What I’ve Been Doing…Part 2

What have I been doing since last week?  Besides planning a short vacation trip in August with my hubby, my mind is trying to make decisions on what shows I will be doing this fall and what needs to be done for each of them.  I am vending at some art fairs and a couple of quilt shows. But first, a retreat coming up in August: I will be teaching free form machine quilting and vending.  I finished a new jacket sample this week, pattern by SuznQuilts. It turned out so cute!

My piece,…But Words Will Never Hurt Me (Sticks and Stones), hanging in the museum exhbit.  The opening was last Saturday and I received an Honorable Mention in the 3D category.  Can anyone tell me why that is?  I entered in the 2D category.  I sure would like to know how they arrived at an award in 3D.  A friend had a lovely huge sculpture in the show…I wondered how that made her feel? I would appreciate hearing any thoughts on this.

A call came from the Indiana Heritage quilt show from Bloomington, IN.  This is a fairly well attended 3 day show next March.  They wanted to know if I was still interested in vending.  I’ll give it a shot, although I’ve never done a 3 day show.  Should be fun, as long as the country isn’t in a spending depression by then!

Paducah…

I’ve been to the AQS quilt show at Paducah, KY this week.  On Tuesday, I drove down and met up with friends from back home.  We hit Hancock’s, then went to Eleanor Burns, then to downtown.  My friends, Betty and Steve Cummings from the Village Mercantile quilt shop in Boonville, IN were vending in the downtown area.  I hung out with them a bit and saw the fiber art show across the street at the Yeiser Art Center.  We spent the night at Drury Inn and Suites which graciously provided us with dinner of pizza and salad, baked potatoes with the trimmings, nacho chips and drinks, as well as breakfast the next morning.  It’s a great place to stay.

Wednesday morning we left for the quilt show.  The one major thing I noticed about the show was the extremely high quality of a lot of the quilts.  I think this year, the competition must have been much stiffer to get in, just because there were so many high quality quilts.  I roamed through the vendors, finally finding the ones I really needed to find (that would be Pro-Chem for dyes).  In the afternoon, I went to the Embellishment Village booth and worked for Greg and Betty Blais, doing Angelina demos.  Met up with my friends for a great Mexican dinner and then found my new “hotel” for the night, staying with a very nice couple for the night.  I then worked again for Embellishment Village on Thursday and came home that night.  I didn’t buy much.  My work for Embellishment Village paid for  a few things I wanted to stock up on for my own booth.  I got some new Botanicals stencils, new Angelina colors, the new Happy Holidays rubbing plates from Cedar Canyon Textiles.  I also stocked up on glitter towers and foiling glue and patterns.

For myself, I purchased Kerr Grabowski’s dvd on Deconstructed Screen Printing.  After watching it yesterday, I am anxious to get to work!  This morning I am working on printing silk scarves.  It feels good to be getting back in the creative mode!

Creativity…Or Not…

Just to be sewing and in an attempt to jump start creativity this week, I decided to start on a new sample for a class I will teach at the shop. ( I did create on Wednesday, but it didn’t translate to cloth.  It was a story for my little kids class at church.)

I purchased the fabric for this sample last Saturday. Now I  will need to sell the class to recoup my costs.  Anyway, I decided to work on what was in front of me to hopefully start the juices flowing.  Here is the block and the fabrics I am using.

I bought 4 fabrics for the blocks, which will alternate and the sashing and border will be the yellow fabric.  The blocks are woven.   The collection of fabrics is called Serenity and is by Don Baker (?) it looks like (it’s hard to read).  Clothworks makes it.

I liked making the block and writing down notes for the class….but I don’t feel the juices flowing yet.  It was good to be sewing and experimenting again, though.  I have read one suggestion to “just show up”.  I guess I could try that.  But today I think I will read an article in the new QA magazine by Jane Davila…called “it’s About  Time”.

BTW I will be putting in some work time at the Paducah quilt show on April 21 and 22 (that’s Wed/Thurs).  I will be working for Betty Blais at the Embellishment Village booth.  Come by and see us!

Back Home…

I’m back from the Decatur show and trying to catch up on things here at home.  This show is put on by mostly traditional quilters, so my sales of artsy supplies weren’t as good as I would have liked. I’ve done better in past years, so it could be the economy.  The previous weekend I had a knockout day at the National Quilting Day event in our area.  It was like there was absolutely NO recession.  So who knows why you can sell better in one area than another.  It’s good to be home after 4 days gone.  April is the month I plan to do lots of new art for an art fair the first weekend of May.

I had an appraisal done of a new art piece while I was gone.  Sandy Sweitzer of PAQA is always the appraiser at the Decatur event and she appraised my new piece, “…Words Will Never Hurt Me”, which will go into a museum show this summer.  Her appraisal value exceeded my expectations!

In addition to getting an appraisal, I bought a few things…thread marked down cheap and some hand dyed cotton thread.  Of course, I could have dyed it myself, but I like supporting other hand dyers too.  Look at all the colors!

The New Year

It is the last day of 2008.  My blog is set on some weird time zone, but I think it will show that I am still writing this in 2008.

(Note:  Whoops, guess not…after I published it I see it shows Jan. 1. 2009.  Oh, well.)

It is hard to be pensive and thoughtful about the past year as I am cleaning and fixing food, in preparation for a few guests tonight.  Perhaps I will be able to tomorrow.  Of course, my husband will also be home with me, so, maybe not. I am making that yummy potato soup recipe with homemade croutons that I have talked about before and the shrimp cocktail is on ice.

A lot of people on the quiltart list are already talking about goals for 2009.  Hmmm…all I know is that my first three months of the year are likely to be quite busy and I am gearing up mentally.  I will be attending two quilt retreats (count ‘em…two!) in January.  My husband purchased one of them as a Christmas gift to me. What a sweetie.  I have a project class scheduled to teach at the quilt shop in Evansville.  In February I have a machine quilting class scheduled and the rest of the month will be spent preparing to vend at the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show in Bloomington, IN.  I received notification that they had a space available.  Since I have wanted to vend there for a few years, I jumped at the chance.  So I will be dyeing fabric as well as making decisions about my inventory of other artsy things to take.  The Indiana Heritage show is a fairly large show lasting 3 days.  I may also have the opportunity to teach a workshop for a Greenwood quilt guild while I am up there.  Currently I am still slugging around trying to complete the commission proposal.  It is not finished yet.  I am making small advances.

Anyway, here’s wishing every reader a VERY BLESSED NEW YEAR!

New piece I’ve been working on for a “go green” exhibit…I’m sure it’s now done..except for finishing the edges…made from a section of an old quilt…

The Kreativ Blogger Award

I just read on Gerrie’s blog, a comment by someone that the word “Kreativ” is not a misspell, it’s German.  I’m glad to have that cleared up, because there was talk going around about that “misspell” and what it might mean.

I also agree with Terry that the logo is quite ugly (pink and blue are not my favorite colors), so I have designed a new one.  It’s quite simple and if I could ever figure out how to upload it to get it on a post I would show it.  But I probably won’t spend time on it today.  Sorry.  Maybe later.  I have other things I’d rather do today.

Today, my art project is a recycling one for an upcoming exhibit at the Rend Lake visitor’s center.  I am a member of the Illinois Artisan’s program and usually have some things for sale in their art shop.  This exhibit will take place starting in February, 2009 and run til the end of April.  The Paducah AQS show is in April and Rend Lake gets lots of visitors on their way from and to the quilt show, so they always plan something special for that time.  The exhibit is entitled “Repurposed, Renewed, and Reborn”.  For this project we are to buy nothing new, but to use what we have by recycling, reusing and reinventing.  At the moment I have cut a section of a very tattered old quilt and I put gesso on it.  I plan to paint and embellish it for my entry.  This is the starting point.

I would like to keep some of the background colors peeking through and want to definitely tone down the pink feedsack.  I can’t wait to start painting and will be using some Lumiere paints.

Hey, if I like it enough, maybe I’ll start a “series”.  I have plenty of that quilt left!

Friday This ‘N That…

There are not a lot of exciting things happening this week.  I am starting to think about what I need to have ready for a quilt show in Elizabethtown, KY.  It is the 19th and 20th, but I will leave on the 18th to go get set up.  The dyeing, painting and printing class that I have been doing SO much preparation for is cancelled at the Rend Lake facility.  I was so looking forward to teaching this class, but there will be another time, and I have a bunch of new cool fabrics!

I am working on a new sample.  The pattern is Kimonos by Betty Blais of Embellishment Village.  Most people would probably use oriental fabrics for this pattern, but I am using my hand dyed fabrics.  See…

I will probably make a couple of other blocks using different fabrics.  I am also planning on painting some sky fabrics to sell with patterns from the Accidental Landscapes series.  And there are probably a few other small samples to make.  I sell Angelina fibers and film, paintstiks and accessories, beads and beading supplies, surface design books, as well as patterns, kits and fabrics.  I plan my booth to offer items for the quilter interested in trying something new and, so that it will offer items other vendors might not have. I will be demo-ing paintstiks, Angelina products, and foiling with some new glue and foiling glue pen products.  I am really looking forward to this show.  Last year was the first year I vended and the reception from the quilters was very good.

It is cooling off here some this morning and I am thinking about getting outside and creating some more dye painted cloth.  I have some ideas I want to try.

Keep making art!

The Last Few Days…

…I know I’ve been pretty quiet here. That’s because…last week I was contemplating expanding my selling options by opening an Etsy shop. On Thursday I signed up and on Friday I listed a few items. I will be using the shop to sell hand made textiles, silk scarves, and small pieces of fiber art. People started to visit the shop on Friday. By Friday evening I had two people who “hearted” me. Etsy people will know what that means! That was exciting. So I have been busy with that. See the shop here.

On Saturday, I taught two short classes in Evansvile. The first class was this little bag made by Jill. She was thrilled with it. I also managed to get two of them made at the same time!

The patterns for the other class didn’t make it to the shop…and then I discovered I had forgotten mine! Have you ever “winged it” when teaching a pattern class? Fortunately for me, it was a tote bag and I had just made my class sample in May, but still…I had to think. I teach so many different projects, that I just can’t be expected to know on a whim what is what. I threatened to take the sample apart, but it all came back to me, step by step. Whew! This was a pretty cool bag and the way it was made was pretty cool. It was the Whimsy Bag by Lazy Girl.

I have so many things I am working on and need to work on, I feel like I am running in circles. I have one quilt show in Kentucky lined up for the fall and I am making up a few samples that feature my hand dyes so that I can sell kits. I’ll give you a sneak preview of one sample, but it is not complete as I am still deciding on what the borders will be. This pattern is called Rosa and Friends and it was designed by Betty Blais of Embellishment Village. I think she did a great job.

Have a great week!

Paducah…

I’m back from Paducah…and it was a great trip. ! saw friends from other places, did lots of walking and shopping, and spent too much. I ran into Kathy Arnett again working for Embellishment Village. The last time I posted about meeting her, I didn’t know that she had a fabulous website that tells about the retreat she organizes every year, so here it is…www.fabricationsretreat.com. Be sure to check it out!

I purchased all the fun stuff…ceramic beads, dyes, paints, etc. I did buy some commercial fabrics that I thought I would cut the motifs from and use in something and some stripes. I also got some great cinnamon colored solids that I will put some surface design on. I also found some newsprint fabric and tape measure fabric.

There were new vendors on ParkAvenue across from Bluegrass Honda—good stuff there! A really great hand dyer with wonderful shibori pieces. A wonderful “black/white and one other color” challenge was hung in there as well as two solo quilt exhibits. Of course, the quilts at the show were great as usual. It was interesting listening to people comment about certain ones. One comment was that one person “cheated” by painting ovals on her quilt instead of appliqueing them. (Of course, I loved it.) Others were surprised at the choice of Best of Show. There were several whole cloth quilted pieces that had been painted or inked after the quilting, and I thought they were quite stunning.

I was hoping I would find some Adirondack Dabbers for sale there, but was unable to locate them. I did find some Adirondack paints in these yummy colors…Butterscotch, Raisin, Denim, Terra Cotta, Eggplant and Bottie..and the price was VERY good. I have some little wooden daubers I can use with them.

I probably can’t say enough about our stay at the Drury Inn and Suites. They provided a wonderful dinner and breakfast for us. It was awesome. And of course, to get to spend the time with good friends from back home is totally awesome too. Now that all of my running around is done, I can get back to “normal life”. I have a baby quilt waiting for me to finish quilting, then I have an art festival next weekend. I am looking forward to that and hoping it won’t be hot or rainy. I’m not asking for much, eh?

Another One?…..And off to Paducah We Go

I just heard on the news this morning that another earthquake occured in this area shortly after midnight this morning. It was measured at 4.5 and the center was 45 minutes away from me at Mt. Carmel. I slept through it, but it woke my husband up. You can check out all the recent earthquake activity at the USGS site here. It is very interesting to read. I never knew that Alaska had so many quakes.

On another, unrelated, topic, I leave for Paducah tomorrow to spend a couple of days with my friends there. Tomorrow we will shop, shop, shop…and on Wednesday, we will probably shop, shop, shop…and see quilts. I don’t think earthquakes will stop us.

I have been spending my weekend installing a new email client and getting it up and running and connecting with my server. Outlook Express has totally fallen apart. I still can’t get one of the email addresses working, but kathy@katherinesands.com is working, hallelujia. My 70 gb hard drive filled up over the weekend, so I bought a 320 gb external hard drive to put all my photos on. (There, that oughta hold me for awhile.) I have so much computer work to do, I can’t see straight. But…first things first…Paducah.

Here is the last photo I saw of my fabric making its way through the Round Robin #1 circle on the complexcloth list. It will be interesting to see the final outcome in person! See ya’.