WAV Christmas

I have been spending a lot of time in the studio recently but you wouldn't know it from looking at the pictures on my blog. The problem is that most of the pieces I have been working on cannot be shown, either because they are Christmas gifts or, more likely, they are part of an upcoming competition or exhibit that prohibits publication of images before the event. Since this blog allows public access it qualifies under the publication ban.

One of the things I can now show is the book cover I made as part of the gift exchange for my fabric artist's group in Billings. The theme for the Christmas exchange is often chosen a year in advance and we then have 12 months to plan our creation. Even so, I would guess that most of the gifts, like mine, are constructed after the first of November or even later. The theme for this year was "book". We can interpret the theme however we wish and we do not have to stick with fabric in the creation, but it does have to be something made with our own hands. There is no requirement to participate and we often have a member or two who simply finds the season too busy to spend time on the gift exchange so they sit out a year. All along I had planned on making a book cover. I had doodled out several possibilities, all landscapes and was zeroing in on a final choice. Then, about September or so, it seemed like every book and magazine I picked up featured a new method or technique or design for making book covers. When I saw the one in the newest issue of Quilting Arts Magazine I knew I had to re-think my sketch. The technique shown looked like so much fun I just had to give it a go. The result is the cover shown here in the first four photos. The luscious texture is achieved by covering the whole thing with a layer of polyester organza, free-motion machine quilting over it all and then applying the heat gun to the surface to melt away the organza in places. Even though the article warns against making the piece too small I still managed to do so so I added a leaf of faux leather to the closure side. The cording used to make the closure was braided using a simple method I discovered in Bead and Button Magazine a few months ago.

The fun part of a gift exchange is, of course, the exchange part! We use a non-biased method of placing a number on each wrapped package and then drawing names out of a hat to see who goes home with what present. My gift went to Linda MacD. I in turn received a wonderful package from Brooke A that included the little gems shown here. The container is a deep shadow box and inside were three incredible pieces of art. The base of each was a page from an old book with the intriguing name of "Adventuresses and Adventurous Women". Inside each was a grouping of sharp objects: rose thorns in one, broken glass in another and pins and needles in the third. The theme of the grouping was "Quilting as a Blood Sport" and it was inspired by the hair-raising adventures of those of us who participated in this summer's artist's llama trek in the Beartooth Mountains. Each little miniature then has an extensive amount of stitching holding it all together.

Next year's theme has already been chosen. Jeanne K put forth the idea of "Time" which was adopted by all. I am already thinking of possibilities!

Illustration Friday - Backwards

"The faster I go, the behinder I get!"

The above statement is a silly old saying I remember hearing as I was growing up. Like most silly old sayings, it has a ring of truth to it. This time of year especially, it seems that the more we rush around trying to get everything done, the more there is to do. So I propose we all take a deep breath, pour ourselves a cup of nice hot tea and take a moment to sit still and enjoy the season.

Happy Holidays!

2006 Journal Quilts

I can't believe it has been a week since I last posted. Life got in the way, as it tends to do over the holidays, and the last seven days just vanished when I wasn't paying attention!

On Monday I received a phone call from the mailman saying he had a package I needed to sign for. It turned out to be my 2006 Journal Quilts, returning home after touring the country with about 1000 others of their kind for the last year. I was excited to receive them; not because I have any particular use for them at this time, but simply because I could not remember, for the life of me, what they looked like. I was thrilled to discover I still like them. It was as if I was seeing them with fresh eyes since I had them in my possession for such a short time before they left home.

The first one was my first ever attempt at painting on fabric with Dye-na-flo paints, a technique I have used extensively since in everything from large quilts to pieces of clothing.

Number 2 is colored with fabric crayons. I wasn't too thrilled with it at the time and I have only recently picked up the crayons again for another try.

The third quitlet uses a combination of paint and foil to create the pears.

The fourth piece is probably my favorite of the bunch. The dragonfly was painted with Jacquard Lumiere paints onto a polyester sheer fabric. This was then layered over a hand-dyed cotton and quilted to emphasize the shape. I still want to go back and give him a pair of crystal eyes.

The last piece was started in a class at Yellowstone Quilt Festival by Barbara Olsen. While I really like the look of it I have a hard time thinking of it as my own. This technique is so obviously Barbara and anyone who has seen her work would easily identify it as a poor knockoff of one of her masterpieces.

I will miss the Journal Quilt Project. I participated in the last five years of its existence and learned a lot along the way. I think the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge Group that I am now part of will probably go a long way to taking the place of these wonderful little exercises.

Illustration Friday "little things"

Maybe it is the fact that there are just too many obvious bad jokes that could be illustrated under this heading that made me take the high road for a change. This image was constructed from a bunch of photos I took of a family of Canada Geese in Jackson Hole last spring. There are certainly some things I wish I had done differently but it was a fun exercise nonetheless.

For the Birds

This has been the week of the birds. A few days ago I reported on some of the tracks I had observed in the snow, including a bunch of chukar prints. That prompted a comment from Tomme in Iowa saying she had to look the bird up to know what it was. It always surprises me that the beautiful partridge is so little known. I had never heard of them myself until I moved here and witnessed them in the flesh. Most days we have about 50 chukars hanging around in our yard. We feed them in the winter which no doubt accounts for their presence in such high numbers. It also helps that we don't shoot them even though the rumor is they make delicious eating. I really like this photo I took of two of them in the back yard yesterday even though it is a little too dark to fully appreciate the birds. The one on the right looks like he is looking up at the snow and maybe trying to catch it like a child does on his tongue.

Then, as Ken and I took off on our run yesterday, we saw one of the golden eagles circling low over our trail. They spend quite a bit of time visiting in the summer but the winter is when they move onto our place and hunt rabbits daily. I was a little bit ahead of Ken and as I got about 2 miles out from the house the eagle started circling lower and lower overhead. I stopped running and held my breath as he landed in a tree just a few feet away. We both remained motionless, starring at each other until Ken caught up and the eagle decided the pressure of two people was too much. Ken's reaction was great. "What the h--l was that?!" he said. "I thought maybe the eagle thought your hat was a big pink bunny and he was about to swoop down for a meal!" I didn't want to admit that the same thought had entered my head. I was prepared to hit the dirt fast if it looked like the big bird was coming for my head but he obviously had other things in mind. I would love to think he is finally getting used to us after 15 years of co-existence, realizing we are not a threat. It is more likely, however, he was just bored and curious about these strange two legged creatures who move at such a slow pace even when they are trying to go fast.

But today was the best sighting of them all. After lunch, as I went outside to head back over to my studio, a pigeon ran right into the side of the house in front of me. He shook himself off and flew away but I felt guilty, assuming I had startled him from his resting place. Then I rounded the corner and saw this big boy perched in the juniper bush. A Northern Goshawk, pretty rare and an amazing sight to see. They are huge birds, not as big as the eagle of course, but impressive nonetheless at almost two feet tall. He spent quite a bit of time hanging out in the yard, allowing me to take numerous photos of him, then finally flapped his powerful wings and headed elsewhere in search of lunch.

Life in Wyoming

I was just settling into a new project yesterday when the pager went off. An 11 year old boy was missing south of Cody. I used to get upset that the pager always seems to interrupt me in the middle of something until one day I realized...duh...unless I am sitting around waiting for it to go off, it is always going to come when I am doing something else. We loaded up our gear and headed to town but the boy was found by a Sheriff's Deputy before we arrived so back home we went. It is our slow time of year right now but we have still had a few calls in the last week: a missing Alzheimer's patient in the middle of a snow storm, a call to the airport for a private jet that couldn't get its landing gear to engage, and now this one. All have ended happily and with little fanfare.
As we headed down the road yesterday afternoon we had to flag down our neighbor, Buster, who was about to deliver us a load of hay. He was very understanding and agreed to wait until we called him later in the day. By the time we got home and he arrived with the load, it was getting dark and the wind was picking up. We couldn't risk leaving the stack the way it was so Ken and I re-stacked the bales (4 ton of them) in the dark. It is a good job we did because the wind arrived on schedule last night and we registered 70mph on our gauge. That hay would have been spread for miles!
When Buster came in to get paid I showed him our copy of this month's National Geographic magazine that just arrived. It has a big story in it about modern day cowboys and his two nephews are featured as part of the story. One of the boys is the one that was accidentally shot in the back last month and he is still in the hospital in Denver. Buster says he is doing much better but is pretty depressed at the slowness of healing.
I am running again. I probably shouldn't be as my foot is far from better, but I am wearing a night brace and new supportive running shoes and I at least don't seem to be making it any worse. We had a thin dusting of snow on the ground yesterday morning and I noted the following footprints, by size:
* mouse
* pack rat
* chukar
* cottontail
* jack rabbit
* fox
* bobcat
* coyote
* deer
That means at least one of each of the above has been in the vicinity within the last 24 hours. I saw chukars, cottontails, coyote and mule deer in the flesh so can verify their presence.
Today I start wrapping Christmas gifts so they can be put in the mail to Canada and actually get there before the big day. I hope to also keep working on a variety of projects. This is when they are most compelling to me - when they are just getting started and the promise of what they might be is still fresh. Life is good!

Illustration Friday - Excess

Going Green

A year and a half ago I received an invitation, along with about 40 other quilt artists, to participate in a show to be presented at a gallery in Tillamook, Oregon in March of 2008. Now how can you say no to someone who gives you that much lead time? Besides, I was honored to have been asked and I thought it would be kind of fun. There were some guidelines: the finished piece had to be 18" wide by 45" long and the theme was "Its Good to be Green". We could interpret that any way we wanted. I started mulling over ideas in my head and discarded most of them as not too exciting.

Shortly after I said I would participate in the show I traveled "home" to Prince Edward Island to help celebrate my parents' 50th wedding anniversary. It was August and by then the landscape surrounding my high desert Wyoming home had settled into its mid-summer tones of beige and brown. When I got off the plane on PEI I felt as though someone had turned my visual sensors to read green. I couldn't believe how lush and tropical everything looked. After all, we are talking about an annual difference in rainfall of many, many inches between Wyoming and the Island. I took lots of photos while I was there and soon settled on one that would be the basis for my "Good to be Green" quilt. I even had a name - "The Green, Green Grass of Home". Once I returned from the Island I doodled around for a few months until I had the design I wanted, then summer came round again and I put away all things fabric until the cooler weather returned this fall. By then I had come up with a second possible design for a quilt for the show and I decided to proceed with both and choose the one I preferred once they were complete.

In September I got serious about putting them together and dyed all the fabric I needed for both quilts. I experimented with batik on the one and was quite pleased with the results. I kept working on the two quilts along with a half dozen other projects until I suddenly realized my huge lead time was getting shorter and shorter and I needed to focus on one or the other and get it done. I settled on my first idea and finished the applique and started on the quilting about a month ago. I was still feeling pretty good about it all until I went back and read the correspondence in early November and realized I had to have a photograph of the finished quilt to the curator by December 1st. And that I would be gone for at least a week of that time over Thanksgiving. Aaagh! I put in lots of hours over the last few days and sent the photo off on time (barely) yesterday. Even though it doesn't say anywhere that we can't show the quilt, it doesn't feel quite right doing so before the show opens so I am going to do what I have seen done by one of the other participants and just show one of the detail shots here. I am pretty pleased with the final piece. The bamboo/cotton combination fabric I used took the dye beautifully and the colors are rich as I had hoped they would be. Ken thinks I need to add a flock of geese in the sky and I may still do so even though I have sent the photo already.

I am excited to be able to move on to other projects now. This summer I wondered if I would ever quilt again - I just seemed to have lost the desire. It has returned with a vengeance over the last few months and I have enough designs backed up on my drawing board to take me through the next ten years at least!