Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Inspired by the View

In between making Christmas gifts for friends and family, I started a new series inspired by all the farm land in our area. I've always loved the view of a farm - with vast fields of rows upon row of something. When driving through farm country I'd guess at what each field was growing.

I even liked the empty fields because they seem to always hold such promise. What would be their next harvest?

This first of the series I called "Fields of Promise"

It is about 24" x 15". The "field" part is pieced. The horizon landscape is raw edge collage.

I have 2 other "fields" prepared, but have not yet decided how I will treat them.

In the meantime, I continue work on my daughter's wedding quilt.

Our office assistant and chocolate saleswoman, Delores, gave me a wicker towel rack to use in my studio. It is doing a great job holding all of the fabric strips for the log cabin quilt.

I set it up resting between a drawer and my cutting table. It closes me in to my sewing area, but that is mostly a good thing! It is very light weight, so it is easy to move around. Handy for my small studio space.

Here is a closer look at the rack.

On another topic, I'll admit that I am a sock knitting fiend. I can't stop. It is a very relaxing thing to do and I love wearing socks that I've knit myself.

Here are a couple of my latest.

I'll never wear boring white socks again!


Friday, December 11, 2009

Winter Studio Bonanza

Every winter as the workshop season at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops draws to a close I always envision a bonanza of time to spend working in my studio. Let's see if it actually happens this year!

Last year the chocolate business took off, so most of my "spare" time was spent packing and shipping chocolate to the over 100 stores that carry our chocolates. This year we have more employees, so hopefully that will free up my time for fiber art!

In the short break for Thanksgiving I did actually get to start on a new series of landscape quilts and finished one of them. I have a stack of quilts in one of our guest rooms waiting for me to have time to photograph them.

I've also realized that my Crazy By Design website has been woefully neglected. It is pitifully out of date and the design/layout is so "yesterday". I started a new design last winter, but same story - chocolate got in the way!

In between the fiber art I'm working a a wedding quilt for my daughter. She is planning a 2010 wedding and I'm hoping for a late 2010 date to give me plenty of time to finish the quilt! She has requested a log cabin quilt in the colors of navy blue, moss green, and chocolate brown. I have about 11 blocks done and 60+ more to do to finish the king size quilt!