Hello,

This week has been a week with several little victories.  The first was last Thursday evening when I went to the Prevention Network banquet.    Just by chance I sat next to Carolyn and she wanted the quilt I had donated to the cause.  As this picture suggests she was successful in her pursuit of that goal.  I was as delighted with her achievement of that goal as she was and the Network got the benefit  too.       Friday was the Towpath Quilt show and I attended that event.   This is Victoria’s finished work.  I have watched her struggle with this piece and I think her solution is great.

Another   event in my week was a trip to the SAQA meeting on Saturday.  The group was small but full of  exciting ideas.  My friend Chris showed two of her framed works.  It made me think again about working in that direction.

On Monday I went to visit with another quilting buddy Regina.  We had not seen each other sense fall so she had lots of new works.  I really like this one were she used discharged paste and then embellished it with lock washers.  She had also completed four works from the

Carol Soderlands class in Soy Wax printing that the both of us were in at QBL II.    This shot is of the wonderful potato smasher that she brought to class and we all used to print with wax.    This shot is a work in  progress but she also had four  she had completed.   They were wonderful insect type pieces that I truly enjoyed.      Then because I just can’t seem to get enough play time with other creative soles, I went to play with Cheri yesterday.  We had fun painting   on Tyveck.  I now have a new pile of  altered material to add to my stash.  I will do the melting of some of the surfaces tomorrow.  Ans as Cheri suggested one does not need to melt all the Tyvec to use it.

The Big success  of this week was saving the Baby quilt I had ruined.  At the  Towpath show I talked with Angela about the problem of my marker marks.   I told her of the methods I had tried and she listened very sympathetically.  Her suggestion was I try Oxi Clean.   I stopped on the way home and got some at the grocery store.   It did not take all of the marks out on the first run( the fifth wash) but it did diminish them.  I air dried it and Sue Ellen looked at it on Sat before we went to the SAQA meeting.  She said they barely showed and suggested I repeat the process again.  So I did.   To my delight when I went down and took the work off the line yesterday it was clean.   I only took six washes to do the trick.  I will give the quilt to the expectant mother and tell her that I know it will withstand lots of washing.   I am so very thankful for my encouraging friends.   They pushed me forward on this project until it was a Success.

Progress Report:  Running Red   I am delighted with how this quilt finally came out.    The curving quilting did prove to be a big challenge for me, but I think it works in the end.    I used a variegated thread and that proved to be a good idea as well because some times it faded into the background and other times it stood out.  

I used  silk from an Obi, taffeta,  and old table cloth I had done deconstructed screen printing on and cotton in this work.    The quilting pattern of the swirls came from the Obi.  

  Make Visible   I had so much success with the circular quilt pattern in  Running Red that I tried a  variation on that idea with this quilt.  I am going to write the words in the quilting pattern on the surface.   This shot is of the letter patterns I will be following.

Flags: Stretch  DailyI am working away on the flag challenge too.   What a great place to try new things and explore.  This time I did a little trumpto on the dark green figures.  I added green plastic to  give more interest and I cut new bigger stencils that I then spray painted on the work.  Lastly, I added the letters.  They are cut from a photograph and stitched down.      My talk with Susan made me feel that adding paper to the work was okay.

Flags: Dive In  With this flag I took the paper idea even further.  The week before I had been dyeing with Ethel and I put paper under the work so the wax would be absorbed and I left it under when I dyed too.  So I had several pieces of beautiful papers on the desk when I was playing with this project.  I traced the painted sections of the flag on the papers and cut them out.  Then I stitched them down.  

Ribbon Work    This work is moving along- but I have hit a snag with the fact that I have used the whole spool of yellow ribbon now.     I need to live with it before I decide what will be my next move.

Label Block  The nightly work goes on with this project.

Keep Creating

Carol