Fiber Postcards

Today was a busy but fun day at my Fibervision meeting. We unveiled our Revisioned Challenge pieces. All were wonderful, some amazing. Mine isn't quite finished yet . . . so I'll post a photo when it is done. We prepared our boutique items and fiber pieces for the Elverhoj Museum. Here are 4 of the 28 postcards I will have for sale.This one was made by discharging the fabric with bleach. Then red foil was added to the design.The background was sun-printed and stamped. Silk flowers and leaves were stitched on and a little foil was added to the flower center.This piece was transferred from a photo of a rock wall. The cracks are heavily stitched for a three dimensional effect.The background was sun-printed, then stitching and foil was added.

If you are planning a trip to central California (Solvang, Danish capital of America), stop in to see this exhibit. It is called "Color & Cloth Redefining a Traditional Art Form". It is going to be amazing, if I do say so myself. I have two pieces on exhibit. I think there are around 50 pieces. Our reception is on Friday, November 16 from 5 - 7 pm and we have a panel discussion with the artists on January 6th. Hope some of you can make it!

SB Artist Trading Card Group

Here's the link SB Newspress to the two page article about my ATC group. Can't wait to see how many people show up next month.
I'm hard at work on my regurgitation challenge piece for Fibervision that is due next Saturday. I'll post some photos as soon as I finish. I'm also working on a seminole exchange for my Blockheads group. So much to do, so little free time.

Fun at Pacific International

We had a great time at Pacific International Quit Show and San Francisco. There were some great quilts and vendors. I behaved very well the first two days, but something happened on the third day and I went into a spending frenzy. Here are some of my purchases:I'm always a sucker for anything with gold or silver metallic and I'm sure I was a crow in a previous life. The surprising purchase was all this hand-dyed fabric from Cherry Wood. It is so incredible in person, it looks like suede. I decided that I should have some solid type fabric in my stash and bought two packs, one is bright and one is light.We went to Britex in downtown San Francisco. For those of you that haven't been there, it's a 4 story fabric store that stocks just about anything you can imagine. If you are looking for something specific, this is the place to go. There was a large wall lined with buttons and rows and rows of ribbons and trim. I fell in love with organza ribbon and just had to have some.We spent the afternoon wandering through Chinatown. Of course we didn't make it out of there without spending some money. We purchased some pretty handbags, wine bags, pillow cases and jewelry. I took a lot of photos of the fantastic architecture. Here are a couple taken in Chinatown.

Fiber Tornado Destroys Studio

It really does look like a mini tornado swept through my studio. It always looks like this after a stretch of creativity. I get so wrapped up in what I'm doing and don't want to stop to clean up. It's at the point that I can't stand it any longer. My work space has been reduced to about 6 inches. Fortunately, the pile on my laptop wasn't too bad. I'm afraid I'm going to have to clean it up tonight. Does this happen in your studio too? I tried doing some machine embroidery yesterday but I kept bumping into things as I moved the piece around. The effect wasn't pretty!I went to my ATC meeting today. I got there a little late and missed out on some of the trading. These are the beautiful new additions to my collection. As a result of our "Swapped Not Traded" show we had 3 or 4 new artists stop by to see how the group works. It's pretty simple, bring original 2-1/2 x 3-1/2" cards to trade. That's it!

I'm going to PIQF for three days with Kathy and Ranell. I'm really excited, it's going to be a lot of fun. We're probably going to visit Britex Fabric and Chinatown in San Francisco. I'll probably take another 300 - 400 photos, so I'll have something to post when I return!

Yesterday was my 50th birthday. I'm not sure how that happened, it doesn't seem like that much time has gone by. Does anyone out there have the same birthday as me? I was born in San Francisco, so it's kind of cool going back there so close to my birthday. If I had to live in a large city, San Francisco would be high on my list.

It was a Very Colorful Day

Can you guess where I went today? There were many beautiful costumes, some had applique, some had beads and many had feathers.It was the 12th annual Chumash Inter-tribal Pow Wow at Live Oak Park. I've never been to one before and thought it would be fun to do something different and a wonderful opportunity for some photos. Wow, it was amazing!! The costumes far exceeded anything I expected and that is really unusual for me. Each tribe had their own drummers, song, dance and costume design. They had dance competitions for cash prizes. I took over 300 photos today, a new record.
They invited anyone that needed healing to join their healing circle, so I did. One woman went around the circle and smoked each of us with burning sage, another woman brushed us off with an eagle wing and a man sprinkled holy water on us.
I was taking his photo when he reached down and pulled out his cell phone. It was such an oxymoron that Kathy started cracking up, so I took this photo for her.