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I love going on vacation, especially somewhere warm and green where I can leave the cold and snow far, far behind. I look forward to it for weeks and this year had my suitcase packed well before departure time. Then you come home. In a blizzard. But I am sustained with enough warm, green thoughts to get me through all of April and into May when hopefully I can start gardening, or playing in the dirt at least.

I've also come back with creative energies recharged and lots of ideas for art quilts. Whether they get from head to fabric is another story, but I'm OPEN and ready to rock and roll. We did a lot of art galleries in Key West where the employees are trained to get you into the 'black room' with whatever painting you happen to be studying. We learned quickly not to linger too long in front of any of them, though some did beg for a closer look. And I was able to make some quick sketches from memory of those I found most inspiring. Then proceeded to lose my journal. C'est la vie!

Funny Faces

Last fall I was asked by a friend of mine to come into her kindergarten classroom and talk about fabric. It was just as general as that. Oh, and there were two classrooms. And I would have 30 minutes in each. That's all. One half hour. So I thought about just doing a project, but that wouldn't really teach them anything and I did want to do that. So I put four different fabrics together on a safety pin, enough for each child. I had wool, cotton, silk, and polar fleece. Then I printed out large photos of sheep, a silkworm, a cotton plant and a pile of plastic bottles., and we had a very short discussion of what they felt like and where they came from. From there we went to our project which was making funny faces. I had the bases all fused to the backgrounds and lots of fused shapes which they placed where they wanted them and I ironed down. It was really fun and didn't take long, yet they could let their creativity take over.

I apologize for the terrible photoshopped pictures, but of course I couldn't show you all the darling kids holding up their work. They were the best part.

Work in Progress

This has gone together pretty quickly and I've only used two fabrics that I didn't paint the other day. I 've made this the correct dimensions in case i decide to use it in our guild challenge.The theme is "place", interpreted broadly, and if not a real place, you must be able to describe it. This is a garden in my winter mind, maybe not a real place, but certainly deliciously describable!
I'm working on some embroidered "wind" blowing through the sky right now and I'm really liking the look. More pictures soon.

Snow DAY!!

This is what I did today. Painted fabric and hung it to dry by the cookstove. It took about ten minutes tops. I was happy to be doing something creative and NOT WORKING! A free day, one where the whole world seems to be canceled. You jump out of bed with so much more energy.


And then when it was dry I actually started to sew it. And what colors show up on a dark and dreary day? Garden colors. Bright! Spring! The blue fabric on top of the pinkish is actually fusible interfacing. It sucked up the color beautifully. Tomorrow I'll have pictures.