Hello,

Leaves continue to be a big part of  my daily dose of nature.  But I want to talk about a Jewish Proverb I came across in my reading this week.        “The Quality of life is fuelled by our productive wealth.”   That idea has been on my mind while I have been walking for the last two days.  To begin with I really think that my life is a rich and wealthy one,  but I think even though I am productive that is not the only thing that adds meaning and value to my life.   Quality  is strongly related to context.   One can have “Quality Time” and for me that can mean just

time spent listening and interacting with a friend or child.  A big part of that quality comes with the  focus of that time- no distractions or concerns for other things.  When I was making the halloween costume for my grandson- (some video game character that I do not know anything about)- that” one on one time ” with him telling me exactly what he wanted and helping with the sewing machine work was real quality time.   I spent quality time talking with Nancy on Wed at the FAB meeting when there were only the two us and we got to telling stories about our youth to one another.  That shows a quality of trust too.  (She is making progress on her quilt and the sky with the clouds she made in silk paper on that sky is great.   ) Then there is also  quality friendships like the one I share with Nancy and a few others.   There is a degree of necessary quality in all our lives for things  like  shelter, food,  good quality air and water- without those assuredness none of the other quality things can come about.   We need those quality ingredients  to be  healthy and to fully appreciate the degrees of wealthy  excellence our lives hold.

Progress Report:Agate  I finished this work this week.   It has been created from a big piece of silk paper  that I made with Ethel a few weeks ago.  The most difficult part of this project was deciding what side of the  silk paper to use- they were both so lovely.   I had a good time attaching the silk paper to the quilt with  many hand stitches.    This project was created with silk hankies that were hand dyed before I put the paper together.  I might not have selected these colors to use together on my own, but I sure like them and  will try to add this type of mix to my own way of thinking.

Spill   This quilt is coming along nicely now.  I love all the textures on the surface of this work. This shot shows silk paper- two types the sheet form (on the far left) and the flow form(the green blue at the top) , the iron melted  mylar( the turquoise ) and iron melted plastic bag( the apple green).   The whole thing has been fun for me.

Watermarked Sandstone   I am still doing machine drawing on this work but I can see the end is in sight.    Again I am playing with texture- my favorite thing.   There are “nodes of iron ore” in the image and so I have created some solid rust colored circles to add to the surface of the piece.   Before I can stitch them down I need to add rust colored paint to the surface to show how the water wears away the iron too and in so doing it stains the surrounding stone.

Yellowstone Memory Map     I so enjoyed creating the Sandstone Church project that I thought I would do a second memory map type quilt from my childhood.  When I was seven, my Dad was a summer ranger in Yellowstone National Park at South Gate.  I have wonderful memories of that summer and want to try to  put them into this  new project.     This is layer one and it too is ready for a paint layer  to soften and unify some of these  parts.

I hope you too are enjoying the fall color and creating fun works.

Hugs

Carol