Hello ,

As this shot shows I have been out of doors.  I spend a day with my daughter and grandson at a local park called Beaver Lake.  We spend a few hours walking in the deep woods as well as along the lake.    We  not only spotted this leopard frog along the shore, but we saw a heron as well.  The woods  was full of many types of fungus  in color from whites, oranges , browns and even a dark blue colored one.  There was a wide range of shapes too- from the flat shelf fungus, branching coral like shapes, to the umbrella mushrooms.   It was fun to see who would spot the next one along the trail as we walked.   Nature always provides lots of variety.

The  big excursion for me this week was a drive to Athens Ohio to go to Quilt National.  I was on the road with Ethel last Thursday and because we started early( 6:00 am) and drove for 11 hours- we got to the show that evening.    It was wonderful to get a chance to see the work that eve.  And it was even better that we also got to have a second day to study the  quilts on Friday. The other big even for this last two weeks was the hanging of the ” Sticks and Stones” show at the Americana winery in Interlocken NY.   That job took Anne and myself two and a half hours.   I have eight works in that show including Wind Fall, Sunny Crannies  under the rim and Mummy Cave Ruins from several weeks ago.  The canyon and stone works I have been working on really look strong on the barn board walls of the winery.

Progress Report: Diamond Peak  This quilt was created after my float trip down the Grand Canyon with my Dad eight years ago.    I did ten quilts about that trip when I got home.  The experience was magical and I would do it again in a second.    For this show I pulled out the seven quilts that remain from that series  and reworked some of them.  I added about five or six  hours of additional machine quilting to the surface of the rocky areas of all of these  quilts.     I think that extra machine work helped.   When I first made them I was so excited about capturing   the images that I could not see that they needed more needle work.

 

 

Canyons Create Towers   This is a second one from  the Grand Canyon Series.   It is based on a photo that I took further up stream then Diamond Peak.   Part of the thrill of the trip was how fast the river ran down  some of the narrow cliff openings creating great water patters and falls .   I was also fascinated by how you could see the different layers of stone in the rock formations father down the river.    Here too I reworked the surface with lots of quilting.  I folded over the organza and stitched in lots of quilt lines to lead the eye back into the quilt surface on this work.  At the bottom of this shot you can see the florist plastic that I captured under the organza too.  It added a bit of sparkle  that was always present on the water.

 

 Sunny Canyon    I remember how beautifully the sun filled that canyon the day I took the photo that was the inspiration for this quilt.  Every thing sort of glowed.   This quilt not only got a lot of additional quilting it also go a major resizing. I removed a hole row of trees that were on an island that was in the for ground and about six inches off both sides before I was happy with this quilt.   I also remember how surprised I was when I started these quilts that I did not need to purchase much fabric to complete them.  I had been on the look out for “rock” materials for a long time it seemed.

Slot Canyon    One day on the Canyon trip we walked up a slot canyon.  The narrow walls were wonderfully textured by  rushing  waters.  I found all the line marks so fascinating that I had to make a quilt about that.   This quilt is a whole cloth piece with color added in pastel and pressed into the surface.  Then I did the machine work on top.

 

I hope summer is still bringing joy to your lives as it is to mine.

Keep Creating

Carol