Organizing

What have I been doing? Not sewing! I decided I needed to reorganize my sewing wall. I have one wall in the living room that has all my sewing stuff. I had been thinking about buying a couple of cabinets to put stuff in instead of having it in tupperware containers and on top of my cutting table. Friday I went ahead and bought a couple. I spent from 2:oopm - 10:00pm putting the cabinets together and rearranging. I wish I had taken before pictures. The place was a mess and all my stuff was taking over the whole livingroom.
One cabinet is almost filled with fabric and batting and the other has miscellaneous things like: wonderunder, stabilizer, yarns, beads, etc. The smaller cabinet, I had before. Since I usually make smaller wall hangings, I have just been using that small folding table to work on, so I cleaned off my cutting table and folded it up and put it on the other side of the tv with a couple of plants on it (hopefully the plants will keep it from getting cluttered with other junk. It is still nearbly if I need it.
Here is the corner over by the tv with a few things that wouldn't fit in the cabinet. The guinea pigs usually don't reside here in the livingroom but we are expecting my husbands sister tomorrow and she will be staying in Kara's room where they guineas usually stay.
I'm also thinking I can use the cabinet by the couch as a small design wall by draping a piece of flannel over the front. We'll see just how neat I can keep this!! Almost afraid of starting a projuect and messing it up!

Day Out With the Kids & Mom & a Moose

Yesterday I had to take Alex to Dartmouth to see the pediatric neurologist for his 6 month check-up. Kara and my Mom decided to come along. Kara wanted do some geocaching on the way home. If you haven't heard of geocaching, go here: http://www.geocaching.com . After going to the dr's, we stopped at a pizza place for lunch and then started to look for the four caches that Kara wanted to find.
These first 2 pictures are the foundations of an old mill near where one of the caches was located. Some areas of the foundation were made up of stone from the area. I love the combination of the shapes of the stone, the lichen and moss and the plants above.
Some areas of the walls were made up of bricks and stone, like the picture below. After this we went looking for another cache within walking distance. I went to take pictures of the river along the path and found out the batteries had died after the wall pictures and the extra batteries were in the car. Oh, well.
Looking for the last cache, we saw these flowers with the spotted leaves. I've never seen them before so will need to find my flower book and try to identify them. They are also some of the first flowers I've seen this spring
We also saw this covered bridge from the path. Blogger seems to really like this one, since it posted the picture twice.

On the drive home we saw this moose. It was on the side of the road when we first saw it. After we stopped, it meandered in front of us and into the woods beside us. It was a young one but still really big.
The day was fun despite being cloudy and rainy. We were all tired when we got home.

VACATION!!!

I am on vacation this week. I have all sorts of plans (which involves quilting) but I think my daughter has other ideas. The kids are also on vacation and my daughter is planning on me taking her geocaching. Tomorrow, I'm going somewhere with my mom and Tuesday, I'm taking Alex to Hanover to see the pediatric neurologist for his 6 month check-up. If it is nice out, Kara wants to come so we can geocache on the way home.

Fiber Art Friends met last Friday. We went and visited Jane Balshaw's studio. http://www.QuiltedArt.com. I really need to learn how to add links!! It was nice to meet her and see her studio and work. I think we all left ready to start something. Sometime, I'd like to take her class on coloring fabric. We then went to Concord to the Anderson-Soule Gallery to see some of Jane's other work and the other exhibits.

We exchanged our round robin projects. This first picture is of Marilyn's project and what she did with it. Her theme is Awakening. She says the fabric reminds her of what her world looks like when she wakes up. I was going to add tulips or dafodils to it for the awakening of spring but I changed my mind. The day I was going to work on it, I woke up and looked out the window and saw the orange of the sky through all the trees. So I cut out pieces of the background and fused an orange and yellow batik to the back in various areas. The top picture is closer to the actual color of the fabric.
Well, this has to be it for today. I have to get up at 5am tomorrow and I still have to get alot of stuff ready. I can't believe I'm on vacation and getting up at 5!!!

Happy Easter

Hope everyone is having a great day. I didn't have to work today so we were able to have a quiet family dinner.
I went to make the label for the quilt I need to send in for the Quilting Arts calendar contest and couldn't find the fabric I have that's ready to be printed on. I reorganized my whole sewing area last fall and put it somewhere where it could lay flat. Well, it is still there. where ever there is. I tore everything apart looking for it. I finally got out the Bubble Jet Set 2000 that I bought a couple of years ago but have never used. I have a piece of fabric drying and am hoping it works. I really wanted to get this sent out tomorrow morning before I have to go into work.
This is the finished piece that I have been working on. I'm not sure that I will keep the 3 beads on the bottom of the gold. I really wanted to find an interesting twig or piece of bark or something. On the outside edge, I ended up putting on some reeds that I bought in the Wal-Mart floral department. I still haven't decided if I will hang it as is or frame it. I left the top reed longer on both sides so I could hang the piece from the reed. If I decide to frame it, I can just cut the reeds off.

Quilting Arts Calendar Contest

I'm so excited! My quilt made it to the finals of the Quilting Arts calendar contest! Now I just need to put a label on the back and get it sent off to Quilting Arts. Of course, I would love to be one of the 13 to make it into the calendar but just to be one of the finalists is a big thrill for me!!! I really want to show you all a picture of it but will have to wait. It is going to be a long wait until they announce the winners!

I finally got around to joining the Artful Quilter's Webring. I kept putting it off because I wasn't sure I could get the html for the button inserted without messing my blog up. Well, the button is here and everything seems fine. Now I'm just waiting for approval. I need to figure out how to get people's personal buttons to show up in my link section and actually link to their site. I'll get there eventually!

My husband took my digital camera with him today, so I don't have any pictures to post. I wanted to get a picture of the finished piece I was working on yesterday or was it Wed? I can't keep track!

Round Robin

Last Friday was the Fiber Art Friends meeting. We exchanged our backgrounds for the round robin we are doing. This is what I came up with. I wanted to do something more than just a piece of fabric so I added a piece of cheesecloth I had sitting around. It added some texture, which is my theme, but still leaves lots of room for the others to explore, experiment and have fun! I forgot to ask if the others mind if I post theirs to my blog. Will have to remember to ask next time.
The theme for the one I have now is "Awakening". Since it is spring, I am thinking of trying a tulip or some spring flower in sheer fabrics. I've always wanted to try working with sheers.
Figuring out a theme and what I wanted to do for the background was harder than I thought it would be. While trying to decide, I pulled out my back issues of "Quilting Arts" and "Cloth, Paper, Scissors". I experimented with a couple of techniques that I decided against for the round robin but I ended up with some things that I have had fun making. The piece below is one. The center is a green piece of fabric with painted wonder under fused to it. That is sewed onto a brown paper bag that has been crumpled and colored with stamp pads and gold paint. I added two gold skeleton leaves. I still need to attach this to the fabric background and I need to figure out how to finish the edges of the green fabric. I zigzagged around the edge with gold thread but I think it need something more to finish it.
Here's a close up of the center. Wish it was clearer but you can see some of the straight stitching I did on the green. I sent an e-mail to "Cloth, Paper, Scissors" and they are sending me a new magazine to replace the one that never arrived.

Flower Class and More Fabric

No, we don't have Johnny Jump Ups coming up yet here in New Hampshire!! I'm taking another class at Quilt University with Susan Brittingham. It's called Flower Power. This is a picture I took last may and am using it for the class to make into a quilt. I have done a line drawing of it and enlarged to to about 18"x16". I have always wanted to make realistic looking flower quilts but just never got around to experimenting with it. By taking the class, I'm making myself learn how and learning some new techniques. One of the reasons I got a digital camera last spring was to be able to take good pictures of flowers to use as for quilts.
I tried posting these Sunday and again yesterday and couldn't get them to load. These are the final pieces that I dyed. The colors are off.



Our quilt group, Fiber Art Friends, is meeting on Friday. I'm looking forward to it. At the last meeting we decided to do a round robin project that we can display at our quilt show in October. It is based on one of the round robin projects we saw in the new Cloth, Paper, Scissors. Since my copy seems to be lost in the mail some where, I can't tell you which project it is exactly. I think it was canvases that they passed around and each person added something to it. (painting, collage, etc.) We thought it would be fun to do something like this but with fabric. A way to stretch and try some new things.
Each of us is picking a theme and then making a background(12"x18"). Picking a theme was harder than I thought it would be since I didn't want to fall back on all the things I seem to do. I finally picked texture as my theme. Completely different from what I would usually pick. More of an abstract concept. I picked a piece of hand-dyed fabric and now am trying to figure out how I want to add some texture to it.
It will be interesting to see what everyone comes up with and how we will all add to each piece.