Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
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I listened to an interview with Mary Lou Weidman on Annie Smith’s podcast this morning. I listened to and wrote about it before. You can find the podcast and show notes at Simple Arts and the podcast on iTunes. It is the 4/17/2008 episode and well worth your time. Mary Lou is a really positive person and what I noticed about this podcast was her discussion of small blessings. I know that blessings can be a loaded word for some. I think of her concept as small treasures anyway.
Mary Lou talked about enjoying the small things in life: a special pear with a wonderful slice of cheese on it, a nice cup of tea, a wonderful bar of soap or bottle of lotion. While I have been trying to, generally, think positive, this comment gave me a little shove in the right direction. I also realized that there were a few recent things that I have really been enjoy. I recently received some apricot vanilla bars of soap and some of my favorite chocolates from a very special person in honor of a very special anniversary. Times are tight financially right now and these were in lieu of the wished for trip to Hawaii. I find, however, that I am not too disappointed and that I think about these gifts very often. I really am enjoying them.
Also, I have been rummaging through my stash quite a bit lately for fabric for the Tarts and other projects. I do this pretty regularly, but am not buying as much new fabric, so I am paying more attention to the fabric I have. It is really fun!
Finally, I also finished the Crazy Test on Thursday. It is ready for…something. I don’t know what it will end up as or who it will end up with.
In general, all is well!
Vicki is one of my blog readers and a wonderful colorist. If you are familar with the Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop by Kerr and Ringle (review), then you would enjoy Vicki’s blog, Field Trips in Fiber, and especially her work on color theory.
Her color theory work was done a couple of years ago, but she has some very astute comments about the different color theory systems and color wheels. Lately she has been dyeing groups of related colors. I think that this current work must come out of her color theory studies. She posts the groups of colors next to each other (as Kerr and Ringle do in their book, above) as she dyes them, including, occasionally, the inspirational picture. Her postings illustrates perfectly the Kerr/Ringle “Big Idea.”
Periodically I peruse the various that comprise Urban Sketchers. Yesterday I found Caroline of the Artist’s Smock. Her drawings remind me of Seattle Sketcher, but with a European Twist. I like her descriptive bio as well. I can’t insert the drawing I like, but you can see it at http://tinyurl.com/artistsmock.
I also thought the look of the blog was great.
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The lower photo is just downright hilarious. I’ll have to get out my Chanel No.5 (assuming Eau de Toilette works as well as cologne) just so I can be cool.
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I am on another CraftSanity jag and listened to an episode where Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood interviewed Meg McElwee, owner of Sew Liberated and writer of the Sew Liberated blog. Jennifer is a huge fan of aprons and these look really fun. I have been thinking of making a bunch to entertain some friends and relatives at Christmas, but we will see.
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Meg has a nice way about her and I enjoyed her calm speaking style. I took a quick look at her blog. She takes gorgeous photos and I am looking forward to seeing the result of her new book project.
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To that end, I try and be patient with people who don’t post as often as *I* 
would like them to post. Thus, I was thrilled today when I saw a couple of posts from Anna Maria Horner. She obviously reads her blog comments, because her post is answers to a number of questions that came up in comments when she posted her multi-tasking bag -soon-to-be- pattern. I really liked the post. I clipped a little piece of it to get you there easily, though I really wanted to clip the part about the patterns and couldn’t.
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The second CQFA Retreat was the weekend of January 25, 2009 (read about the first retreat here). What a great weekend for sewing. You have already seen my completed top, FOTY 2008, but I thought I would share some of the highlights of the trip and other people’s projects with you. I highly recommend going on a weekend retreat once in a while, especially if you normally don’t get several hours of uninterrupted time to do your sewing.
On Saturday, I went out for a walk and to get some food and saw this flower, which I thought might make a nice sketch or a “Big Idea” for a quilt.
Terri, a talented writer whose books you should go out and buy right now, is also a talented quiltmaker. Above is her Kaleidoscope project. Since I had recently completed the Eye Spy top, I gave her some unsolicited advice on putting the top together. One of the things that I enjoy about the retreat is that I like seeing what people are making. Terri uses a very different color palette than I do, but it was great to see how she worked on the hexagons.
CQFA has a free fabric connection. Julie went and got some free fabric and made the above couch throw out of it. I love the cabbage rose feel that this top has, mostly because it is not too sickly sweet.
I didn’t crop the photo above, because I wanted you to see the set up. Julie and I were working at the table on the left side of the photo. You can see FOTY 2008 on my portable design wall in the background. Dolores was working on the right. We had nice big tables to work on.
Dolores, the organizer, had a goal of getting to know everyone better. Last year people did introductions and everyone talked about how they got into quiltmaking. This year she asked everyone to talk about what inspires them. Above is a picture of everyone gathering around one person’s work.
Debbie talked about taking a summer course at Cabrillo College with Richard Elliott. The class was called something like Frankenstein Fabric and they learned to manipulate fabric in new and interesting ways. The fabric above has been manipulated so that it has little puffs all over it.
The fabric has a high polyester content. Debbie does really interesting things with fiber and is very involved with SAQA.
All in all, the weekend was a big success. I certainly got a lot done and was pleased to be able to spend some extra time with Julie.
