Busy in Millinocket

CQ / the sequel

I have to add a few more strips and embroider them too and then I'll be ready for sandwiching all the layers together and probably using buttons to tie them all together and hold the panels in place. Do you ever feel as though the only time you are working is when you are outside of the studio?

The ZONE

Welcome to my world here in the small town of Millinocket. The first crazy quilt pictured in this blog is hanging up in the local library. Another crazy quilt top is done and has been done for awhile. I need to finish it for a client soon, I haven't been posting here because I had the wrong browser, this is a lot less frustrating. It took me awhile but I finaly came up with a lead for the second crazy quilt. A card from the Met gave me the color scheme that I wanted to use. And then I went a chopping up fabric and making sure that no two colours touched as I sewed it back together. Embroidering all sorts of things onto this one, even a peacock feather and some spider webs. I always explain the spider webs in the quilt. They were considered good luck in European needlework way back when. My Quaker friend gave me a wonderful , inspiring book that helped the second quilt to evolve as far as the embroidery was concerned. I'm not a techie when it comes to sewing , I try to lead with my strengths and that would be sewing by hand. It's so soothing.

 

To be continued....

Crazy quilt or just plain crazy quilter/ you decide..........

 It seems like every time someone passes away in my life, that I make a quilt to heal from it with. I put a small knitted purse inside of the container that holds the quilt. It had a few candles in it so the scent that it carried was very strong and now whenever I put the quilt on my lap to work on it, I can smell the candles that are long gone. I can see the finish line with this quilt. Not too much longer and it will be done. It's been a meditation on patience and life. A mending of my spirit.  I'm in the home stretch and it's been a pleasant journey so I think that I will continue to do crazy quilts for awhile and see what happens.

Some of my work

    Please feel free to leave some feedback. Comments welcome!

blog du jour

    I have tried and tried and tried to send this tiny image to my friend via email and nothing would go through. I found this fragile little piece of antique advertising while panning for gold at my favorite usual spot in Burlington, VT. It's called Resources but the name at the time that I found this there was Recycle North.

     As for the care-giving , things have gotten so much better since the meds were changed to be given every 6 hours instead of every 3 hours. Now it isn't such a marathon. Hell-week has passed and Ollie is eating light and drinking alot more fluids.

   I'm slowly learning more on the computer and my typing is becoming easier all the time. The amount of learning that someone can do on the computer cannot possibly be finite. And choosing a direction is an almost impossible task for someone like me who gets swept away by the next bright shiny thing. I want to try to do etsy again but don't have an organized inventory or aproach or even regulated blocks of time to develope one.

Happy Easter

When I was growing up we always made two large batches of eggs for Easter. One was for the store bought egg dye and another pot full of white eggs with onion skins thrown into the water to turn them a wonderful almost chocolate brown.  

Keeping Busy

Found this junktiquing and I don't have the before photo>rats but these are the after photos. It was a dark brown before the yellow paint was applied > many layers of yellow paint and I'm not done with the legs yet. I wasn't sure what to do until Ollie suggested a bouquet of flowers for the top. Not quite happy with the way the leaves and stems came out but hey for $12 in materials, I think that it was well worth my time. 

Progress

Two more panels and maybe some embroidery and I will be ready to start sewing the top together. I'm thinking of using stripes to go lengthwise inbetween the panels.

1/02/10

Spent the morning trying to get in some good photos for holiday cards for next year. I tried to get a good shot of the snow but nothing great happened. Nothing worth posting, lets just say there's a something or other load of it out there! And much more is expected. It's OK, I'm stocked up on the essentials. Chocolate and arts & crafts supplies. I really can't tell if any of the shots that I took this morning are any good at all. But then I never can tell right away. It's part of the process to leave them alone for awhile and do something else. At least I used my camera for a few hours. And heavily edited the results. I never think of this as work. And the instant gratification part of it. Let's just say, I'm weak right now. I need to develope my patience but the camera is spoiling me. I have these huge bags of yarns upstairs, I know how to needlepoint and weave tapestry.................. I need an artistic drill seargant. Or maybe just not to create in a vacumn. But then I'll crave solitude to work. Sound familiar?

Favorite Christmas present

This was given to me by my friend Valerie this year. I call him the good spirit and have him hanging up on the door to one of my studios. You can find Valerie at plainandpractical.com. on typepad. She had a little note attached to him that said that out of all of the different things that she makes , these little people are the only ones that she finds herself talking to. It reminds me of an angel that my father made for me when I was very ill. I also think that they would be nice made into larger pieces for the outdoors out of sturdier stuff. I would love to have one in my garden. She has two larger ones that she wants to give me but I think they belong in a library along with a description of her process for making them. At any rate I'm very fortunate to have her as my friend. Although I haven't figured out how to link to her site yet. How about you? Did anyone give you something very special this year?

Where there is chocolate, there is hope!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dScc6WtAq34

older work from when I was a single

Making another matrix is on my agenda of things to do. These pieces are from a few years ago and have my name from before I married for the second time around on them if you look closely. They are handprinted on acid free paper and the rooster print is numbered as well as signed. The grasshopper and rabbit prints are signed and not numbered.They are some of the first prints that I did and became popular before I considered limiting the amount of prints in circulation. So they keep multiplying , just like locusts and rabbits. 

One of the photos that I use for making cards.

Here is a sample of the photographs that I use for card making. I keep making cards because of the cards and letters that I have collected over the years and keep finding tucked away in boxes and books.   

more experiments in upcycling

This was just plain fun to put together using all the bits and pieces that I collect.  My experiments are still not polished enough for me though and I look forward to developing them more. The piece on the right is a work in progress, embroidered with silk thread.

old fashioned scrap quilt

I figure that about 80% of this quilt's fabric was rescued from the arts & crafts aisle at the recycling center. Washed and ironed and ready to go, alot of small scraps that lend themselves nicely to being cut into thin strips. This is the easiest kind of quilt for me to make. Very little is wasted.

experiments in upcycling

These small purses are made from a combination of upolstery samples with synthetic fibers as well as hemp, silk, cotton & linen. Hunting and gathering the materials is one of my favorite pastimes