Hello-

We are now in the space between the gift rush and celebration of  Christmas and the celebrations of new beginnings that come with New Years day.  I happen to be in the middle of a big snow storm too and that does give one pause as travel is not really a good idea at this point.  I fortunately do not have to leave the house except to shovel the walk so the post man can get to the mail box.  I will venture out and walk up the street to check on the 95 year old- Fred, but mostly I am staying put.       This week is the time I try to evaluate and be realistic.  To finish up the started projects  and to discard the unsuccessful things, and be honest about what seems to slip to the bottom of consideration and toss out the things I really will never go back and finish.   If I do have anything in the way of resolutions there are two.  This one about being realistic and the second is to try the 30 day exercise that I have been hearing about.  That proposition is to take a small thing that you have wanted to do like become a better  drawer, learn to use  my Print Shop Pro program, or do more collage  journaling, and commit to yourself to doing that idea for 30 days.  Then you reevaluate.  You can then choose your next action on this idea.  This sounds very doable to me.  I will make my decision by next Tue.

Progress Report: Out  of the Dark

 This quilt is a new work for the goddess show that I will be doing in Jan.  I actually did the first piece of this in Aug with Susan.  That section is the middle sized goddess that I drew in pencil and we made a photo transfer onto fabric.  The other drawn images are done in permanent ink.

I did the ink drawings from the images in “The Language of the Goddess ” book by Marija Gimbutas.   I really enjoyed working on silk for this project.

Painted Sands   This is another of the wiggle series and I am enjoying the freedom

of this process.  The big painted units I did last summer.  There is also some text on thous areas from a stencil that I created.

The crisp gold line here is the stencil.  It is a part of my graffiti series were I was using my name as the element of the stenciling.

Tree Men

This is one of the old projects that I have pulled out to work on.   After trying out four different arrangement for the units I think this is the strongest one and now I need to decide what the next step will be.  It is hanging from the bookshelf in the direct sight line from my sewing machine.  I think this will help me look and think about the process more.  I do not hold any illusions though- it has been 5 years sense I started this so going forward may be slow.

 

 

Written Words  This quilt is again one where I am using the graffiti stencil.  It is

a bit easier to see as this time the letters are stenciled in a blue purple paint.  I quilted my name in free motion work in all directions to hold this quilt sandwich together. There are blue facings on the top and bottom  that I will pull to the back and stitch down to create a knife edge.

Jots and Joints   This is a new quilt top that I started this week as I wanted to use several of the painted fabrics I had created in my class this summer.  In class I   created the stencil- the line with a dot at both ends show here in dark green.   I am still playing with scraps from the silk scarp bag with this top. The light blue/white is  a course weave silk fabric.

 

I hope you are all enjoying the season.  I will post my 30 day effort  resolution along with my work next week.

 

Keep Crating

Carol