Category Archives: Sounds like the Blues

Snow Time

-snow-treesHello -from the snowy north…….

I think the snow has stopped  falling and sense I took this shot yesterday I know there is lots more snow out there- but this does give one the idea.    If I was still teaching- I would have used the fall to teach tree branch  forms  by giving the students gray paper and only black and white crayons.   They kids always did wonderful work when they were directed to slow down and look  at their world with a careful eye.    The slow down part is so important when it comes to snow- It quiets the world a bit too.

playday

I went down to the Turquoise Moon studio and spent as day playing with collage this week.  I seem to collect lots of cool images and do not take the time to work on them when I am home.  It takes a play Ginnyday like this one to remind me of the joy that I get from doing “paper work”.

Ginny wanted help making a bag for her Grand Daughter for Christmas.  So she came with her goods and we did the job yesterday afternoon.  The bag is for all the Fairy stuff Ginny had collected to give her for dress up.  It was fun.

Progress Report: cutting  Scrap Bag     I  still do not have my big sewing machine and I continue to use Garma Butterworth’s old Feather Weight.     I  have finally finished assembling the scraps from the scarp bag however.  So I started cutting them into 2.5″ strips.   I made the mistake of working on that step too long – 2 hours and my arm and index finger really paid the price for that excess.     That happened last Friday and I still feel a twinge of pain when I press too hard with the finger.   I am limiting myself to cutting only ten sections into the strips before I stop now.    I never really knew my habit of only doing one thing/ project  for about an hour was a good plan- I just thought of it as an extension of my teaching where I only had did one class  for 45min before I had a new bunch of students and usually a new grade level to deal with.  Now I see the benefit of not working too long at any one thing.   I will Bluesstill get the  cutting and assembly job done- it will just be a bit more slowly.     That is OK too as I am building these quilts to give away and there is no deadline.     I did decide to purchase a new sewing machine however as I do have a deadline for the wedding quilt.  The machine – a Berna B 350 will  come tomorrow or Sat.  I am excited about getting back into free motion work.

 Sounds like the Blues   I am still doing hand work on this piece.  I also started  a knitting  project too  so progress on this hand work  is slow. 

Minion  Minion  The other thing I just started was this Minion.   I think they are so silly and they always make me laugh- so here goes me attempt.  I am sure there are patterns out there- but I will muddle along.    I am sure I would not go this route if I had a free motion machine- so I will count  this as one of the unexpected blessings of only being able to sew treestrait stitches with a machine.

My holiday wish for all of you is- may you find joy in the challenges you face.

Keep Creating

Carol

 

 

Clean Up

Hello,

In the process of returning all my quilts to their normal storage spots I noticed how much orange I use in my work.  Then on further consideration I realized that it tends to appear more in the work I do in the fall when I see more orange and brown as the leaves change color here.    But now my world has become very muted and almost  mono chromatic.  prints  That was espically true today when the sky was gray and trees were black against it .  The leaves on the ground tended toward brows, and tans with a little rust there.  I will try to take note as to the color choices I Angelamake in the studio in the next few weeks.   I spent Tuesday with the  QuEG’s folks and we played with the Gelli plates.  Several of the gals had never done it before.  After a quick demo- the paint started flying and we all produced lots of colorful prints.

Folks did show and tell too of course.

Angela showed off her “10 Min Wonder ” table runners.  It really only took 10 min to put together she says and she is set to make lots.Corinne had been to the Red

Corinne Thread Retreat and she was excited by the experience too.   She came home with a box full of treasures.  Mostly in book forms this time.  It was a good day.

At the moment I am not making lots of progress  on my work because  my sewing machine is in the repair shop.   I was free motion sewing on the wedding quilt  when I noticed  there was a problem with the tension.So  I did pull out grandmother Butterworth’s old Feather Weight and  went to work on the scrap bags.  Being limited to froward and backward means I am limited to piecing.   It took the better part of last week and Monday to finish putting all the scraps into groups.  I started slicing them into 2.5inch units today and started assembling those into long strips for my Scarp Happy quilts.

Progress Report:

Flow Patterns 21.5X 38.5 $300.00
Flow Patterns
21.5X 38.5
$300.00

Flow Patterns    Although I do not have a machine now- I did earlier and I did finish the free motion work on this quilt befor.  This project just seemed to flow out my finger tips when I was pinning the parts up.  I so enjoy using my silk paper and that is what the most of this project is made of.  It does have some gold painted tyvek as an add on  portion too.flow

 

 

 

 

Flow pattern close up 2This work has lots of movement from my point of view.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Broadcasting

Broadcasting 23" X 26"  $215.00
Broadcasting
23″ X 26″
$215.00

I can do some work with only strait stitching and this piece only needed to have the facings added to do that part.     I enjoyed adding all the round elements by hand to this piece.  There are beads and pads from saxafones  on the surface of this work.  It was easy to stitch through the felted pads and the ones with leather were also easy to push the needles through.

Broadcastingcl2A friend who plays the sax is very impressed.

 

 

 

 

BD4Broadcastingcl1

 

 

 

 

 

YellowstongfullMemory Maps- Yellowstone    Even though I can only sew strait stitching I can work on this project a little.  I outlined the park and painted in the rives and Yellowstone lake.  Then I did the road lines.   I have added the Ranger Station at South Gate where Dad worked when we lived  there.    I am still working out exactly where I want to place the trailer that was our home  at this point.  And the trees- I remember so many lodge pole pine Map-Memory Yellowstone close uptrees in all directions….  It is fun to work away on this project as more and more memories of that wonderful season when I was seven keep flowing back to me.

 

 

 

 

clutchSilk Clutch     I needed a elegant small hand bag for a seasonal event last week.   So I looked at the silk paper( I was working on  Flow Patterns at the time) and found a bigger piece of some I had created with Ethel as fall.   This is strong enough to be a bag because we  sandwiched a piece of silk organza in the middle of the silk roving when we created the paper.   It worked well and I got several compliments on the bag.

The Blues clSound like the Blues     I am still doing lots of hand stitching on this work.   All the textures are starting to come together for me.

Keep Creating

Hugs

Carol