March 30, 2010

Front Page News

Susan told me that my photo was on the front page of the Ventura County Star, but I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw that a detail of my quilt, "Inside Out: Macrophage", IS the front page!
Wow, that's quite the portfolio piece. There is a very nice article inside, and more photos of the quilts. The reception was amazing, almost too well attended. It was so crowded, you could barely get near the art. I guess that's better than having nobody show up. I want to go back to the museum and look at all the art again, it seems I have a hard time focusing on opening night. I'll also be there for the lecture entitled "Maverick Quilts" with Julie Silber. It's a great show . . . I hope you get a chance to stop by to see it.
As promised, here's the newest addition to my garden art collection. Venus caught a Spark Plug bug! The whole thing uses recycled materials and it's nicely rusted. The fences were just replaced, now I need to measure, draw a site plan and figure out the hard scape. More dirty days to come. Unfortunately, I haven't had too much time to quilt!

March 26, 2010

Fun Friday

If you ever wondered what I look like, here I am at Ostrichland. Yep, that's right . . . Ostrichland. If you like being frightened by large animals, this is the place for you!
My daughter is home for spring break, so we decided to head north to play tourist! We stopped at Creation Station where Dawn and Patrick have created a fabulous fabric store and gift shop. Then we went on to this fun garden store. There are so many wonderful items to choose from.
We're about to start the remodeling the backyard and I'm collecting garden art. Today we bought a rusty Venus fly trap catching a bug that's made from a spark plug! I know it sounds a bit strange, what can I say. I'll take a photo for the next post, you'll love it too.
Guess where our final stop was? Can you tell what kind of bottles these are? They're all stored on their sides in a dark room that is temperature controlled.
Give up? We went to Gainey Vineyard for a tour of the facilities and then wine tasting. What a great way to start the weekend!
Tomorrow, I'm leading a Visual Texture workshop with my Fibervision group. Should be another fun day!

March 20, 2010

My New Best Friend

Here she is . . . the newest addition to my household! Isn't she pretty?? I'm so happy to have a working computer again. I'm switching from a PC to a Mac, so there is a bit of a learning curve, but I'm getting it.
Every time I cut thread tails off the end of a seam, I add it to this jar. My jar began to overflow, so I needed to find a way to recycle the thread.
This is what I came up with - thread circles.
I got a little carried away and made quite a few of them in various colors and sizes. This one already has a home in my newest piece.
Do you have a favorite recycling technique? If so, I would love to hear about it.

March 9, 2010

Museum of Ventura County Exhibit

Happy Dance time! I'm really excited to tell you about an exhibit that is opening this week at the Museum of Ventura County. Three of my pieces were juried into the show, along with fabulous work from 27 other fiber artists in LA, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties. A detail of one of my pieces was included in the brochure (see below).
The opening reception is Friday, March 12 from 6:00 - 8:00 pm at the museum. Check their website for more information. I hope you get a chance to stop by to see the show, it will be on display for 3 months.
And here's the page with my photo. It's such an honor to have your work featured in the promotional materials. They have some other fiber events planned besides the exhibit. I'm looking forward to the Maverick Quilts lecture.
Well, I'm the proud owner of a brand new iMac. I'm really happy with my decision, but I'm having my fair share of issues transferring files and favorite websites, but I'm getting closer every day. I lost quite a few emails when my computer crashed, so please forgive me if I never answered you. Many of my email addresses have disappeared, so drop me a note so I can add you back into my address book.
Once I get CS4 up and running I'll be able to process some photos and start blogging again.