Dear Friends,

I feel very light hearted today because I spent most of my morning out doors.  I took a painting workshop this weekend along with all my pastel pals.  We were all looking to stretch a bit.  The workshop was taught by Patti Mollica and was called ” Painting- Fast and Loose.”   This fist shot is over Barbara’ shoulder of the first assignment. We were working on showing lights, mediums, and darks, in our work.   The teacher gave us all a few photos to work from.This second shot is of my pears.  The second painting we tried. I am not real happy with it, but I think I got the concept.  Then on the second day we did more painting and she was pushing the  fast and loose working part.  We did five paintings that day.  The first in the morning to worm up and then one forty five minute one.  Followed by a half hour one and last we did two fifteen min works.  That sure put us into the fast and loose part.   The pomegranate is my favorite.   The whole thing  was fun and got me going with the painting again.    Hence my happy feeling as I painted out doors this morning.  I raised the level of my plastic table by setting the legs on four up turned  flower pots so I could stand up and work.  I painted  fabric as starts for two more works based on the trip last June to Canyon De Chelly Nation Monument.      This first shot is of the White  House Ruin.  I have rough out the color bases and will add layers on top with pastels, crayons and fabric pieces.   I want to show the Desert Varnish on the walls of the canyon in this one.      The second one is also from a picture I took on that trip.   It is of the Mummy Cave Ruin.   This time I want to work on showing the depth of the rock  pocket of the canyon wall and how much color there was in the stone.    There is lots of work to do here, but I am excited about it.

Progress Report: Mapping the Ruins

The Canyon trip really was on my mind this week and this work also has the influence of that trip in it.   This piece has a traditional pieced  fabric  base in pinks and white.  I am sorry I did not take a photo of this step before I went forward.  Then I pinned tyvek that had been painted on both side with acrylic paint to the surface.  I quilted through all the layers in a pattern that I had made.  The pattern for the quilting  was based on a map of the ruins of one to the  pueblos in the cliff face of Canyon De Chelly.   I had drawn that map  last year in July for the class I took with Valerie Goodwin at Quilting By the Lake.     I did not use the map in the work because it made the work too busy for my final piece. ( Check last week for the shot of White Tower in the Kendall Show- it’s intended home)   This morning  I took the heat gun to the tyvek and melted away some of the surface.  I love the wholes in the surface that add to the idea of decay and deterioration.   My next step will be to add the  map that I have created on two layers of organza on top of the quilt. I will be trimming it down and stitching this map on top of the fabric and the tyvek  to add yet another layer of depth to the work.   That is the plan at this time any way.  

Greek Butterflies    This is a new top that grew our of some very old material.   I took a class six years ago were we learned how to transfer photographic images to fabric.   I fist mixed the side of a  shingled building ( the gray)with a wonderful butterfly image that I had taken when I went to Greece. I printed the image on fabric in class.  Then the  fabric just kept shuffling around from one pile to another.   Thinking on the painting class were our teacher Patti Mollica,  spent a whole day on Light-Medium-Dark, I though I would try to use that idea.   I  had a good time and found out what many quilters know about there stashes – we have lots of mediums and not many lights or darks.  Now I need to move forward on this piece- like how to quilt it…..