Detours Postcard

I just found out that my "Go With the Flow" quilt is featured on the Detours postcard! They did a great job, and I'm thrilled.

Detours is the special exhibit put on by Quilts on the Wall Fiber Artists, and it will be at the Long Beach International Quilt Festival later this month.

moo, meow and Gramps

My Moo Cards arrived! Now I have some nice cards to give out/trade at the Long Beach Quilt Festival and beyond. I've been making do with cards printed out on my computer, a page at a time.

In other news, the "Edges" exhibit has been accepted into the Houston Quilt Festival. Woohoo!

I'm racking my brain for an idea for a "summer" quilt. I am currently leaning towards my desert tortoise, Gramps. Summer is his time (heck, he hibernates for five months a year in the colder months). Or I could make a summertime quilt about my fluffy cat, Olive. She doesn't have much to do with summer, but she's prettier than Gramps.

fun with fabric

I've been experimenting with some of the dyed fabrics I made in Rayna Gillman's class. I made some more stamps with fun foam and stamped away. Even the dyed fabrics that I had been disappointed with seemed to benefit from the extra layers.

Once again, Matilda has to be in the photo.

Notice the two baby hummingbirds on one of my stamps!

It occurred to me that these fabrics might look great in clothing. So I made a blouse, mixing in some other fabric that I also stamped on. What do you think?

My dressmaking skills are still rusty. I'm still figuring out current-day pattern sizing versus current-day me sizing!

I'm here and I'm there

One of my friends just told me that my "Detours" quilt is on the Quilts Inc. media page! Cool. This was a quilt I've had to keep under wraps. Check it out! Scroll down, I'm near the bottom of the page.


http://www.quilts.com/mediapage/

Also, I've been meaning to mention that I am a participant in an online sale on the California Fiber Artists website. Here's the link:

http://www.cafiberartists.com/gallery/gallery.asp

Scenes from Rayna's workshop

Here are a few photos from Rayna's class, just to give you the gist of it. The walls were really colorful with our fabrics!

Next is a photo of my rinsed fabrics on the dryer, waiting their turn to dry.

I had only mixed four dyes, which limited my fabric palette. I wish I'd had time to mix more. I'll probably do some overdyeing.

Finally, here is a photo of the baby hummingbirds on Sunday morning, reunited in the palm tree in the atrium. Today I saw one of them flying around the atrium, from one palm tree to the other. Woohoo!

rayna gillman workshop

I took a 2-day workshop with Rayna Gillman at Fullerton College this weekend, organized by Carol Henke. I loved it, it was amazing. Although I am familiar with screenprinting and procion dyeing, her method of deconstructed screenprinting with thickened dyes was new to me. I learned so much, and I am eager to do more on my own. I came home with a ton of cool fabric, which I still need to rinse out. Rayna was such a great teacher, and the students came up with such beautiful stuff!

I promise to post photos tomorrow, but tonight I'm pooped.

On the hummingbird front, there have been some sightings in the atrium of both babies and mama bird. I've seen the babies both alone and together sitting in the palm tree, perched upon the stems of the palm fronds. I've seen the mother feeding one of the babies. They have abandoned the nest, and there is evidence of the feathers being removed from the inner lining. I can't imagine the mother would be building the babies a new nest at this point, so I really don't understand what that is about.

Empty Nest

About six clock this evening, my husband noticed that the babies had flown from the nest. One of them was on a branch above the nest for quite some time. Then the mother lured him over to the palm tree. Now who knows where they are. All we can do now is wish them well....

It's been quite an experience for us. I feel inspired, to try making a mixed media nest, or a mixed media book, a quilt, or???