This piece I did for the November challenge of the Fiber & Stitch Yahoo group. This group is for anyone who has a subscription to Fiber and Stitch online magazine.
Novembers challenge was to make a piece showing what home meant to you. To me home is a place where you feel safe, loved and accepted. Something I try to pass on to my kids. The background is a piece of paper fabric that I made, then painted. I then stamped on top of it. The heart is from a piece of silk paper that I made. I may try to stamp a few more words around the heart. When I did the stamping, I wasn't sure what I was going to do with it and now there are some empty space.

Tomorrow my art quilt group meets. I'm looking forward to it.

Challenge Postcard

Today I attempted another quilt for the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. This challenge was to use size and/or proportion in your work. I used a photo that was provided and attempted an abstract from it. I find it very hard to make abstracts. Pictoral quilts come really easy but working with abstracts I find very difficult. I keep second guessing myself and questioning my decisions. I even question my color choices. The landscape I showed in the last post came much easier.
Wish I had the original photo to show but that is on our yahoo group.
I had planned on doing alot of things but sad to say this little post card took most of my time. I did paint and stamp some paper fabric for another project but that is it!

Fast Friday Challenge #15

Fast Friday Fabric Challenge, isuued it's new challenge on Friday. Make a quilt keeping scale and proportion in mind. I made this in response. I still need to add some details like grass around the fence. I also think I will crop out some of the sky. I really wanted to do something abstract for this challenge but I really have a hard time making abstact quilts.
Right now especially, I seem to be in a funk. No matter what I start working on, I keep second guessing myself, telling myself it's not good enough. I had so much I wanted to get done today but it was so frustrating to have to clean an area off to work in and move my ironing board and table to get to my fabric cupboard. Now that I've done that, the livingroom is a mess and the kids will be coming home and messing everything up since this is where they do their homework and watch tv. Just really frustrated. I even got the new Quilting Arts Magazine, which usually inspires me but this time I leafed through it and just got depressed. Made me feel like I'll never be good enough. I know that I shouldn't be comparing myself with others, just focus on myself. But today I really feel like I should just stick with crafty stuff and following someone elses patterns.
Sorry about the ranting, I'm just really in a funk and can't seem to get out.

Motion Quilt

This is a journal size quilt I did for Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. At the beginning of each month we get a "theme" for our challenge and then have a week to make a quilt. Some, like me don't get it done in a week. This months challenge was to make a quilt that showed motion and use some type of embellishment technique. The quilt itself looks nicer than this picture. The yarns I couched down have gold metallic threads the sparkle more. I wanted to try something abstract instead of making some type of pictoral quilt.
This gave me a chance to practice my quilting and I tried a facing for the binding so that the binding didn't show on the front of the quilt.

Field Trip

Yesterday the ladies from my quilt group and I went to Lowell for a fun day out. I was finally able to meet Geri, who joined our book round robin this past spring.

We went to Western Avenue Studios and met Maxine Farkas and Karen Bettencourt. We had a nice visit. It was exciting to see and hear about Maxines art. Then we went down the hall to Friends Fabric Art and met Ann Lee. We had fun looking around her store and studio space. I did find some new things to play with. It was a very inspiring visit.

We had lunch at the Athenian Corner, a great Greek restaurant near the Lowell quilt museum.

Didn't have time to visit the museum.

On our way home, we stopped in Nashua to see the Quilter's Gathering quilt show. It was a quick run through. I did find some fabric and a book I've been wanting to buy. My big splurge for the day was a piece of hand-dyed fabric from Elin Noble. That's it in the poicture above. All the fabrics in her booth were gorgeous.

Journal Quilt

I can finally show my journal quilt: Colors of Autumn. I took these pictures before I sent it out to Houston but the picture of the whole piece didn't turn out that great. The colors in the close-up are more true to the actual quilt.

I'm trying to work on some new pieces but am still having problems working. I have ideas in my head and the pieces I make just aren't turning out like I want and then I get frustrated and don't know what to do. Maybe I'm just trying too hard.

Maybe it's time to work on a scrappy bed quilt that doesn't require any thinking and will use up fabrics that I don't use in my art quilts any more. I've been wanting to make one to replace one I made when I was a junior in college and it has been used and used and used. I hate to say it, it's 21 years old and is falling apart enough that I can't repair it anymore. Though my daughter did grab it the other night and has it on her bed again even though the batting is falling out!!