Hello,

The last fling of summer is over and the kids are all back in school.    I find that this time offers me a great time to reorganize as I prepare for the fall and up coming winter.    I need to sort a bit as I put away the shorts and summer tees.  It is also  a good time for me to look critically at what I really use.  Like that wonderful divided basket that I thought I would use to carry dinner things to the patio that I never even pulled out of the cupboard this summer.   The back end of my station wagon is full of items like that- all perfect ally good, but not necessary to my life that I am now passing along.    It is very easy to pile up too much stuff- so now I feel a bit lighter and look forward to doing a bit of wall painting next week.

I hung a solo show at  Man in the Moon Gallery in Kings Ferry on Friday last week.   There  are about a dozen works in this show all featuring  the golds, oranges and browns of fall.   I had a good time preparing and hanging the show.

Tuesday this week was the first Tuesday of the month and so I had meetings.  The QuEG’s  had wonderful things to share.

Angela is creating a wonderful hand embroidered  baby quilt for her first grand child.  The theme is  Australian birds and animals.  The Kookaburra is one of them.   She is doing a beautiful job .

Barb is creating family history works with bits of hand work from her relatives.

 Linda is quilting away on a very colorful lap quilt to keep her knees comfortable this winter.  I think these colors will keep summer memories worm too.

Liz kindly modeled my latest  fabric flower necklace   at the meeting.  I thank her for that.  I only have one more to complete.

She also has been taking a

watercolor class and did some wonderful work in that area as well.

Then in the evening, I went off to the Diva meeting.  This time of year seems to make many quilters  want to dye.  Both Sally and  Ruth put in time on that topic this month.     They both show their individuality even in their dying colors and techniques.    I love that.       Sally is also putting together a small accordion book to send to Elsie who has moved away.   Everyone is adding a small 4″ X 6″  page to the work.    The wood cut is by Liese and the Fimo bird is by Donna.  The book will be sent to her when it is complete.     It is so very thoughtful of Sally to come up with this idea.

Liese is working on wonderful project using Valerie Goodwin’s book, Art Quilt Maps  her jumping off point.    This is her start of her work displaying her  favorite place in the whole world.  This is just an early stage she says and she has yet to add houses and churches and trees  to the work.  I find it fascinating and look forward to  seeing how it grows and changes with her efforts.

Anne is working on several things.  One is a block exchange that she is creating wonderful reverse applique leave blocks for.  I like the fact that she has pieced the fabric for the appliqued units she is using to create her leaves.  They will all be unique that way.

Susan made us all laugh with her  big head parrot choris.     She made the removable paper mache’ heads over little soft bodied little creatures that she had picked up at garage sales for about ten cents a piece.    What fun.

Noel  does wonderful work with silk and this is a close up of some of her style.    She too dyes many of her fabrics to get the tones and shades she wants.  They are just luscious and I can hardly keep my fingers off of them.  She really is a master of curved piecing.

I feel so very fortunate to be a part of such strong artistic groups of women.

 Progress Report:  The Road Less Traveled     I am still doing the hand and machine work on this piece.    I am doing lots of fly stitch as well as chain and ladder stitches on this one.

 Stone Church   This work has not appeared in a while.  I did not know what I wanted to do with it.    Like Liesi it is based on a memory of a location.   I was stuck  so I  looked again in Valerie Goodwin’s book and decided to push forward.  I painted the church on the organza and  and then I carefully placed dark fabrics behind the opening in the decaying structure.      It is getting there  but the concept is not quite in place yet.   Some work just takes lots of time.

New Work     This is a close up of the quilt using the orange kimono fabric I purchased a few weeks ago.  I am almost ready to start quilting it.  I thought I knew what I wanted to do and had picked out some wonderful Chinese Characters to use as my pattern – then I realized – this is Japanese material- not Chinese.  I will keep thinking.

Daily News     I am still working on finishing the blocks for this project.  But I can see the end of the process now.   I am still adding/ subtracting  and altering the  units daily and that is why there is so much size in the photos.   I do not always stand at the same distance from one day to the next.

Please write if you have any comments.

Keep Creating,

Carol