Bump in the road

Even though I said I wasn’t going to count my Weekly Special projects, I couldn’t help myself. I felt a need to see if I was on track for my goal of finishing one a week. This is week 9.

I have eight done, so I’m close. I’m putting quite a bit more work into these than I first anticipated, but I’m enjoying what I’m doing. I think if I don’t keep exactly to one per week, but stay close, I’ll be satisfied. The ultimate goal is to discipline myself into always having something to work on…and work on it.

There are a few more ready to go, or close to ready.

I do love those gingkoes!

The embroidered leaves on batting need some quilting around them to hold the  parts together before they are mounted. I thought a simple outline and echoing would be fine. Ummm…not so much!

I think it looks awful. Totally takes away from the embroidery and beading.

I’m going to try a more neutral thread color and maybe not an outline. Probably a simple spiral.

Right now I need to spend some time removing some dark green thread! Not my favorite process…

New “stuff”

While I’m on vacation, I usually hit every fabric, bead and thrift shop in the vicinity. This time, I seriously avoided the fabric stores, because I AM trying not to accumulate more fabric. However, I did visit some bead and thrift stores and has some success spending my few little dollars!

Actually, the only piece of fabric I bought was a silk tie at my favorite thrift shop.

Aren’t the colors scrumptious? There is a surprising amount of fabric in a tie, so this will turn up in more than one piece, I’m sure. I took a couple of skinny, free cut strips and added them to the piece I was working on.

There will be more beading, but this is where it’s at right now.

Speaking of beads…here are the beads I took with me, planned for use on this piece.

I stopped at the bead store to see if there was anything interesting to add to these. I kind of went overboard and stocked up on a few other beauties!

Obviously not to go on this piece, but I sure do love gorgeous, shiny “stuff.” I honestly tried to be restrained and only went into the store twice. But then the ladies wanted to see what I had been working on, so I had to go back. And I knew that we were leaving in a couple of days…well, what’s a bead addict to do?

And here’s the biggest lovely bit of “stuff” that I brought back—

It’s probably made in some sweat shop and I’ll go to hell for supporting exploitation, but I had to have it! Totally beaded, totally useless and totally beautiful!

That’s it for today’s “stuff”–what I’m doing and what I’ve done to NOT be de-stashing! Now back to work to use some of this up!

Major leaf printing

You know by now that I love to use leaves for stamping paint on fabric. Both last year and this year while we were in Florida, there was a large leaf that kept shouting at me to use it. I ignored it until our last day there and then I broke down, bought a chunk of fabric and some paint. I wanted gray, and couldn’t believe the store I was at did not have gray fabric paint! So I settled for yellow, with white to temper it.

The first print was very pale, but I think I’ll be able to use it. I had to darken it to show it here, it’s so pale!

But you can’t really tell what it is! The next one was quite a bit darker.

And you can start to see that it’s a philodendron selloum

and these things are BIG!! I picked a smaller leaf–it was only as long as my arm!

I did a couple of smaller ‘parts’ of the leaf and a half leaf, which is my favorite!

The last print I did was was using the leaf as a mask and just painting around the edges. I like it a lot, too.

You know by now that I don’t work on projects in a linear fashion. I will do something with these, but it’s not going to be tomorrow. It’ll be whenever and I’ll show you when I do something, but it’s an idea in the bank now…several ideas, actually, because these are huge!

Don’t know what I’ll be working on next…there are so many possibilities. I prefer that term to UFO’s! Stay tuned!

777 Giveaway Winner

Michigan is a mighty cold state right now…as is a lot of the country, I know! It’s nice to get a warm Florida winter break, but it’s always good to be home, even if it IS totally frozen over.

Haven’t been downstairs to select fabric for the giveaway winner, but Mr. Random Number Generator and I have selected a winner. I’m so happy that my fabric will find a new home with

Dana Charlton!

I’ll shoot you an email and we’ll get some fabric sent out. Enjoy!

Edit: Here’s what I’m sending…sorta matchy-matchy for someone who doesn’t have a big stash.

777

WordPress has informed me that I have published post number 777. Actually, more than that now. Doesn’t a number like that mean I should give something away?

I’m sure that someone, somewhere could use a couple of fat quarters of fabric. I think I can find some to share!

Just leave a comment and I’ll be happy to pick someone with whom to share!

Comments closed so that I can pick a winner! Thanks, everyone, for participating!

Artist Chit Chat

Today was a wonderful day for me! I got to go visit glass artist Marilyn Catlow. We talked and talked and I was so glad to get to know her better. She has had some health issues so she is not doing shows anymore, but she is still represented in at least one gallery–which I neglected to get the name of! Her eyesight is having some issues, too, that she has to work around. She is still making new work, though, because she is a true artist and she MUST create!

And her work…!!!!! I am totally and unconditionally in love with it. Even including my own work, I love glass art the best of all media. Marilyn had pieces hanging from every inch of wall space in her home. She said that many of the pieces were older and that the particular style of this or that piece wasn’t as popular today. Well, it was ALL still just as popular as ever with me.

She has been publicly recognized for her contributions to public art and she has more ribbons than I could count. I took quite a few snapshots and I’ll share them with you in a little slideshow.

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The most amazing part of the day was that Marilyn GIFTED me with two pieces of her art!!!! I could not believe her generosity, but there was no way I was going to decline. I am one of the happiest creatures on earth right now.

Look–these pieces are MINE, all mine!!! Hooray!

So much gorgeousness going on my walls. I can’t stop smiling!

Tourist Report

Feb. 8–went to the Mt. Dora Festival of the Arts. Huge event and we didn’t see the half of it in the time we spent there. Promised ourselves we’d go back and check out the town after the festival was over.

Today was the day. I didn’t take a lot of pictures of the shops…lots of art and handmade items and I didn’t want to infringe on anyone’s proprietary work. But here’s the scoop…this town is absolutely darling! Lots of little shops–some are typical tourist gift stores and some are wonderfully unique.

It was quite cold, for Florida! We went up and down all the Mr. Dora hills. Almost bought the shirt that said “I conquered Mt. Dora. Elevation 144 ft.”

Then I saw the front of this building and fell in love. I could have taken 100 pictures right here!

I feel like I left out a lot of detail with the pictures I took, but it was just wonderful.

We only looked at the buildings down by the water, which were also spectacular, but it was too cold and windy to be a picture taker there. However, right at the start of the downtown area, this Victorian beauty just called out to my camera…

Blazing sun made it hard to capture accurate color, but every fancy bit of gingerbread you can think of was on this place. It’s the Masonic building here now, but it started life as a private home. Yumminess!

We were just delighted with our day in Mt. Dora and I highly recommend it to anyone touristing around this part of Florida. We didn’t see everything…we left something to see for next time!