Interview Posted

Karen has finally finished with me...I can get really verbose!

The interview with the Center for the Quilt is in their Save Our Stories section.

Amazement

I am so absolutely amazed about how things are going with my art.

Karen Musgrave is almost finished with her on-line interview of me for the Quilt Alliance SOS. Why they chose to do me is beyond my comprehension but I sure am having fun doing it. I have a captive audience and she just keeps saying nice things about whatever it is that I dribble on with. Since I read Virginia's I feel like I am suffering from terminal diarrhea of the mouth. This goes along with the surprise when someone (a guild) is willing to pay me big dollars to talk about myself for an hour! Can life get any better?!!

Well, yes it can!


When I got home from taking my dad out and about, my husband indicated that the Textile Center in Minneapolis had called to tell me than they wouldn' t be able to return my quilt, Cross Roads 8, the Passion, to me. It took a minute for it to sink in. They sold it!

So much happening

Life has been so much fun! I'm not sure it can get any better!

The Alameda County Arts Commission has made the decision to purchase four of my works. On Good Friday, I went to the opening reception of the textile show at the Olive Hyde Gallery in Fremont, CA and met one of the commissioners from the Art commission. She said all sorts of positive things about my work. The curator of the show at the Gallery had recognized me and told me that the commissioner had wanted to talk to me. Boy, am I doing the schmoozing now!

The next week got the notification that they are purchasing the art. Trying to borrow Summer Fun from them for Quilter's Newsletter won't work. QNM said they would take slides of my work for publication...not sure if, when or where.

California Fiber Artists have been really busy getting shows together. One suddenly came up at a winery in the foothill country so had to get a piece off for them. There there are two more coming up very quickly, one in Half Moon Bay, and the other in Petaluma.

Then, of course, we had Holy Week. I was only able to get to a couple of the services but finished up with our Easter Vigil on Saturday night. The story of creation is told during that service and my six creation banners are taken off the wall and used to illustrate the story.

And then, I have just been working away...and away, and away. Can hardly find my studio and I had done some clean up before hand so I could do some work. I have the big quilt finished fusing but have decided that I want to add another 10 inches to it so it goes in the large art quilt category at shows where there is less competition (oh, did I let that secret out?) Have been working on post cards, some for my Art2Mail group and some for Virginia's Fiber Arts for a Cause. Virginia has also posted the pieces with prices for the reverse auction, also a fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.

I have spent all day (except for a trip out to the gym) in my studio...doing art? No way...doing email stuff, paying art bills, getting things promised off to people, and doing an interview with Karen Musgrave for the SOS (Save our Stories) with the Quilt Alliance. It is really an interesting project.


But I thought I would share some of my photos of my studio with piles of semi-finished things. Did get a lot of small pieces on to stretched black cotton on stretcher bars, now need to do the screw eyes and wiring. Have one piece that I am putting on to an off white heavy weave linen and need to stretch it and do the screw eyes, etc. And then there is a pile of pieces that have been finished except for sleaves and labels (nothing has labels right now!) And then there is the pile on the ironing board.

I Can't Believe It's Been Two Weeks

I have been sooooo busy I don't know which way is up! But a good busy!!

Went to ArtQuilt Claremont with Gerrie Congdon. Picked her up at the airport just after I dropped off my college roommate who visited for a couple of hours before having to leave.

Gerrie and I got settled in to our room.

You will notice that there are two laptops in this picture...woe be to us to not be connected. Of course, I didn't post anything while there but Gerrie was very good about letting every know what we were up to!

We were both in Jane Dunnewold's class. The entire floor was covered in blue tarp taped down with duct tape. The tables were covered in plastic. We each had our own eight foot table...didn't know what to do with so much room!

Jane had us up and running right away. Had to get fabrics ready for dying and seperated cotton from silk and rayon going in the cotton pots. It was so confusing...we were supposed to get at least all six colors but you can see that I didn't quite get there. There was so many people trying to get stuff in to the dye pots that I couldn't figure out which pots I had put mine in. Then it was time to start carving stamps out of plastic errasers...what fun...I did that everytime I had a few minutes. Then off to lunch, back to wash out our fabric and we just kept on going. Working on over dyeing, stamping with our stamps, re-folding the fabric for over dyeing, getting our silk screens taped and washed, creating stencils using fusible interfacing with netting in between which was all covered with latex house paint to make a stiff stencil. Then made a permanent screen design and got busy silk screening, stenciling and stamping everything under the sun!

Got home and had to just take a break for a day and then the next day I started making silk screens using my thermofax...boy have I made silk screens...I think about 25 different ones. Well, then I had to start using them and the next day was busy screening ink and the waiting until the next day to start on discharging, using Soft Scrub through the silk screen.

This is a piece of fabric that I did a discharge on just to check out the screens. One is a brush stroke that I had done on a screen and the other is one of several images from Dover of Greek women...I see a new series coming!

This leaf piece is a small piece of Thai silk that I dyed, folded, over-dyed, stamped, and then stamped with adhesive and foiled. I love the colors in this.

Got some interesting mail yesterday. A big envelope from Primedia Publishing came, asking for me to send my quilt, Summer Fun, to them for photography as they are considering using it in their publication. More than that, I don't know. (Primedia publishes Quilter's Newsletter Magazine, Quilt Maker, and McCall's Quilting, as well as Sew News) I have a problem though, the quilt is currently with the Alameda County Arts Commission for consideration for purchase. I should find out tomorrow if the Arts Commission is going to purchase it and several others they have or not. If they do, I will have to ask if I can borrow it for a month while it goes to Primedia. such problems...I know! LOL!

I am so happy that the Fiber Arts for a Cause that Virginia Spiegel has been doing as a fund raiser for the American Cancer Society had done so well at Chicago. She told me that mine sold pretty quickly.

I have just sent her the jpg of the quilt, Spring Day, which will be on the reverse auction on her website. I had told everyone that another quilt would be going but Virginia liked this one best. It is 16" by 19".

Meanwhile, I have had several contacts from various placing to see if I could come and give a lecture and/or a workshop. I would like to do about six or so a year which would help my income but not keep me out of the studio for too long.

I'm working on another fused piece which will be considerably larger than Spring Day. The title is really about what we haven't seen since December, except for one day increments every once in a while. Rain, rain, go away, come again another day. The deer bed down in the hills right close to the freeway because the grass is so tall you can't see them. Oh well...of to work I go again.