For a reasonably good picture of the whole thing, check out http://www.nccpg.com/gloucestershire/plantweek6c.html

RJ and the Bird

Ignoring the crappy photography, I'm very pleased with these 2 pieces. The Robert Johnson is destined (most likely) to be donated to Tougaloo College for their art auction, and Bird will be one of my three for exhibit and sale. Robert Johnson is done with commercial batiks, photo printed fabric and real guitar parts and picks. I also used annealed brass corners on it.

Charlie "Bird" Parker is commercial batik (the black stripe-y looking stuff bottom right) and some of my rust dyed fabric. Photo printed fabric, and commercial prints for the staff. The bird applique is done with a pinwale corduroy so there is a bit of texture to it. I also spent 2 days with a microscopic screw driver, taking the saxophone apart to get the keys and thumb hook. A HUGE thank you to Chris at Morrison Brothers Music for taking the time to locate an old sax for me, along with some very cool cases and spare parts for future use. He also had some really good suggestions for other pieces of instruments I may be able to use.

Scout and the guitar bits

First things first, Boo Radley is a she, not a he, so her name is now Scout. That'll show me about trying to sex a kitten when they're so young.

And I hit the motherlode at the music store. I went in for a dozen 35 cent picks for the Robert Johnson piece and came out with 10 assorted tuning keys and 3 ....ummmm......decorative metal things with the keys still attached, whatever those are called. The guy I was dealing with was VERY interested in what I was doing with broken guitar pieces and took a lot of time going through his boxes of repair parts looking for other stuff I might be able to use. He also had some good ideas of how to use pieces of a guitar and told me which parts of it were veneer and which weren't. I love the look of the keys and the key sets (for lack of a better name for it) and I think they'll definitely find a home on some of my work. Big thanks to Stephen (of Kokojazzman fame) for suggesting the keys.

Robert and the art cloth

Of which I only have pics of Robert so far. I sort of went off on a tangent with him after I got back from Vicksburg and had all my fabrics laid out together (translation: dumped into a pile on top of another pile on the table) and saw the blue and brown batiks playing so nicely together. I printed off the picture of Robert Johnson, after changing it to a sepia sort of color instead of the original gray/black tones. The lighter blue strip at the bottom will have tortoiseshell guitar picks and if I can buy some unattached tuning pegs they will wind up at the edge of the picture. A coil of rusty guitar strings (which reminds me I need to get out there and put the acid on them so they'll rust today) below the pic, then some quilting. I'm also considering "roughing up" the seam between the blue and brown by overlapping and lacing or something, instead of having the sharp line. We'll see. I have the patterns printed off for the next one, a Charlie "Bird" Parker piece, and the fabrics chosen and dyed for it. It's lying on the ironing board as we speak as I re-dye some rust stuff a bit darker to use with it.

The art cloth came out pretty well. A couple of pieces I absolutely love, a couple that I'm already using as wiping rags when I'm working on others. I really like the look of the shaving cream dyed pieces when they get done, but I'm obviously doing something wrong with the setting process since I'm losing most of the color once they're washed. The yard of gelatin plate printed fabric is going to be very hard to turn loose of, but maybe I'll get a couple more pieces made and will have a choice of which one to donate. This session of gelatin dying went much better than the last, and I'm actually happy with the result. I'll try to get a pic of that up sometime today. I'm also liking the effect of simply sprinkling dry Rit dye on the pieces as I'm doing something else to them. I need to add some salt filler to the shakers of dye though to control the amount a little better. A really pretty piece of rust dyed stuff with teal Rit dye will wind up in the Bird Parker piece. I also played with rust dying some colored fabric. I'll report back on that experiment once they dry and set and get washed. So far I like the effect though. They have more of an orange color too, since I dyed them in the rusty wheelbarrow.

The pain of art

Boo Radley and I have been playing together. A lot. And as a result, my arms and legs look like I've been flogged with barbed wire (which reminds me......) from where his little pointed cat fingers snag me a thousand times a day. So, I'm wide awake at 5:00 am and looking for something to do. My bright idea is to get started on some art cloth stuff, so off I go to my stash for some fabric appropriate for rust dying and gelatin printing and rubbing plates and shaving cream dying and other fun stuff. Pour the vinegar into the bowl and stick it in the microwave. Start cutting the fabric to size. The microwave dings. Add the salt to the vinegar. Load everything up and haul it out to the work table on the deck. So far, so good. Stick the fabric in the bowl to prep it for dying. DAMN! Open wounds and salt/vinegar at the crack of dawn is NOT a good idea. Too late to do anything about it now though so I just keep muddling through until I can get inside and rinse my arms. Of course I also now have pretty little hand prints across the seat of my pajama pants from where I snatched my hands out of the vinegar in reflex to the pain. The fabric is now cooking in the rusty pan, wrapped around various rusty objects.

Cross your fingers that I get some good pieces that were worth, literally, salt in the wound.

Meet Boo Radley

This is my new kitten, who already thinks he needs to help at every opportunity.

He's very vocal and demanding about getting attention too. But he's also a sweet kitten who loves to be petted and held more than any cat we've ever had. He sleeps in my lap while I'm working at the machine (at least he sleeps when he's not "helping" guide the fabric through the machine) and he apparently loves the sound of the Janome since he promptly climbs up and sticks his head through the harp to sleep. That position should be interesting the first time I try to quilt a big piece.

He's "helping" me iron that quilt top, by the way. Since this is a quilt blog, I guess I should mention the actual quilt and not just the quilt kitty. It uses about 75 of the almost 200 music print fabrics I have and is a sort of non-measured ....ummmmm....strip pieced sort of thing. I basically just cut a bunch of strips and started sewing them together then cut them up into triangles and sewed them back together randomly. Absolutely no thought to pattern or design, other than making sure I didn't get the same pieces together most of the time. I added the inner and outer border to stabilize all the bias edges and even then, added interfacing to make SURE it stayed square. So far so good on that. It's probably due to all the help I got from Boo.

Lazy Sunday afternoon

Ah yes, nothing like a lazy Sunday afternoon. Two middle-aged women with hatchets and crow bars, an abandoned piano, high-humidity 90 degree weather, a pick up truck and a plan. What could be any more entertaining than that? It look us under an hour to dismantle the whole thing and get the pieces parts hauled out to the street. I now have a relatively unlimited supply of piano guts to do with as I please. An interesting note (at least to me) is that the hammers of pianos have different colored felt. The one I already had has red, the one I got yesterday has green, and Dorinda's has grey. I have a whole bunch of keys and the whole strip of the part where the hammers and other stuff connect. If I can talk the boys into doing it, I may try to send them back out there to get the big metal piece the piano wires connect to. I would make a VERY cool rust dying form. That part of it (I think she called it the sound board) was too heavy for us to lift into the back of the truck, but maybe if the boys unscrew it from the wood part the 2 of them can get it home.

We also did some gelatin plate printing yesterday and that was pretty cool. We were just playing, so I don't really have anything that I'm willing to show, but at least I got some ideas for the situations where it might be the appropriate technique for a particular effect. It did strike me as very project-specific though. One more weapon in my war chest to be used as needed. I also got the deck cleaned off and replaced the weird shaped piece of tarp covered plywood with a great solid wood exterior door to use as a work surface. If the rain holds off today (that's a joke, y'all....we're crying for rain) I'm going to try to get a couple of coats of polyurethane on it "just in case" the thick painted surface needs some extra help. I can already tell it's going to be a huge improvement. I can actually get to the cabinets it sits on, it's perfectly flat and level, the top is white so I can see what I'm doing, and it doesn't have an irregular shape. I also raised it about 3" higher than it was and my back didn't bother me at all, even after an hour or so of standing there working. My daughter came out on the deck and asked why I had plastic lizards and snakes and spare body parts lying around. After I told her what we'd used them for her comment was "Oh, so it was arts and crafts day at the B house this morning. You should run your own summer camp." I think I'm going to invite Mike Rowe to come paint and dye and discharge with me for his Dirty Jobs show. Or maybe I'll invite him over to just stand there and let me look at him.

MQA June gathering

The MQA (Mississippi Quilt Ass'n) June gathering was this weekend and it came off without a hitch. I was one of the speakers Friday night (I took my timer this time so I knew when to shut up too!) and my talk and quilts seemed to be very well-received. Lots of interest and questions after the program and a bunch of people took pictures of me and the quilts. That surprised me. I've done several of those talks and I don't remember anyone doing that before. As I expected, "Sing" made a big hit and I intentionally saved it for last during my talk. Surprisingly, I think the second crowd favorite was the "Simplicity" quilt with all the sewing supplies on it, and it wasn't just because the women are quilters. Most everyone commented on having a lot of the old things at home themselves, and how much they loved them without using them, but couldn't bring themselves to throw out. I could see the gears clicking in their heads by the time some of them got through asking questions and checking out the assembly techniques.

I taught a beading and embellishment class all day Saturday and that was a ton of fun. I had a really good group of students, and we got a lot accomplished. I intentionally made the supplies list sort of vague so people would show up with a variety of fabrics and embellishments. It apparently worked too, since we had everything from a huge printed panel to a journal sized micro print. We looked at every piece and discussed scale and proportion of each. I think we solved every problem too, including the cute micro print. She just added a big applique of the same tiny motif and it was off to the races for her. Strangely enough, she was the only student who left class to buy more fabric this time. We had every type of fabric imaginable, from bright novelty prints to pastel watercolor fabric to a beautiful, rich looking blue and brown upholstery fabric. It was fun for me to see how the fabric choices "matched" the personalities of the women I knew. The enhancements we ultimately used ran the gamut from basic beading, with some fancy stitches thrown in, all the way through couched yarns and fibers to fabric paint and gel pens and dimensional overlays and bead encrusting to embroidery. I would LOVE to see all of the finished pieces. I did have 2 students from other classes stop by during the day to ask me for suggestions on their own work. I had to giggle at how they looked almost furtive about asking though. Maybe one day embellishment will be a universally accepted addition to a quilt. And in my own defense, "embellishment" doesn't always mean "stick more crap on it" either. Both suggestions I gave were very minor. One was simply a change in thread color, the other was to add a grand total of about a dozen color-coordinated seed beads. Embellishment isn't always about more-is-better, sometimes it's just about enhancing an existing element.

I'm hoping everyone left the class with a better idea of what can be done, when it's called for on their quilt, and that they are a little more open to considering the possibilities. I'm not advocating that everyone always embellish. I'm just hoping people who are very traditional will begin to see it as another tool in their arsenal of techniques. We have DEFINITELY come a long way in the last five years with that. They let us read our instructor critiques before we left yesterday and the one I liked best was the comment from a woman who said she was totally out of her box with embellishment when she signed up for the class, but left at the end of the day comfortable with going home and doing it on her own. I also got an email from a student last night who said she'd dragged out her beads after she got home, even before she unpacked her suitcase! THAT is the kind of motivation that keeps me coming back. I got so excited about the progress they made during the day, and how enthusiastic they were about doing more of it that I challenged them to a Bag O' Stuff round (limited to a quart bag and 25 people though) and I already had 4 signed up by 6:00 last night. I'll probably be a raving lunatic before we finish it up at the end of the summer, but I'm really looking forward to it. The cut-off for signing up is next Sunday, so if any of my 4 regular readers are interested, leave me a comment and I'll put you on the list.

Sing While You're Working

I have finally found the right fabric for the quilt design I've had in my head ever since I got the piano pieces, and it was a gift from a friend.
The instant I saw it, I knew it was what I had been waiting for too. The quilt was very well-received at the guild meeting show and tell this morning (the same guild that turned their noses up at my work 5 years ago) so I was happy. I can't say it's all their fault though. They have made strides in being more accepting of non-traditional work, but my work has also improved and been refined over the last 5 years. At any rate, I re-upped my membership today for the first time in several years. I also had 3 people approach me about the price of it before I got out of the parking lot. Friends admire your work, true friends hop out of a car in the middle of the street and help you bust up a piano with a tire iron. Finished size is 20x22, unless you count the hammers that it hangs by, which makes it 22x22. Commercial cottons, rust dyed keyboard and stripe print, pages torn from a children's song book and piano keys and internal pieces. The titles of the 2 songs are "Sing While You're Working" and "Something Happy", both of which I thought were appropriate. The paper is stabilized on fusible interfacing and coated with polymer medium. The piano pieces are sealed with a spray varnish. The binding is a very narrow gold and ecru stripe.