Today's Game

Fun & Games for $100
Google the word "Failure"

Fun & Games for $500
Visit this site to read Keith Olbermann's brilliant rebuttal to Rumsfield's fascist talk.
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2006/08/30/keith-olbermann-delivers-one-hell-of-a-commentary-on-rumsfeld/

Fun & Games for $1000
Mother Jones Magazine has developed a lie by lie timeline that helps track the early days of the US war against Iraq. Check it out.
http://www.motherjones.com/bush_war_timeline/

Dyeing Daze

Well, I finally did it! I took the plunge and dyed fabric for my own quilts for the first time. It was fun! Of course I needed a little help, I needed a reason to do the dyeing, somehow I couldn't just own up to the fact that I wanted to/needed to do this for myself and my art. But the learning here once again is don't be afraid, don't be cautious. My God! I am 54 years old and I can do anything I put my mind to.

So with a little help from my friends, i.e. the 12th grade art class at MdC, I bought the dye, fabric, and soda ash. I followed the Lazy Dyer Method. And Voila! It was a tie-dye fun fest.


Seven seniors and their teacher GS came to my garage and together we dyed abaout 30 yards of fabric. We all had a blast Now I have to buy us all a couple of bolts of Wonder Under and let the Fusing Frenzy begin!

The results of Dye Fest 2006

 

New Summer Quilt

At last I am able to post this summer's first quilt, 45X45. Obviously it's a modern take off of traditional log cabin quilts. My learning here was to surround the vibrant blocks with neutrals so that they would stand out even more.
The biggest success of the quilt though, was the machine quilting. I have had a lot of trouble with my (new) machine and free-motion quilting. An afternoon spent with local machine quilter
P. Klug really helped as I learned a lot about threads.


Now that I have a good relationship with my machine and some nice new Sulky threads, the quilting is easy.


And here are two close-ups of the blocks.

Once Was Lost, But Now Is Found

I am happy to report that what was lost, now is found. The past few days my family has been searching for lost items-- a credit card, lost quilt tops, a pair of glasses. It was a learning experience because we had to think about our sin of surplus. For three people, we have too, too much junk. Our excuses include the fact that we've emptied two family homesteads this past year, but those are excuses. We simply have too much stuff, expecially too many papers, books, & magazines. It's an occupational hazard, the home of two writers.

We have had to take our searching to the next level, we went to the professional. We started praying to Tony. St. Anthony, patron saint of the lost & found came through. God bless St. Anthony. When the DH was on the tredmill last evening, Tony told Marc where to look. (I'd found the credit card earlier, thanks to Tony, I'm sure.) "Look in the laundry shoot!" Tony hollered over the din of the exercise machine. And that's exactly where Marc found the quilt tops, lodged in the shoot and unable to fall free...another life metaphor I suppose!


Thank you Tony! and thank you to my DH who heard Tony shouting and looked in the laundry shoot and found my lost quilt top as well as SJ's fused tree.





Now we can get back to working our way through the piles of junk. I'm taking a vacation day tomorrow to QUILT!! and to empty more boxes in the basement. Perhaps in the quilting I will "fall free" and that would be a good thing for my psyche & my chi.

Halleluia!

Stacks, Quilt Tops & more

On Saturday my family drove to Youngstown, OH to visit the Butler Institute of American Art and to view the Janet Fish pastels that are on display there thru September. What a wonderful museum and collection they have! The cafe is good too. But look what I found there--art quilt tops!


Aren't they loverly. Look at the stacks. Look at the fusible designs.

But where is the quilting? Where are the stitches, you might ask.

Well, these are really not quilt tops.

They are paintings and collages by the American Expressionist Robert Motherwell. And to be very truthful, these are not the actual ones I saw at the museum, these are pictures of similar pieces that I could borrow from the internet. Inspiration is all around. Now I'm on a Motherwell kick, getting books through interlibrary loan, and letting these images swim alongside those of Mrs. Mel and Nancy Crow.

WHERE IS IT, TONY?

How many times a day are you frustrated by not being able to locate something you just had? Well, for me & mine this happens a lot--too often and I think it's time for Big Mama to put her foot down. Clean up this house! Throw away that old stuff! Put everything back in its place when you're done with it!

Well this is what is missing now. I am so upset! I've looked everywhere and can't find it. We had company staying with us last week--10 people filling beds and camping on the floor. (The Super 8 where they had reservations had a power failure.) I last remember showing them this piece that I made at a workshop with Mrs. Mel. And now it has vanished. I searched the house top to bottom, and my DH and DD who are frightened by the look in my eyes have searched too. This is without a doubt the best piece that I've ever made--fused to batting, backing attached and ready for the pillowcase finish. It's that AHA! kind of a piece.

There is nothing left to do but to post this and give it up to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost items.

Tony, Tony, look around.
Something's lost and must be found.

Geez, Tony, please don't let it be in a van on its way to Iowa!!

Arts "Fare"

One of my friends is assemblage artist Robert Villamagna. We both work at the same small college in WV and RV has been teacher, mentor, and advocate for me.

This first picture is of his booth at this summer's Penn State Arts Fair. I love his work, how his eye sees things, how he remembers and re-members or puts together the lost, found, & forgotten.



And here is a close-up of one of his shadow boxes. These are small pieces, I have one of his in my library that is over 12 feet tall.