Hello Friends,
Here in central New York the wind is blowing up a storm as a cold front from the north hits a worm front form the south. Trees are bending and swaying and some tree limbs have blown down. The snow has been blown horizontally off and on this afternoon. I am glad to be inside working in my studio today!
The Opening was Sunday afternoon and it went well. I was delighted by the many friends that appeared from all parts of my life. My daughter and grandson appeared
early in the afternoon and my husband along with several of the folks that he works with near the end of the event. My friends from school, from Social Art and fellow quilters also showed up to support me and enjoy the wonderful banquet that the director provided. I was delighted to discover that I have now sold two of my works, the second being the Kachina Sun quilt that was on the post card.
It can be very affirming for an artist like my self to sell a work to a total stranger.
I think that Spider Woman’s Spires looks really strong on the brick wall background too.
The placement of Motherhood Maze so it is seen from the doorway as you enter the dinning area makes it one of the first works you see. I think I talked about it more as an individual piece then any of the others. I am still flying high from the experience.
Progress Report: Play Day
Barbara invited me to the Turquoise Studio to have a play day on Thur last week. We were working with gesso- stenciling and stamping with it .
I put on it on fabric and felt and Barbara mostly applied it to stretched canvas. After the gesso was dry in the afternoon we painted the surfaces. The gesso resisted the 
paint a bit and that changed the color as well as the texture. I was so excited by the results that I created a top with some of the altered fabric already.
I am calling this Eventide. I used all of one of the turquoise felt pieces in this as well as a second painted piece.
The white is the pure gesso. The turquoise felt has been painted with purple and blue acrylic paint.
Pepe’ I started this quilt before the show but did not get it finished. It too is a goddess quilt as Pepe’ is the Hawaiian goddess of the vocano. I have started 
the quilting with a copper metallic thread in a swirling pattern. But the thread kept breaking so I put the thread on the bobbin and I have been quilting from the back side. It is just a little scary to do it this way but the braking
is not happening now. The ghost like color changes shown here in this close up come from using painted fusible web that I painted orange and brown. I keep learning new tricks along the way and that is exciting for me.
Painted Fusible Web I went off to my friend Ethel and had a second play day this week. She and I painted the fusible web. I did blue, orange and yellow, black and a pink gold pieces. I do not know where I will use most of this but it did the trick for the Pepe piece. I sure had fun and one can never have too many tools in the creative tool box.
Soy Wax Resist This was another thing Ethel and I played with. We had both read about this technique in the February/March issue of Quilting Arts Magazine- issue 61. The article is by Susan Purney Mark. We followed the instructions and did the sewing step first . Then we painted with soy wax on the mountains and tried not to get the wax in the valleys were the tread was. The next step was to paint in the dye in thous valleys. It is batching now so the final images will not appear until next week. 
This second shot shows how the dye penetrates to through the batting to the back. The dye will all wash away as the batting is synthetic and the dye will not adhere. The same batting can be reused for a second try of this method. Ethel and I plan to do just that.
Tsunami Wash Up I have been hand stitching down mostly plastic objects like the ones I have seen in photos of the plastics that have been washing ashore on the west cost do to the Tsunami last year. We are really polluting our environment and events like this really play that up. 
We have too much plastic in our lives. It does not break down into reusable materials like natural objects. So were does it go? Sure it gets broken and ground into smaller and smaller bits. Sometimes birds and fish eat it. What are the effects on those creatures? Do we end up with it in ourselves when we eat sea food? How dangerous is that? What are the long term effects? I do not have any answers, just lots of questions.
Keep Creating
Carol
