In The Garden

The current challenge from Art Quilts Around the World is called "In The Garden". I had a great time doing this quilt. I originally thought about doing a keyhole that you are looking through to see the whole amazing garden but couldn't figure how to do that on this scale. I then decided that I wanted to go the route of a secret garden and finding the door to it hidden along with the key. 

This is the quilt that I came up with. 

The first thing I did was quilt the wooden gate by taking hand painted brown fabric and tracing the grain of the wood on my table onto paper, pinning that to the brown fabric, in sections, and quilting. Here is just the wood. 

Next, I cut the piece down to the correct size, and added the lock and vines. 

Then I sewed individual leaves using fusible web to make them two-sided. Once the leaves were made, I determined how best to place them on the vines and sewed down only the stems so that the leaf can blow in the breeze. I then attached a red ribbon with a small key with the word "dream" on it that I purchased from a store on Etsy onto the vines. 

I decided that I didn't want to do a conventional binding on this, so I just satin stitched all around the edge and left it a little rough. 

Like I said at the beginning of this post, I really liked doing this challenge and think that this is one of my best pieces to date. 

Structure - Golden Gate Bridge

The Art Quilts Around the World challenge this round was "Structure".

This could be so many different things, but I immediately thought about architectural structures (although I did briefly toy with an idea of rock structures found in nature).

I landed on the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco. When I lived there, I always enjoyed driving across that bridge and even made a walk across it once. During that walk I took some great shots of the framework of the bridge, and that became the impetus for my piece:

I decided that I would do a white border (although I'm not thrilled with the actual binding) to hark back to the old school pictures that would have white borders around them. I didn't do a lot of quilting on this piece as I really wanted the fabric to speak for itself (and trust me this sky around San Francisco will look very similar to this). Other than the binding, I couldn't be happier with this....and in creating this, it gave me some ideas on how to translate photographs into quilts.

Every one of these challenges is an opportunity for me to learn something new and to add to my repertoire....bring on the next challenge!

Houston International Quilt Show

This past weekend I missed out on seeing Laura and Ash at the Watsons, but already had plans to take a bus trip down to Houston with my mom to spend the day at one of the largest quilt shows in the world. 

I went over to mom's on Friday evening and took Leo with me for a couple of reasons... 1) I wanted to see how he would do on a trip to grandma's and 2) I didn't want to deal with him freaking out over the trick-or-treaters on the street and I knew that in my mom's complex we wouldn't have that issue. He did really well at her place. She has hardwood floors, so that was a little challenging to him especially on the stairs up to our room, but he got the hang of it...he just needs to slow down a bit, but maybe he'll learn. Admittedly, I didn't sleep well on Friday night as Leo wouldn't really settle and I thought he needed to go outside more than usual...which meant I had to get up, put his collar and leash on, and take him outside (I'm used to just opening the back door and waiting for him to come back in). 

Saturday morning we all got up, my brother-in-law and nephew came over to dig some stuff out of my mom's patio space and later my sister and niece came over and the six of us went through some of dad's stuff that has been in the garage since we cleared out his shop from the old house. Leo spent the morning out in the yard with us, tethered to a table leg, but happy that he could be in the sun and watch all his people at one time. After lunch, my sister and her family left and mom and I headed up to her "wet" studio where we played with some fabric painting techniques, of which I will have examples to show at the end of the month. 

Sunday morning mom and I got up way before dawn so that we could meet our bus and head down to Houston. We left the house a little before 5 am, after a not so steady night because to be honest, we weren't certain which clocks were automatically falling forward and which weren't and for some reason both of our iPhones were acting weird saying they were on Eastern time zone....but it all worked out in the end and we made it with time to spare (and time to nap on the bus). My sister, Marti, came over around 8 am and rescued poor Leo from his crate and took him to spend the day at her house....as far as I know he was a perfect gentleman and only minimally traumatized their dog, Sadie. 

Mom and I made it through the show and most of the market at lightning speed and saw everything....I think. It was a great day...oh, and on the way home, we stopped at a place called Woody's Bar-B-Que where we had smoked, bacon wrapped quail breasts....YUM! 

We retuned home about 10 pm, about an hour after Marti brought Leo back and returned him to his crate but needless to say, he was thrilled to have us back home (yeah, he is very much a momma's boy). 

Here are a couple of pictures of quilts from the show....I have to say I was so amazed at some of the work that I saw there, these artists amaze me! Sadly, I didn't think to get the names of the quilts nor the artists and that is bad on me. 

This is the only one that I know the artist because she belongs to the Art Quilts Around the World group. This one is by Shruti Dandekar and it is titled "The White Rainbow". She has quilted the Braille spelling of the colors of the rainbow.

She then included the color in the actual color of the thread used in some of the quilting. 

Well done, Shruti...this is great!

And here are a few more that just gobsmacked me...

Of course this one makes me want to do a portrait of my own little beastie...

Mom Trip Days 6 - 10

Wow, how time flew. 

We spent the week at Turtle Art Camp, as mentioned previously. We learned how to use an air pen to write on fabric as well as how to airbrush on fabric, which was a lot of fun. 

Each morning I would egg up and walk with Suzie, our host/instructor, and her golden doodle, Libby. We would get back to the house and get ready to start the day. We would spend the next 3 hours in the studio, break for lunch, and then get back to work for 3 to 4 hours in the afternoon. We would then go out some place for dinner. 

On Tuesday evening, we went to Wooster College where we attended a lecture by Amy Tan, the author. It was a great talk. Amy Tan was very interesting and now I want to go back and re-read her books. 

In general, the whole week was wonderful and I was very worn out by the end. Here are some pictures of our projects at the point that cap'n was completed. 

This is my "Family" quilt that us still in progress. 

This is a picture of my mom learning how to use the airbrush. We started out learning on paper towels but quickly jumped to fabric. 

We decided to do a collaboration quilt with each of us (mom, me, our classmate, and our instructor) taking a quadrant but also adding to one another's work as we changed paint colors. Here is a shot of the final product: 

We then cut thus up into fourths so we would all have a part of our work to take home with us. Here is a shot of our work from the week. 

It was a great week and I have a lot of ideas that I am taking away from the camp. 

Monochromatic - A Study in Red

The latest challenge from Art Quilts Around the World was titled "Monochromatic". 

I had so many thoughts that I wanted to do, but they were all in blacks and grays and I really felt that I needed to do something with color. My normal go to color is blue or blues and greens or purple...all nice cool colors. 

So then I had to start thinking about what I wanted to depict. About this time my mom gave me a book about different art quilt techniques and different ideas for fabric manipulation. As I looked through this book I came across the instructions for weaving and I knew that is what I wanted to do, which just left my color choice. 

I knew that I had a little bit of red mottled yarn left from scarf I knitted last winter and knew that is what I wanted to be my base....so now I needed to figure out the weft (or the warp, I can't remember which is which and in my world that is okay). I ended up going to Etsy and purchasing a bunch of recycled sari silk ribbons. Once those arrived it was a matter of just doing it. 

In the end, I decided to leave the extra ribbon hanging and just did a satin stitch around the edges with the same variegated red thread that I quilted with. Here is the finished product: 

Here is a close up of the quilting. I started with the Sanskrit "Om" and then shadow quilted around. 

And, just to give you an idea of what I started with, here is a shot of my "loom" with the first couple of rows of woven ribbon. 

Now, on to the next challenge... 

Mom Trip Days 4 and 5

We have been in "the studio" for two days now and have really been able to unleash the creativity and are learning a lot. It is all really great fun to learn a new way to express yourself using paint on fabric. It is also incredibly tiring. I can't express how tired I am by the end of the day, but I do want to try and get this down before I slip off to Never Never Land...

We start each day with what the instructor, Susan Shie, calls "Library Time". This is a time where we take 10 minutes and just draw or journal without talking just to clear our minds. Actually, let me back up a bit... Susan is an artist that does almost folk art pieces and they are all covered in writing and tells a story and journaling her life and/or what is happening in the world at the time that she is working on a particular piece. But, to unleash the creativity in us we all have to start off drawing as if we were 6 year olds without stopping and thinking whether it is realistic or what anybody eels thinks about it and just let the juices flow. 

So, we draw or journal for 10 minutes during Library Time. Then we decide what the theme for the day is going to be. Yesterday, we made a list of things from which to draw inspiration from and then we go from there. Yesterday, our theme was "Time". That is pretty broad and left everybody open to do whatever they felt like doing. I got to thinking about the passage of time and settled on the Riddle of the Sphinx. Here is my outline drawing that I started with before I started adding color: 

And here it is with color added:

Here is a picture of our instructor and my mom's piece on the table on the lower right:

Today's theme that we were to work on was "Family". This is what I drew thus far:

I've just started adding color to it and will work more on it tomorrow, along with our next theme. 

On top of the class during the day today, this evening we went and saw a lecture from Amy Tan, author of "The Joy Luck Club" among many other books. It was in interesting talk about the "Heart of a Writer". She talked about her family and where her writing comes from within her. All really neat stuff to hear. Now, however, if am struggling to keep my eyes open, so will wrap up for now. 

Mom Trip - Day 2 (The Setting of Rules)

Day 2 and the subject and I are still getting along. We awoke to a lovely day in Little Rock at our pleasant Holiday Inn Express. As per custom, we partook of the free breakfast including having a cinnamon roll, which I really want to know if I can order those from somewhere and just keep them in the freezer to heat up when I'm feeling the need for a pick-me-up of flaky crust and cinnamon surgar. 

We got away only slightly later than we had planned. I started as the driver and got us as far as Memphis. We pulled over and checked out the tourist and welcome center where there is a statue of Elvis and B.B. King. They also had karaoke with a live band going on across the river at Mud Island that we could hear. We walked along the shore of the Mississippi River for a few minutes and remembered the times that we had when we lived just south across the line in Mississippi. We also texted a picture to my sister and asked her to guess where we were...this later became a theme for the day. 

Eventually, we got back in the car and continued east. Mom was behind the wheel at this point and remained the driver for the rest of the day. I was comfortable relinquishing the reins, so to speak. We drove on for another hour until I saw a sign for the Casey Jones Railroad Museum and tourist center and insisted we pull off, not because I wanted to go check out the museum, but I figured they would have a decent bathroom and, well, I really needed to use the facilities. We ended up going through the museum because it was free and sort of interesting. The museum is all about Casey Jones, conductor of legend who saved a train full of passengers from certain death in a train crash in 1900. I'm still not 100% certain about the whole story! but there is a song out there about it and he has a museum, so must be important. We did send another picture to my sister from this locale but she was flummoxed as to where we were and to be honest she was a little more concerned with watching college football, specifically the TCU Horned Frogs. 

Mom and I considered having some lunch at the restaurant there at the museum, however, upon seeing the food (sorta cafeteria/buffet style) I knew that it wasn't anything that I could stomach. They were serving good ol' home style Southern cooking (e.g., collard greens, black-eyed peas, hominy, fat back, pickled pigs feet...okay maybe that us going a little far, but you get the idea) and that is just not something my palette has ever appreciated. So, we opted for a scoop of ice cream and headed on our way. 

The next stop we made was at a rest stop just West of Nashville because for some reason today my bladder was on full output. And we got so tickled that mom almost killed us...okay, not really but we were laughing pretty hard at something that I'm pretty certain nobody else would find it quite as hilarious....building those memories. 

It was about this time that I'm looking at the atlas, because that is what the navigator is supposed to do, and I'm trying to find something. Mom looks over at the map as if she is trying to read it while driving. I calmly close the atlas and state "Here's the thing, we have to have a rule that the person in the driver's seat is not allowed to read the map as their job is to actually drive." This became the most recent thing thst got us laughing and now whenever we need to set a rule, we have to start with "Here's the thing... There will be no yelling at one another in the car" or "Here's the thing... If you need to go to the bathroom, state it calmly and with enough advance notice so that the driver can safely navigate off the highway to a clean, well lit location".

We got stopped in bumper to bumper stop and go traffic just north of Nashville and managed to go all of 1.8 miles in about 30 minutes. Luckily, mom was driving and she managed the situation with a much calmer attitude than I ever would have had. And once the traffic cleared it was clear sailing, so to speak, into Kentucky, where we pulled into the state information area to 1. Use the facilities, again and 2. Take another "guess where we are picture" to send to my sister. 

Shortly there after we arrived in Bowling Green where we checked into our hotel and walked across the street to a less than stellar dinner at another chain restaurant. I wrapped up the day by walking the halls to get my 10,000 steps in for the day and learning that my Aggies managed to come out ahead of the Razorbacks and the Horned Frogs whomped up hard on the SMU Mustangs. 

Tomorrow we have another semi long day of driving ahead where we finally arrive at the location for our quilting workshop. 

Mom Trip 2014 - Day 1

Today is day one of my adventure with my mom. We are on a drive across the country to a quilt camp and then off to explore Niagara Falls and then upper Michigan. 

We left almost on time. I hadn't finished packing, so I needed to get that wrapped up and I have to convince Leo that I would back and to be a good boy. I'm pretty certain that he knew something was up as he was a little reluctant to go outside to go potty, although he eventually did and I felt okay leaving him alone (I have a house sitter/dog walker staying with him so that his schedule won't be too out of sorts).

Anyway, mom and I got on the road and headed for Little Rock, AR. We stopped a couple hours out to have a quick bite at a rest stop (some cheese and crackers and fruit) and to stretch our legs. We then got back in the car and mom took over the driving for awhile. Yes, I actually let somebody else drive my new baby and I'm pleased to say that she did a fine job and I will allow her drive some more on this trip. 

As we crossed into Arkansas, I noticed a sign for the William Clinton Presidential Library so we decided that we would stop there before heading to the hotel, because we really didn't have anything else to do and we were making really good time. And surprise, surprise...there was a Chuhuly exhibit at the library, which was great to see. 

We then headed to the hotel and a quick dinner at a chain steakhouse. Nothing fancy for us...yet. 

So, after day one, we have both survived. 

The Three Rs Quilts

I have been participating in the Art Quilts Around the World, quilt challenge for a while now. The latest was "The Three Rs...Reduce, Reuse, Recycle" and the only rules (aside from staying within the size range) was that we were not to purchase anything new for the creation of these quilts. I immediately knew what I was going to use for my quilt....I have been doing a lot of fusible web stuff lately and really enjoy it and always end up with bits and pieces of fused fabric left over that I have just been tossing into a box. I decided that I would pull all of that out and and figure out a use for it. I then came across a picture in a recycling ad of a swirly tree with its limbs all ending in what can be recycled and the importance, blah blah. Well, I decided that I wanted to make a tree. This is what I ended up with: 

As I was working on it, it felt a little Dr. Seussian to me...but I loved it.

Then, sadly, I quilted it....

This is with the quilting and the binding. I am very disappointed in both of those.  I wanted to do a bunch of free motion quilting, but need to practice a lot more on that. Ah well, I learn with each challenge. 

This is the backing. I used a wallhanging that I made for my friend Sara's nursery...or rather, I used the first attempt at the wall hanging. I wasn't happy with the placement on the fabric after I had fused it all down and decided to make a second version....which is what she received. However, since this was the reduce, reuse, and recycle challenge, I figured I would go ahead and use it. The binding is also a bit that I had left over from some other quilt and you will notice that the bobbin thread on the backside is all different shades, that is because I used up a whole bunch of bobbins that were partially filled with different colors (nice thing about that is now I have a bunch of empty bobbins that I can prefill in preparation for my next big quilt rather than just having a single or couple of bobbins that I have to repeatedly stop and refill. 

As I look at this more, I may take the binding off and redo it...if I get done with the next challenge early...

This was a great challenge for me and I really enjoyed it. I've always wanted to attempt doing a "snippet" picture and this was my first foray into that but it won't be my last....I'm thinking about just covering a whole bunch of fabric with fusible and then see what moves me... 

Quilts for Wee Watson

So a couple of weeks ago my friend Sara was given a baby shower (Waiting to Meet Avery Hope: Baby Shower). Me being me decided that I wasn't going to go off of the baby registry, but instead, I decided to make a quilt....A quilt... yeah that didn't happen.

We all knew back in March what we were having (and yeah, I'm using "we"). I happened to be at the Dallas Quilt Show when I saw a pattern for a wall hanging called "Faith, Hope, and Love" and knew that I wanted to make that for Sara and the nursery, since she was having a girl and it would be fitting for a girl's room. While also at the quilt show, I came across a booth that was out of Bryan, TX and specializes in Texas A&M fabric and patterns and saw the cutest baby quilt pattern that I had to pick up.

The thing is....I had already found a really cute quilt pattern and fabric for a baby quilt that was all about puppies, and I know that both Sara and Randall are dog people as they have 3 crazy critters already. And then I found out that she was doing the nursery in pink and grey, and well.... the black and red doggie quilt nor the maroon and white A&M quilt would really work there. So..... Yep, you guessed it, there were 3 quilts wrapped and a triptyche of angels for the wall:

Faith

Hope

Love

A&M Quilt

Puppy Quilt with Razorback backing fabric

For the Nursery

And because I am notorious about talking about my mistakes... The Faith and Love quilts were made twice as I didn't like the original placement of them. I then trimmed all three wrong so that I had to do a little adjusting there and lastly, after it had quilted all three of them and taken them over to my mom's so that she could put on the binding(and actually finish them off nicely, I realized that there was a black thread showing on Faith, so I had to take out a small chunk of the quilting, dig out the thread and then quilt that section again. Needless to say, there was much cursing to be had while making these small quilts.

(Thank you, Sara, for getting pictures of these and letting me 'borrow' them from your blog.)

Couple of Baby Quilts

While I have not been doing nearly as much quilting as I would like to, I have managed to complete a couple of baby quilts:

This is a different take on the "eduquilt" that I like to make, which has lots of pictures to help teach the baby. This one only has a handful of pictures...yeah, I was feeling a little lazy. It is also smaller than the normal ones that I make.

This is one that I made specifically for the parents as they said they were doing the baby's room in gray and navy. I couldn't bring myself to do navy fabrics, but the gray seemed to work nicely. It is backed in flannel, which will hopefully be soft against baby's skin. This was also a pretty quick pattern to do, and may become a 'go to' for quilts in the future...especially if I ever get around to actually making some inventory and setting up shop on Etsy....

Road Less Traveled



This month for Art Quilts Around the World (AQAW), we were challenged with coming up with a quilt that represented "The Road Less Traveled". Here is what I came up with:

When we were first given the challenge topic, I immediately knew that I wanted to do a Mariner's Compass and I was originally going to add some song lyrics that reflect traveling on a road (e.g., Long and Winding Road, On the Road Again, Highway to Hell, etc.). However, I attended a retreat at my church to kickoff a nine month small group that I am facilitating that discusses our spiritual journey. As part of that, we discussed a Rumi poem:

Come, come, whoever you are
Wanderer, worshipper, lover of leaving
It does not matter
Ours is not a caravan of despair
Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times
Come, yet again, come. 

After reading and discussing this poem, I decided that I wanted to include those words on my quilt.

I really enjoyed this topic. I knew exactly what I wanted to do and for the most part, I think I achieved it. It is far from perfect, but I'm happy with the outcome. I was challenged to find a simple Mariner's Compass that would fit on the size that we work with, and as you can see, I didn't quite make it, however, I'm okay with that as I like the look of how two of the points are chopped off allowing for the idea that it goes beyond the page (I tried to back the compass and thought of having two points extend beyond the actual quilt, but it didn't turn out the way that I imagined, and I ended up removing the backing and going with this). I also hadn't intended to go with a black and white and sepia quilt, but when I started pulling fabrics, this is just what I saw...sort of like an ancient map. Getting the actual compass onto the backing...well that was a challenge. I ended up using my go to material (Wonder Under), but it wasn't as neat as I wanted it to be especially when working with all the added seams on the back of the compass. I'm also not overly thrilled with my wording on the quilt. I used the alphabet that comes with my machine and while I really like the idea, the execution isn't to my liking....for one thing, I didn't put in lines first on which to follow and therefore the text isn't spaced well and it went all wonky. Lastly, I don't like to bind quilts, primarily because I'm lazy and which is why I have a number of quilts sitting in my studio sitting there finished except for the binding. But, I really don't like binding quilts this size because I worry that it can overwhelm the quilt, however, for some reason I felt strongly that this one required a binding, a stopping point, and I'm happy with the final look.

All in all, I'm very happy with how this one turned out. I learned quite a bit about myself in working with this one, so yay me!! 

Really?!?

Has it really been two weeks since I last blogged?!? Wow, time sorta slipped away from me and sadly, I'm not expecting it to get much better in the coming months, so just bare with me.

Work has been crazy busy with my project finally taking off in full force. My deadline hasn't changed any, just the start date got pushed and pushed and pushed, so now we are having to make up a lot of lost time. I'm spending a ton of time staring at the computer building workflows in the system, so when I get a break about the last thing I want to do is write...that's the excuse I'm sticking with.

However, I guess I should give a little insight into what has been going on.

Leo - He managed to pick up a new cough while at daycare a couple of weeks ago and while he was on antibiotics, which concerns the vet that he has become resistant to the antibiotics. With this in mind, we are going in to see a diagnostic veterinarian on Monday to have some more extensive tests performed and hopefully get a plan of long-term treatment in place for him. However, because of this new development, I will not be purchasing a new car as of yet since my down-payment dollars are now going to tracheal washes and lung scopes.

Quilting - I managed to finish up a baby quilt for a friend of mine at work, which I will take into him next week. I have plans for my next small art quilt, which according to my challenge is due at the end of this month....and all I have are plans for it. Luckily, it is a small quilt and I think I should be able to whip that out over the next couple of weekends.

Other - I have signed up to facilitate a bi-weekly study group at my church, which I'm looking forward to. I went through the same group last year and found it to be very interesting and insightful, which is why I am participating again this year. There is a lot of reading involved, but I figure since I've done it before, it will be more of a refresher for me. Luckily, I'm not actually teaching the class, but basically just guiding the participants through the discussions.

So, like I said, some areas in my world are going a little crazy, others are quiet, but sitting and writing isn't really top on my list...even if I did give myself a challenge to follow. I'll try and keep things updated, when I can....it would be really great if I could figure out how to just think my blog posts and then they would magically appear and not actually require me to sit and put fingers to keyboard....

Art Quilt Challenge - Opposites Attract

I was a little challenged with this theme as I wasn't really certain what I wanted to do. As I look through the pictures that I downloaded to use as inspiration, I see a lot of Yin/Yang in various colors. I have black and white hands holding. I have images of good and evil struggling. My first plan was to do a fire and ice Yin/Yang.

However, one evening I was standing outside with the dog as he did his final checking of the house and yard for bedtime. While he is performing his duties, I try to find the moon and acknowledge its beauty in the sky. This evening, the moon was just a tiny sliver and I stood there and watched it. It suddenly dawned on me that the moon would not be visible if it were not for the sun as the light of the moon is just the reflection from the sun and the reason it was a sliver on this evening was because the Earth was casting her shadow. And that is when I decided that I wanted to show these two bodies.

Here is my Opposites Attract quilt:

I wanted something that would express both the warmth and glow of the sun as well as the dark of the night...but that is a lot to try and express in a small quilt. I used the remains of some strip sets that I put together for a previous quilt for the warm tones and added some blues. I then attempted to do a bargello for the background. The part that I am happiest with is my actual quilting. I'm not a very good machine quilter, yet. I have a tendency to get really nervous when I'm quilting and get stuck not knowing what I want to do or where to go next. Therefore, with this quilt, I drew my pattern out on paper and pinned it to the quilt and then just traced the pattern with the needle. It still isn't perfect, but I'm happy with it.

Acrylic Ink Adventure

This past weekend I went on an adventure. My mom and I had planned to do an art quilt weekend with Judy Coates Perez for about 6 months. We made all the plans, mom bought all the materials and did lots of planning and communicating with the instructor. On Friday morning, I rolled out of bed, packed up the car and dog and as I was pulling out of the driveway to take Leo to his spaw weekend, Mom called and told me that due to unforeseen circumstances she was not going to be able to make it after all, but my sister had been roped in to take the Acrylic Ink Adventure with me.

I went by my folks' house to pick up all the supplies that mom had packed for us then met up with my sister and headed out to La Grange, TX (known for being the home of the Chicken Ranch from Best Little Whorehouse). The drive down was fantastic. It was about 4 hours of laughing and catching up (Marti and I haven't had any one-on-one time since she came out to visit me in California). We got to the hotel and checked in...and eventually got into the room. We took a short little rest and then headed out to the "Great Expectations Creativity Center", the location of where the workshop was being held. Marti and I had lots of fun coming up with Dickens references as we headed over. Sadly, we got slightly lost. Here are the directions that were provided:

General Directions to Windy Hill Lane: If you came from Highway 71 (which we were), once you are on 159/237, go about 5 miles. You'll see a few green street signs on your right; you'll pass the Jersey Barn and your left, a working oil pump-jack, then two red barns. Windy Hill is just past the second red barn. Turn left. If you reach a little white restaurant (Fishes and Loaves) on your left, you have gone too far.

We found 159/237 and started clocking the 5 miles...with Marti speeding along. We pass one sign that read Dairy Tours, Milk a Cow. I commenting "ooo, better than a wine tour". We then see some signs and one that I thought may have said "Windy Hill" but we kept going. We passed a white building that I thought was a restaurant, but it didn't look open, so we just kept on rolling along. I did ask Marti how far we'd gone and if she could slow down. Her response was "we've only gone a couple of miles, we haven't gone 5 yet". We then didn't see anything...at all...except fields...and no place to turn around. We eventually DID get turned back around because it was agreed by all parties that we had some how missed the turn. (As an FYI, when we left we clocked the distance and it turned out to be around two miles.)

We eventually did make it to Great Expectations, got checked in and set up. We threw the coordinator of the event when we told him that Marti was not Jay, even though she was forced to wear a name tag that had the wrong name all weekend (we did mark through and change the name or just put "NOT" Jay, but still). The class got started and Marti and I dove right into doing something that neither of us had any idea what it was all about. We ended up dying and painting on fabric using Acrylic inks and learned all sorts of new techniques with intentions of coming home and having a "girls' weekend" at Casa ABBA where Marti and I can fill Mom's head with all of our new found knowledge.

Here are pictures of our final "exams" where we used some of the various techniques that we learned. Now there is still work that we will both probably still do on these, but here they are as we left La Grange:

Andrea's Flower Garden

Marti's Texas Boot

 

Quilts Challenge - Carnival

So, I finished the second challenge from Art Quilts Around the World. This time the challenge word was "Carnival". When I first thought about 'carnival', I thought of Carnival in Rio or Venice or even Mardi Gras. I had my first thought for a design and then decided that I needed to do a little more thinking. So, I did an image search for Carnival and found a number of different pictures of masks and parades that I thought I would try and use. Here are some of the examples:

I then started thinking about other types of carnivals and came onto traveling carnivals, carnies, and carnival games:

So, carnival games led me to think about the movie Big and the traveling carnival that the family went to at the beginning of the movie and thought that I would do a Zoltar quilt...but then thought about other freaks and geeks associated with carnivals:

But, then I ended up just going back to my original thought... A wilted feather in a puddle of oil at the end of the carnival parade....


Full Quilt with Mardi Gras bead sewn into the border.



Close up of the feather and the quilting

What I learned from this challenge is that I really want to work more on my quilting. I've done long arm quilting in the past on much larger pieces and that was so much easier than working on a smaller piece and controlling it all. The other thing I have learned is that I'm not a big fan of doing hand work. I had to hand sew the beads around the edge and I do not have the hand-eye coordination to thread a needle.