Escape to Harmony

So here's how I'm doing on the quilt I posted about last week. I finally decided on an arrangement that I liked, and added two smallish borders. It's turned out to be a square composition instead of a rectangle, which was the problem for me I think. That's what happens to me all the time (curse you rectangular sketchbook!!).
Here's what it looked like before I started in on the quilting.








Then I went mad quilting with all kinds of colors, with the thread color matching the shape, then escape out through a similar color in the small colored border. Almost done with quilting now. The yellowish hue is because when I took the picture, I forgot to turn off my studio lights. Whoops.















Here is a closeup so you can see the quilting a bit better.

She's Got Personality

If Deb and Deborah do it, then of course, I've got to, right? So here it is, the results of the World's Shortest Personality Test.

http://www.quizdiva.net/shortestpersonalitytest/black.jpg"> %20color="#000000">You are elegant, withdrawn, and brilliant.Your mind is a weapon, able to solve any puzzle.You are also great at poking holes in arguments and common beliefs. For you, comfort and calm are very important.You tend to thrive on your own and shrug off most affection.You prefer to protect your emotions and stay strong.

World's Shortest Personality Test

Flaming Fire

Flaming Fire Illustrated Bible
A glorious brooch on the shoulder of mankind.
A project to illustrate each and every verse in the Bible can be found at Flaming Fire.

Very interesting idea, and there happen to be some illustrations by Kipling West, one of my very favorite Tarot artists are on the front page.
I guess you can reserve a verse for 90 days. And there is of course some controversy over which version, and what's included in the Bible, that is explained very well on the site.

So what are you waiting for, pick your favorite, or least favorite and make some sort of illustration. They say they only have 34,194 left, better hurry!

Beach Sojourn

Some pictures from our camping trip to Manchester State Beach and Fort Bragg.

Here is how it looked out the windshield as we headed north on the Golden Gate Bridge, it was clear blue, no fog, hardly any traffic either, which was very nice.






Never let your kid get ahold of the camera before you wake up fully when camping...














Here is the fog at the beach, it was like this all day, was very dark, you can kinda see why I forgot to put sunscreen on. Oops.

And then there were the dunes we got to slog across to get to the beach from the camping area. I was struck by the beauty of this scene, and think it might inspire a landscape quilt.














This is under the cypress grove, isn't it mysterious looking, it was so quiet in there, no pounding surf noise. And the light was filtered in a very pleasant way. This would be good inspiration for a Ruth McDowell type of quilt wouldn't it? Too bad I don't do those. (grin).

Why Hippy of Course!

You scored as Hippy. Hippy 75% Nerdy Girl 69% Athletic Tomboy 69% Slut 44% Popular Bitch 19% Loser 19% Goth 13% Preppy Girl 0% What type of girl are you?!! created with QuizFarm.com

Simple Still Life

If you are interested in checking out a new joint blog art project having to do with interpreting a still life photo be sure and check out simplestilllife. Wow all those llllll's together are weird!
I think it will be fun to see what people come up with, what media they end up using, etc... and I'm looking forward to working on this idea.
And supposedly the button should be showing up on the side of my blog, we'll see if I remember how to do this after a long weekend of camping at the beach and the worst sunburn I've had in 20 years (dang fog fooled me!), my brain even feels sunburnt!

Color Theory Harmony

So I'm working on a new quilt that is supposed to be for a show with the theme of Harmony, Peace, Renewal. I happened to be reading my color wheel, and there was a phrase that used the word harmony, so I just worked around the color wheel, selecting those opposite each other, and came up with this. I've tried lots of backgrounds and arrangements of the shapes, hard to decide which one is the most harmonious. I think I like this one where the elements aren't lined up. Not sure if I like the hand-dyed background better though.
What do you think?

Favorite Swamp

The QuiltMavericks favorite swap block, or swamp as we prefer to call it (gotta love those typos that end up becoming a new saying!). I forget the name of the block, it is super easy, just squares and rectangles.
My blocks are on the left that I sent out to everyone. This is supposed to be all batiks and hand-dyed-ish. Mavericks tend to have trouble with rules, big surprise there, right? Not! I'll combine these blocks with the last time we did this swamp, and I'll have a good sized quilt, maybe big enough for our bed? We'll see!

Landscape Pillows

I'm making some pillows for my mom. It was her birthday on the 18th. They will match the landscape triptych quilts that I did for the living room in my folk's house. This is the beginning of one of them, it will be folded in half.

Mama Needs New Shoes

Well, it pays to know the right shoe-connected people. Lucky me to get a shoe-box sized package in the mail. Hmmm, from DebR, oh she found some shoes for me, in size ginormous!

I loooooove black and white checked stuff. Comes from digging the whole ska generation thing back in the groovy '80's. Remember The Specials, Madness, English Beat, etc... Anyways, now I have matchy matchy shoes with the shoe maven herself.

Of course our husbands had the same reaction "Why are you getting shoes in the mail?" "Why are you mailing shoes?" Complete with rolling eyes, and pitiful shaking of heads. Sigh, they just don't get it!

Blinking Ice Cubes

So my parents went on a trip and brought back some blinking ice-cubes which they gifted my boys with. They are plastic ice=cube shaped thingies with lights inside that blink or stay on or off. Mom said the banquet they went to had a hundred tables with these all blinking in all the water glasses. I asked her if they checked to see if there were any epileptic attendees, sheesh!

Guess what the boys used them for? Well, first they asked Grandma for some grape juice, and ate blinking blood. (Think Harry Potter here). Then they finished that and started putting them in their mouths, which we discouraged quickly,even though it made them look like crash-test dummies. Zach then proceeded to use them as new specs. He said it was really trippy to look through them when they were on, and gave him a headache. I'm thinking they might make a cool Eye of Sauron Halloween costume...
I don't know where they are now. Hope the dog doesn't eat them.

One Day Round Robin

Last Saturday, at the CQFA meeting, there were six of us who stayed to participate in the instant round robin.
We had each brought a block or "something" to start with, and we passed them around from person to person every 15 minutes or so with something new added. Here is how mine turned out, I started with the pinwheelish kinda thing in the center. I really like how it turned out, not sure if I'll add to it, or just finish it off as is.
Most of the other ones ended up weird shapes (mostly thanks to me, I was in a curvy mood). But since I didn't add to mine, it is a fairly regular shape.

This was a fun exercise and I highly recommend doing it with your group!!

American-osity

I found this at suburban treehugger's blog

You Are 47% American

America: You don't love it or want to leave it. But you wouldn't mind giving it an extreme make over. On the 4th of July, you'll fly a freak flag instead... And give Uncle Sam a sucker punch!

How American Are You?

Quizzical Mondays

From the quiz queen herself DebR, I'm taking the four Blue Pyramid quizzes and here are the results for me.

If I were a country:
You're the United Nations!Most people think you're ineffective, but you are trying to completely save the world from itself, so there's always going to be a long way to go. You're always the one trying to get friends to talk to each other, enemies to talk to each other, anyone who can to just talk instead of beating each other about the head and torso. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't, and you get very schizophrenic as a result. But your heart is in the right place, and sometimes also in New York.

If I were a Book:
Depending on whether I answer the what's your favorite animal rabbit or armadillo, I'm either Watership Down or Prayer for Owen Meany, both of which are books I really enjoyed reading.

If I were a state:
You're California!In many ways, you are larger than life and almost defy description. You certainly love to shake, rattle, and roll with the best of them. You have a generally sunny disposition, but are capable of resorting to harsh extremes when pressed. You are more likely than most to become rich, or famous, or perhaps both. While you have the golden touch in so many regards, your respect for actors is a little over-zealous. This endless faith in actors needs to be terminated.

If I were an animal:
You're a Jellyfish!It seems that no matter how hard you try to conceal yourself and your thoughts, everything is still in plain view for others to see. Nonetheless, you have a knack for keeping people from exploiting this advantage by using your sharp wit and disorienting charm. You have long limbs and you know how to use them. While you frequently seem drawn to the beach, you should avoid it at all costs.

Well, that sure was fun! Internet quizzes are a great excuse to sit here in front of the airconditioner.

Ahem, Self Portrait

This is a perfectly awful"self portrait" called Dyeing Day. Note, I wasn't going for picture perfect accuracy.
But, here is a free hint, when doing a self portrait, don't use a magnifying mirror that tilts. No one, not even me has a nose that big!
I did get the glasses right though. And I'll leave you to guess whether my eyebrows are green or not (haha!).
I did get the hair shape right at least, I always put my hair up in a tight bun to keep it out of the dyes and my eyes and my mouth.
I do love making faces with fabrics in weird colors.
Well, I'll keep working on a better one I think.

10 of Cups In a Rush

Yikes, I forgot to make a quilt! Eeep! Had to send it out today, Friday the 8th. I began on the 6th and finished with 10 minutes to spare. Luckily I had the image in my head already, so I made a quick sketch, prepared a quilt back, batting, and got out the boxes of my hand-dyed fabrics.

10 of cups begins

In the middle of work, lots o'pins.

The roof of the house, quilted words are LOVE, JOY, Peace, Bliss, Family, with hearts on the chimney.

10 cups done! Just in time quilting. My speciality...Said in my my very best Wallace voice (From Wallace and Grommit who I see have a movie coming out in the fall, hooray!!!)

Oh, and For another version of a quilted 10 of cups you must go see DebR's, especially the back.

Find the Hidden Deer

Find the 3 Deer, two bambis and one mama. Yes, this is the view out my studio window. See camoflauge really does work. But loud chewing and ripping of branches is always a dead giveaway. Lucky for them I'm not a hunter!

Red Sweaters

Have you knitters out there heard about the Red Sweater project? I head about it from Fiber Maggies Closet, an email newsletter from Joy Lily. It sounds like an interesting participatory public art project for those so inclined.
A teeny red sweater for each American troop killed in the Iraq war. All to be suspended from a tree in San Francisco. To encourage people to think about the consequences of war. And there is a good explanation of why no sweaters for the Iraqis who have died. She also references a Knit Socks for Troops that went on during the Vietnam war, as well as during the two world wars, didn't know about that, interesting.
Might be time to finally learn how to knit, so I can send one in.

Live 8

Live 8, the big concerts around the world that happened yesterday were not strictly fundraisers like Live Aid back in the 80's were.
As they say in their promo video "We don't want your money, we want your name."
They are attempting to get a whole lot of people to raise their voices together to make an impact on African Poverty at the G-8 summit meeting which happens on July 6th.
For more info and to add your name go here.
The jist of what they're asking for is 3 things,
1) Cancel 100% of the debt poor countries owe
2) Double the aid given by governments to the poor countries
3) Change trade laws to allow the poor countries a chance to make it in the world economy

Also, and in conjunction with Live 8, there is the ONE campaign which is American based.
If you go here, you can sign a letter to President Bush to "Ask for his support today at the upcoming G8 meeting for an unprecedented debt-aid-trade deal for the people in the poorest countries. Together as ONE, we can send President Bush to the G8 Summit carrying the compassion, justice and generosity of millions of Americans."

So take a second on this lovely Sunday to add your name to these lists, it is the least that we who are lucky enough to live in the countries who are able to make these decisions to help, can do.

Blog Format Probs Fixed

So, I noticed some other blogger folks having trouble with the spacing on their blogs like I was. And I found the solution, hooray! Check out this fix from blogger. And I hope it works for you too. What a pain knowing enough to do the blog stuff, but not knowing the ins and outs of html and all that jazz.
Back to arting it up~!

Self Portrait Time

This a Self portrait? Noooo, this is just one of the many faces that I've made in fabric. But I am contemplating how to do a self portrait for the Quilting Arts Magazine challenge. And I thought it would be interesting to see which faces I like the best, and what I feel like making. So join me in the way back machine as we go back to the year 2000.
So the above is from my Spirits From the Scrap Basket quilt, kind of an abstract, sketchy face.


Then I did a fabric piece from a photograph of my grandma, Grandma Loved Celedon Green










And then a paint and pen face on the Empress.



















And a fairly large self-portrait in the Contessa di Textura quilt. Lots of styles to choose from, some more successful than others.