Race For The Rescues in California

Traci with Betty Boop (left), Andrea & Van

A pooped-out Betty Boop

Just thought I'd add a few after the race pictures. I heard that Betty Boop and Van (the yellow lab) slept all the way home. They are "bff" dogs. Traci & Betty walked this 5k (see previous post) with her team at work to help support the rescues and displaced animals affected by the fires. She lives in Santa Monica. Go Betty!! I'm proud of you!

Betty Boop and her First 5k

Betty Boop

This is a picture of Betty Boop, my daughter's Boston Terrier. She is such a sweetheart. As you can see, she is brindle color and Emma is more black & white. Tomorrow, Betty will walk in The Rescue Train 5k in California with her mom and dad. This is part of the Race for the Rescues effort to help homeless pets. Donations are especially needed now for the displaced animals during the fires in CA. ( Traci has her own page for donations to their effort.) Please watch this video. It is so cute! (Be sure to catch the shot of the three legged dog in the first part of the video.)

I'm just proud of them for doing this! : )

Painted & Stitched Portraits

Emma
Taylor
Taylor & Taylor

I finished the painting and the stitching. I stitched the outline on the machine using black thread. I like using the Golden acrylics...it only takes a tiny drop to go a long way. Now, I have to decide what fabric background to put them on and then I will probably add some hand stitching or beads. I thought the pose of Taylor beside her portrait was cute. She seemed to like it. Now she is asleep...probably dreaming about being a blue cat.

New WIP

Emma

Taylor

These are the two drawings I did of Emma and Taylor on canvas. They are ready to paint and stitch. This is part of a class assignment I am taking from Jane LaFazio at Joggles.com. She has some awesome work on her website ...check it out. I'm totally loving this class because I love to use mixed media in my work. I decided to use Emma & Taylor as my models...just because I think they are so cute. Now, let's see if I can finish the two quilts and still have a resemblance of the originals.

For those of you that read my post of Oct. 17, Cover Up, and were curious, the famous person was Bill Clinton. (This is my only quilt to actually finish from QSDS). LOL!

I just joined a art quilt theory group at my local quilt shop. Most of them have been meeting for years and do awesome work. I sort of squeezed in and am really glad to be part of the group.

I'm off to paint! It is suppose to rain a bit here today! Yippee!!

Move Those Cubes! (Again?)

view of Emma by my desk and oh, the cubes, too!

Taylor under the machine

HQ16 in background, design table on the right

Bookshelves of fabric. The green wooden boxes are from IKEA and hold my rubber stamps and ink pads. Fabric needs to be stamped, sometimes.

OK, I did it again...I re-arranged my studio in the process of cleaning it. I decided to "open it up" again and these are the pictures of the after. I moved my cubes (I love those cubes!) If you notice, two of the main ingredients for a successful studio are: Emma, the Boston Terrier and Taylor, the cat. Emma loves her own little bed in the studio. Taylor prefers sleeping on any available quilt or fabric. Of course she is a cat and that is that! I have more tweaking to do, such as where to put my thread, etc., but now I have a class at the LQS to attend so I'm out of here.

P.S. Thanks for the comments on my blog! Wish I could email all of you.

Finished Quilt

Cover-Up

Here is the story of "Cover-Up": While digging through my bin of scraps, I found this small quilt top, unfinished. It is a quilt I had made in a class. By using colors, it was suppose to be my representation of a famous person. But it did not look like my original because the center of the quilt had been "covered up" by strips of fabric. The real center is a "black mark" or black strip of fabric that represented a dark time in the famous person's life. By being the charismatic person he was, he recovered and people still liked him, though not as many. Here's the comedy: While critiquing my work, the teacher pointed out that the shape of the black mark might be interpreted as "something else" due to what the famous person had done. She very kindly suggested I might want to cover it up just in case. Well, of course I wasn't thinking anything like that when I made it but it did make for a few laughs. So, I just quickly grabbed fabric, cut and fused it over the black mark. When I recently uncovered it, I didn't realize that I had unintentionally cut out a "cross" as you see in the picture. So, it turned out much better than the original and has more meaning for me as a positive thing. I machine quilted it and I really like it, now. A few cover-ups are sometimes a good thing. Hmmm...I wonder what else is lurking in that bin of scraps! : )

Quilted!

Fall Landscape II

Here is my finally quilted landscape. Click on the picture if you want to see details. I just couldn't leave it alone and had to add machine quilting. The hand stitching is fun and relaxing but in this case, it just needed some extra stitches. It is finished, envelope style.

New Quilt

NOW I'm talking landscape! This one is more "me", I think. I do realize that I just thought too much about the last landscape which created too many decisions. This one was just "with the flow" as they say. This is just pinned, ready to stitch. Maybe I should make a few more of these "ready to stitch" versions. I am enjoying the hand stitching, though I think I might be a bit rusty. I do have some great books on embroidery that I acquired. I also like the size of this one which is about 10" x 10 1/2" instead of the 8 1/2" x 11" journal size.

Embroidered Quilt

Landscape after adding embroidery

Landscape Detail

Landscape detail

I think (?) the stitching is done but maybe not. I never know when to stop! : ) I really enjoyed making this quilt. I highly recommend the class I mentioned below. Yippee, Lesson 2 is tomorrow! I won't show you the huge pile of fabric that evolved after making this. : )

WIP-Revised Landscape Quilt

This is my revised version of the previous landscape post. After seeing it on my blog, I realized it was missing something! I needed a body of water in it and this is the result. I took out the lower part of my previous stitching and will finish stitching this one and call it done. I like this version much better. I have some yummy threads I got at QSDS earlier in the summer that are begging to be a part of this quilt. OK, back to stitching...hopefully, I can finish it today, get it posted and start another! I appreciate any comments.
Here is what Emma did while I was revising the landscape quilt. She slept under my feet. She was all worn out after playing. Emma likes to be held and rocked to sleep in my computer chair all wrapped in a little quilt which is what I am doing at the moment. Just a little hard to type sometimes. : ) Yes, she is spoiled. : ) She will be 4 months old on Monday.

Work -In-Progress Quilt

This is my WIP landscape I created from the class, Art Quilt Exploration, taught by Jane LaFazio. I really liked making this one. Now, I have all sorts of ideas floating in my right brain. I have started the stitching and will post the finished version today. Thanks to everyone for the encouragement for hand stitching. It was very relaxing, in fact, I fell asleep while stitching the first night. LOL!

We spent the weekend in Ohio helping to install a fence at our son's house (our former home). Their dogs think it's a dog park, now. Emma had a great time and actually got dirty for the first time! She had a ball playing with Mya and Barley, the Boxers. Emma slept in my lap under a quilt all the way home. I must say it has been a while since we have done that much physical labor, but it felt good the next day. Matt's girlfriend, Stephanie (did I tell you she is so sweet?) sent us home with a large bag of goodies: wine, snacks, OSU hat, shirt, OSU sweater for Emma and more.

I'm off to add the finishing touches to my landscape quilt.

Landscape Quilts

Today, I started a new class, Art Quilt Exploration, with Jane LaFazio! This is an online class at Joggles.com. The first lesson is making landscape quilts! I fell in love with Jane's landscape quilts in her lesson! When I began making art quilts in 2003, I made the quilt pictured here, "In Control". It was actually my first real art quilt and I loved making the quilt. It did get the honor of hanging in a few galleries. It wasn't meant to be a landscape quilt, just an abstract of the earth. Then, today, I realized I have had a framed landscape quilt hanging on my wall that I did in the early 1990's. It was my first time to do any improvisational cutting, stitching and machine embroidery. So, I think I have always had a love for landscape type quilts and didn't realize it. I am so excited to take a class from Jane as I really admire her work and knowledge. I can't wait to learn more from her...my enthusiasm is back! I have already started on my first landscape for the lesson. Yippee! I'm going to do hand stitching! OK, friends who know me, don't faint after reading this! After reading Jane's first lesson, I think I will definitely give the hand work a try!

(Here are the pictures of the quilts I made several years ago.)

"In Control"

(my first real art quilt made in 2003)

This is the framed landscape quilt I did in the 1990s.

Below is a close-up shot. It is a really small quilt. You can tell it was my first attempt at free-motion embroidery...my trees are swaying.

More Hand Dyed Fabrics

Here are pictures of the ones I dyed yesterday. I also included some close ups of two of them. Now to do something with them! I am currently working on a border for the beach scenes I posted a few days ago. Thank you to everyone who posted nice comments on my fabrics. I really appreciate it. I now have to order more fabric so I can dye some more. I must get back to the sewing portion of my art.

I have so many ideas of art in my head that I can't seem to find time to create even a small portion of it. That's because I don't know what to start on next. Does this happen to anyone else?

Hand dyed Blues

I've got the blues...hand dyed, that is... Here is a picture of a few of the blues I dyed yesterday. No blue cat or dog, either! I needed a variety of sky blues for my ocean scenes so I lucked out and got these nice pastels. I felt like a mad scientist in my kitchen measuring dye in little pots to get just the right combination of color. I also dyed 7 yards of other colors yesterday. I will get pictures posted of those. Really cool! The nice thing about dyeing is all the threads you collect from the pieces can be used to embellish other fiber art work. I just toss them in a drawer and combine them with others. They can be couched using the machine or by hand.

Quilt for Emma

This little quilt for Emma was made in about 30 minutes today. She is now 3 months old and so sweet. She slept in my chair behind me while I stitched it on the machine and quilted it. It was super easy and I just love the soft, Minky backing. The front is flannel and it has cotton batting. As you can see in the pictures, she is already snuggling in it. This is her 2nd quilt. The picture of her in her bed is just for cuteness sake. The green stuffed toy is her doggy purse with rope handles.

Fabric Dyeing!

Here are the results of dyeing more fabrics. This time I used an unbleached muslin (not Perma-Press). I'm not as happy with the results as when I used Kona's PFD (Prepared for Dyeing) muslin. But they are quite usable. I managed to squeeze in a few hours while hubby babysat for Emma so I could dye fabric. I didn't want her to be a bright pink puppy. I did manage to dye just one of my fingers a bright red. Apparently, there was a tiny hole in my rubber glove. Today, it is just around the nail bed so that it looks like a badly injured finger. Oh well, I will just put a Bandaid on it if I have to go anywhere today. I am off to make a new puppy quilt and work on an art quilt. Happy Monday!

Pretty Things

Yesterday, I went to the Offray Ribbon outlet store in Hagerstown, MD. Wow! I was a bit overwhelmed. So many bargains! I had read about it in the Washington Post and then heard about it from a fellow artist. Spools of ribbon for 10 cents, 25 cents and less. I put it all out on my work table just to see how pretty it looks. I got all of this for $30 plus tax. Most of the ribbons are fabric so I can use them in my quilts and other creations. Some of my family and friends may see their B-day gifts wrapped in these delightful ribbons. They even had a all you can stuff in a bag for $1.09. I managed to get the piles of wide, satin ribbon in the bag. I like to tie up my quilts in this ribbon whenever I give a quilt as a gift. The most I paid was for the 53 yard spool of fabric ribbon that looks a tape measure was $7.95. OK, now that I've bored you with my pretty things, I must get to work. I am dyeing some more fabric today!

ATCs (Artist Trading Cards)

Here are some new ATCs I have made this week. They are just little creativity starters for me. The one with the bird and the Paris ATC area polished stone backgrounds. It was my first try at it. It uses glossy cardstock, Ranger's alcohol inks and felt.

You can't see the gold leafing or the glitter I used on some of these.

They are lots of fun to make, rather addictive I would say.

Setacolor Paintings

Today, I am posting pictures of the recent landscapes I painted using Setacolor transparent paints. At this point, they are unfinished and will need borders, quilting and embellishing. These are done on PFD fabrics (Prepared for Dyeing). Setacolor is tricky to use as you have to control the bleeding of the color into areas it shouldn't go in. But I am happy with the way these two evolved. After painting them, I placed them in the sun to develop. I will probably do some sun prints for the borders or I may use some of my hand dyed fabrics. I am amazed at how soft the fabric is after painting. After our time at the beach, I have lots of new ideas to keep me busy for awhile.

Emma

I thought I would have time to post pictures of our beach vacation but I just downloaded them to my computer. Once I get them sorted, I will post a few. In the meantime, these are pictures of Emma, our new Boston Terrier. She is so adorable and sweet! When she is not sleeping, she plays and plays until she just passes out on the floor. We are in the process of potty training. I have taken tons of pics of her but most are a bit blurry as she moves so fast! These will have to do until she wakes up again and I can take some good pictures. She weighs about 7 1/2 lbs. now.

While I was at the beach, I recorded in my journal our day by day fun on the beach. I have lots of sketches and ideas that I can't wait to interpret in my artwork. Being at the beach renews my spirit. More about the beach later.