Puppy Spotted

I have a good excuse for not working on more fiber art - or so I tell myself! Hudson is in the house and you have to watch him like a hawk to keep him from leaving little "surprizes" all over the rug. He is not quite ready to be let into my studio on the 3rd floor -- so far from the front door and out to the lawn. But he keeps himself out of too much trouble by using the cuteness defence. You judge for youself.



Another inspiring workshop has come and gone. Laura Cater-Woods was here for 6 days with a group of 11 talented women, each with their own vision in their work. Laura is a great instructor and art career coach and I tried to sit in on as many of the discussions as possible to hear her little gems of wisdom. She is coming back in December 2007.

I'm still working on the Robbi Ecklow piece I started in Chicago. I was in the quilting phase when I had to lend my personal Bernina, a 1260, to one of the students in Laura's workshop. This was because we were having trouble with the new Bernina Activa 220 I bought as a rental machine for the workshops. It was having trouble with specialty threads, but it turned out to be operator error! I had looked at it, Laura had looked at it, and the student was a long-time Bernina user, too, but none of us realized that we had threaded the machine incorrectly! Luckily a quick call to the dealer showed us the error of our ways, but by then I decided that I'd just let the student continue to use my machine as she was so happy with it.

I wish I could find some 1260's to buy inexpensively to have on hand for the workshops, but they are still very much in demand and go on eBay for way over $1000.

More Detail

I've been neglecting my blog and just discovered that I had some comments! I guess I'll have to check my settings because I thought that comments would come to me via email.

But anyway Carol and Debra asked to see a detail shot of Bucephalus, so here it is.



The square pieces are about a half inch square. I fused the pieces to a foundation fabric with Steam-A-Seam II and then stitched over all of them when I quilted the piece. They have held up beautifully, even though the piece was repeatedly folded(!) when on its tour with the Myths and Legends exhibit.

And speaking of fusing, I've really been itching to start in on some new projects after watching the fun everyone has had in first the Melody Johnson workshop and now the Leslie Riley workshop, that is just finishing today. (I think we are going to have to drag the students out -- they don't want to leave!) You can check out the class pictures on our inn blog.

And speaking of pictures, I just have to share the picture of our new puppy. We are going to pick him up on Friday when he will be 7 weeks old.



Hudson is the one on the left. He will be my sixth Dalmatian. If you've seen my website, you may have noticed a few of my pieces have some Dalmatian influnce!

Bucephalus is Back

The piece I created for the Myths and Legends challenge is finally back home. I neglected to get a good picture of it before I sent it off, or rather the pictures I did take were not the best -- I had cut off one side of the edge!



This is a piece with heavy Steam-A-Seam use. Now that I've finally given Wonder Under a try, I'm interested to see how something like this will be using WU instead of SAS. I'll let you know the results.

Where Does All the Time Go?

The Melody Johnson workshop is on its last day, meaning that practically a whole week has gone by since I got home from Chicago and I still haven't unpacked the fabric from the class I took from Robbi Ecklow. I did, however, unpack the project from the class and took a picture!



It's not exactly original work, but it was a fun exercise in fusing and color. I modified a few elements, but this will be a piece for "personal use" only. Robbi is a fun teacher and I plan to ask her to teach a workshop at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops.

And while I had the camera set up for pictures I snapped on of the finished version of the landscape piece I was working on. I titled it "Oregon Landscape 1", as I plan to play with this format a bit more. This piece was just shipped off to California where it will be appearing in an exhibit at the Ironstone Vineyards in Murphy (which is a small town near Fresno).

Personal Shopping

Melody Johnson's workshop has completed their first day of the 5-day workshop here at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops and boy, do they look like they are having fun! I wish I had the time to join in, but because I was away for several days, I had to spend the day working in the office catching up with all the paper work. Blah.

However there are perks! Such as a mini on-site fabric shop provided courtesy of Log Cabin Fabrics. I have my eye on several things, but don't want to deplete the selection before Melody's students get the chance!



I had a great time in Chicago at the Quilt Festival. I had meant to blog more while I was there, but . . . The one night when I might have had the time because Mark had gone home ahead of me, well, I decided to spend it fusing! I took a class from Robbi Eklow and discovered how wonderful Wonder-Under was. I had been a steadfast Steam-a-Seam user, but now that I have tried the W-U, I think I'll be using it more often. Anyway, I spent my last night in Chicago happily working on the project I started in the workshop. Thank goodness for irons in the hotel rooms! I'll post a picture of the piece later.

Tomorrow I hope to sit in Melody's workshop for a bit. She has been blogging about the workshop daily.

I rushed off for my entry for the SAQA: The Creative Force exhibit today. Nothing like waiting until the last minute.

Another project I've been working on is a database system to manage all the details of my art work. I know I could buy an existing software package to do this, but I think I'm too much a nerd to take the easy way! I had to do it myself. I use a Mac, so I chose FileMaker Pro for building the DB. I like FileMaker because it is cross-platform compatible and I'd like to eventually create a system to manage our inn and artworkshop business, because the one we use now is lacking some features that would be very useful. I haven't used FileMaker for quite awhile, but am having fun learning all the new features.

Chicago - What a Wonderful Town

Here I am reporting from the Windy City, although it is not very windy at the moment. In fact, the weather is quite wonderful.

I'm here with Mark to take in the International Quilt Festival and to distribute as many of our fiber art workshop brochures as possible!

The fun begins tomorrow, as I take a class from Robbi Eklow. Should be lots of fun. After the class, the show opens! Too bad I didn't bring a camera. They do allow photographs in a number of exhibits, but with all the shopping and viewing to do, who wants to be weighed down with a camera! I'll try to be descriptive in my posts.

Tonight we have decided to just relax in our room. I have knitting to do and Mark is watching food prep videos from the Culinary Institue of America on his computer.