Still Stitching and Embellishing

As you can see from the photo below, I'm still stitching and embellishing. This mat and metal trays help control my beads. If you spill a container of beads, you'll be picking them up for the next 2 years. Not much fun! Do you have specific tools that make your beading easier?

Here's the final square for the letter "O" challenge. I didn't finish in time for the Fibervision meeting, but I faked it pretty well. Each square was attached to the canvas with two applique pins. My first attempt with blue tape attached to the back didn't work because the squares were too heavy. Once I finish the embellishment on this square, I'll stitch them all to the canvas background.

Everyone loved my piece and thought it would make a great sample for teaching surface design. I tend to underestimate the amount of information I have and think that everyone knows what I know. My friends keep telling me that it's not true, I have a lot to share and should teach. Teaching is something I would like to do, but at this point in my life, I don't have enough hours in my day.

I love the texture in this sea foam along the beach. I use circular or pebble quilting quite often and find that the size variation of the bubbles is what makes it interesting. I recently saw a quilt where all of the bubbles were the same size and I didn't care for the way it looked. IMHO, Size does matter! LOL

Progress . . . Inside and Out

It was a good weekend . . . my "To Do" list is definitely a little shorter. The long days and warm temperatures really make the flowers bloom. Here are a couple of close ups of flowers in my garden.

Nothing like a beautiful Gerber Daisy. They are easy to grow and seem to live forever.

This is an Angel Trumpet Tree. Right now, it's around 5 feet tall, however, they can grow up to 15 feet tall.

Here's a couple of finished panels for my Fibervision challenge. Will it be finished by next weekend? I'm not sure. I still have to finish two panels and attach them all to the black canvas.

The fabric and embellishments in each panel is completely different, however, each has layers of paint, dye or marker. They have been rubbed, screened, scraped, sun-printed and bleached. There is quite a bit of hand stitching, lots of beads and some re-purposed items attached.

With any luck, I'll have a photo of the finished piece ready for the next post. Stay tuned!

Invitational Exhibit at AQS show

This is a giant display in the Ventura Museum window. I asked to have the poster after the show but was told that it's printed on film and probably wouldn't survive the process of removing it. Bummer.

AQS has invited "Becoming Art at the Seams" to travel to Knoxville, TN show for a special exhibit in July. How cool is that?

Do you remember all the planting I did this time last year? Here's the mature version of the same garden. Isn't it pretty?? Amazing what a year and 20 inches of rain can do!

I saw this "animated line" video on Cheryl's blog and thought you would also enjoy it.

It's Challenge Time!

My Fibervision challenge piece is due in a few weeks. Nothing like a deadline to get me moving! This year, I found the challenge to be, well, very challenging! I think there were too many rules and I had a hard time starting. You need to use a specific letter of the alphabet, mine is "O", it has to be mounted on a specific size canvas or stretcher bars and it needs to have some recycled element in it.

Here's a sneak peek of a couple of the elements. So far these two squares have gelatin printing, screen-printing, rubbing, stamping, painting and beading and I still have a ton of handwork to do. My recycled element will be one of my thread circles. I never know how a piece will turn out ahead of time. I start with a general idea and let it evolve. This one has evolved many times already!

I just added a new page called Art Gallery. I thought you enjoy seeing some of my finished work. I'll try to add more as time allows. I didn't realize you could add additional pages until I read a post at Through My Eyes. I also added a tab for Tutorials, but haven't had the time to post any. I'll let you know when it's ready.

We had a lovely picnic at Goleta Beach after work and then went for a walk on the pier. It was very peaceful and relaxing. It was just what I needed.

Venice Beach, California

I've never seen anyplace quite like Venice Beach. I've heard CA referred to as "The Land of Fruits and Nuts" and never quite understood it until this past weekend! What a colorful bunch of people! Here's a photo of Muscle Beach. Basically, it's an outdoor gym where muscle bound men show off.Look very close - see if you can find "Tree Man" hidden in among the palm tree. He's a walking, talking, 8 foot tree from the land of Lanoce (combination of Land and Ocean).

Here's a closer view of him. You should be able to see his mouth, chin and neck in this photo. If you really want to see more, look for him on Facebook!Many of the buildings have murals painted on them. This happens to be a knock-off of my favorite Vincent Van Gogh painting.Here's a detail of another mural full of alien creatures. I like the slogan on his T-shirt "You Can't Until You Say You Can". Very True.

This is nothing like Santa Barbara where graffiti has to be painted over within 24 hours or you get fined mega bucks. I guess every tourist area has a different audience. Venice Beach is a blast from the past! I'm glad I went, but I probably won't be going back any time soon.

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!

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!

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.

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.

The Hunt Continues . . .

I've looked at a lot of computers in the past couple of weeks - laptops, desktops, all in ones, both PC and Mac. It appears that I'm falling in love with a 20.5 all in one iMac (hope that is right). There are a couple of software issues holding me back . . . some of the programs won't work on a Mac, ad the other is the price of Creative Suite. I may get an emulator, so if you have any experience with an emulator, I would love to hear from you. It's difficult sharing a computer, having to use a card reader and an external hard drive all the time, but I'm getting by. My husband told the Mac salesperson that I was switching to the Dark Side, you can imagine how that went over!

My friend, Andi, spent a couple of days lecturing and teaching in Camarillo and Santa Barbara. She spent a couple of nights with us and we had a great time. Mike made a delicious beef sate for us, we drank some wine, and printed fabric the following day. Then 10 or so Fibervision members met for dinner at the Beachside Restaurant. It was a lot of fun and I should have sleep overs more often. Here is some of the fabric I printed and painted, some during her visit, some after she went home.

This was printed using a thermofax screen. After it dried, I painted it with Setacolor.
This base of this piece used deconstructed screenprinting methods with thickened dye. I really didn't like the white background and decided to jazz it up by painting the background with Setacolor. A huge improvement and now I love it.

This is screenprinted using a thermofax made of bubble wrap. I painted it with setacolor and let the sun do its magic.

This was an experiment. I machine basted lines of stitching, gathered them up and tied them off. I sprayed the fabric with water, drizzled Dye-na-flow all over and let it dry. And this is what it looks like once the stitches were removed and ironed. You can see the lines of stitches. It's interesting the way paint gathers in the hills and valleys.

HP Laptop DIED!

I'll start with an apology because I'm going to vent just a bit. My HP laptop died and I experienced the worse customer service ever. After 30 minutes of customer dissatisfaction on two different occasions with two different tech support reps in India, and numerous requests to speak to a supervisor . . . I give up!

My laptop experienced a major problem that HP knew about but failed to tell me. If HP knows of a problem, they post it on their website, but don't tell the customer. If you happen to find the problem while your laptop is still under warranty, they will replace the motherboard. If your warranty runs out before the issue arises, Tough Luck! The fact that they built a BAD product doesn't seem to faze them. Well, after thousands of dollars invested in the company, I'm done with HP for good. Let the buyer beware . . . they don't care about you at all.

Well, on to a more pleasant and colorful subject . . . this quilt top was just completed. I showed it on my design board a couple of posts ago. It has some hand painted fabric, sunprinted fabric, a thermofax screened print and some fabric that I ran through my inkjet printer. I think I'll make the quilting pretty simple because of all the seams.

You may recall this fabric that I screenprinted a while ago. I finally made into a tote bag that I use for grocery shopping. I didn't quite have enough, so I painted and stamped the yellow stripe to add in on each side. I love it - it makes me smile.

Aerial Photos of Salt Lake City

I'm really excited about the aerial photos I took over Salt Lake City. I've never flown over during the winter, so this was new to me.This is one of my favorites . . . such a great composition. This one reminds me of a circuit board.This one looks as if someone just applied the final brushstrokes.The combination of salt, mud, ice and snow made for some fantastic abstract compositions.

We had a great trip to Evanston, IL to visit our daughter for her final college swim meet. Hard to believe that after 14 years it's coming to an end. I know her body will be happy to have a break - 6 hours of swimming a day, 6 days a week is tough. I am constantly amazed at Rachel's focus and determination . . . it's something I could never do.

No trip to Evanston is complete without a visit to Dick Blick and Vogue Fabric. All I bought was a little Thai silk, bright yellow roving, versatex printing ink, extender, Golden open acrylic gloss, and Jacquard color remover.

Not too bad - my suitcase was only 48 pounds and I think my bright red pea coat accounted for 20 pounds. I was surprised how few colorful coats there were. It's so grey in the winter, people should wear more color. Just my opinion.