Hello Friends,

Happy Valentines Day to you.   I  hope the day brings you joy.   In elementary school the day was always full of tension.   I always love the decorating the shoe box with red and white.  I liked punching out the cards and- my favorite part of inserting the heart shaped suckers, but I  did not enjoy  the actual party at school because it always seemed to bring disappointment of a sorts-  Anti climatic I guess.   Now days I indulge myself and make cards to send to my girl friends and I am getting to do the part I always liked the most any way.    I made about 30 of these hand drawn and painted hearts in various colors from orange to turquoise.   This is  the only one I did not mail.   I enjoyed the process the part that is most important to me anyway.

This week has been full and enjoyable.   I went off last Friday to play in the Turquoise Street Studio again.  Beth played with pastels and paint in this work.  She also flattered me a bit by using the graffiti stencil of her name at the bottom.    Barb played with paint and is working away on her project  the recycle show in two mouths.  I continues to work with paint on fabric.  This shot shows my Pomegranate  stencil work.  I still do not have a clue as to how or what this will become- but I like to have lots of raw material about so when an idea strike I am ready.   I think this play day has become a weekly event for a while as I am already set to go again tomorrow.    It is good to work with folks around you even if we are not all working on the same thing. Barbara and I went to Rome along with another artist friend on Monday with work for the figures show.   She did really well in that show last year and I did too.  It is important to have your work out in the world  I think.

Progress Report-  Stamping Out
This quilt is complete now.  I had fun with the quilting as I tried to keep the stitch pattern in irregular square like shapes like the actual area around the stamps.  The cream silk is a bit  wavy and I think the next time I use silk I will back it to avoid this problem.

 

Blue Fuse          I am glad to have this little bit of hand work to play with  as I just got a new book-” Free-Form Embroidery ”    by Judith Baker Montano.   Her work is directed toward landscape.  I just love how she uses the stitches and I am playing with learning them on this piece.  The chance bits of colored fuse makes the process less intimidating too. I know a few but even the simple blanket stitch can be treated with irregularity according to Ms Montano and  I am loving it.

 

  Evening   Trees   This is the DMC Challenge project so far.   This is only a working title as calling it DMC sounds silly even to me.  I am still struggling with the slender inserts.  I like the process and feel I will get the hang of it the more I do it.  I am not happy with this composition so you can be sure that will change before it is done.

   Summer Festival     This is my newest play quilt.  It all started with the big print  fabric.  I have carried it around for about a year.    I needed a shot of sun shine during those snowy gray dark  days last week.    This fabric did the job- I find it so light and cheerful.    I still have quite a large chunk of the print so I think there will be a couple of more quilts that start with the fabric too.

Keep Creating

Hugs

Carol