Flying Solo

I'm very excited to announce my first solo show! Um, OK. It's not really a 'show', it's a display case. But hey, all 16 linear feet of it are mine! And I have to admit, just that little bit is still exciting. I've had one other display case before, but it was part of a larger art quilt exhibit. It was in another city. I was anonymous. Well, I mean, my name was on it, but who knew me there? Not to downplay that one at all...it was great. But I could still hide behind the rest of the show. This time it's just me...my little creations...right there for everyone who comes into the library to see...right here where I live.

It will be on display until the end of September, and then it will move on to the Associated Artists gallery in Winston-Salem, NC.

Yea!!!!

Art Unleashed Auction

Last night marked the second Forsyth Humane Society's Art Unleashed Auction fundraiser. As before, the entire evening was well planned, well attended, and a great big lot of fun. The event was hosted in the gorgeous lobby of the Wachovia Center building in downtown Winston-Salem. There were 28 pieces sold in the silent auction (where mine was) and 20 offered in a live auction. It was fun to encourage bidders on my piece...near the end it became a bidding contest between two people, down to the wire. At the close of the silent auction is when things got really lively...(I guess that's why they call that part a LIVE auction!) They had a great auctioneer and people were cheering and clapping, encouraging the bidders to out do one another.
I don't know yet just how much money was raised, but whatever the amount it will go to help fund the many programs of FHS and enable them to continue helping animals in need. I'm glad I got to be a part of that! A big thank you goes out to my sponsors, the Womble Carlyle Bulldogs.

Here is my Lucy Loves the 'Bow-House' - a play on Bauhaus and inspired by the real Lucy, whom we adopted from FHS. (The 'Garfield' sign is for the adjacent piece not shown)

And here are her proud new owners!

FOOTNOTE: I heard the total was about $55,000!!! Yea!!!!

12+ Hours of Fun

Friday was a BLAST! I arranged a mini in-town day retreat for some of my best quilting buddies. We started at 8 am and sewed until dinner at 7 pm...well, they sewed. I left Bernie at home, and instead designed and fused and glued the beginnings of my next art piece. And actually, Salem Stitcher spent her time pin basting...about a hundred quilts (That girl is amazing!! Every time I looked over she had a new one on the table...and I'm not talking little tiny wall hangings, they were all large quilts. I don't know how she does it...I am always in awe).

All day, great friends, no phones, right across the street from my favorite coffee shop, and thanks to Quiltkeemosabe we had CHERRY M&M's. Oh my...those are some kind of GOOD!!! There were lots of other good things to munch on too. And for our mid day entertainment, Nane's sister brought in lunch and by request "the biggest Diet Coke that they have" for 2 of the quilters. Lesson in be careful what you ask for...she picked up lunch from KFC and the biggest "individual serving" drink they have is a half gallon BUCKET. With a lid, and a place for a straw. Like a giant sippy cup. We laughed so hard it made me cry!

It was heavenly. In fact, since we were using the fellowship hall of the church I attend I called it "Quilter's Heaven."

We finished up the day's fun with dinner at the neighborhood Italian restaurant, joined by 3 other quilters in from Raleigh for a Saturday sew-in with Salem Stitcher. I bet she gets most of those basted quilts quilted...she is a FM goddess! (That's free-motion quilting for my non-quilting friends). Good food and more laughter. The perfect end to a perfect day.

In attendance were Salem Stitcher, Quiltkeemosabe, Mrs. Goodneedle, Nane, Bonnie and myself. We will be having a repeat performance in 3 weeks with more friends from 'Miss Bee Havin' and I can't wait!

Mrs. Goodneedle, Quiltkeemosabe, and Nane

Salem Stitcher...speed basting

What I was working on...doesn't look like much yet but by day's end it was starting to take shape!

And I don't think I can show what Bonnie was doing because it is going on the cover of a magazine and I don't want to be arrested by the Quilt Police for spoiling the reveal. But keep a watch out for it in print...it is a fun scrappy quilt!

Interior Design

Yes, I really do interior design...I know, I haven't posted any pictures about any of my projects yet. That's because construction takes a looong time, even with the best contractors. It's just the nature of the beast. Forget what happens on Extreme Home Makeover... it is great and I love what they do for people, but real world construction doesn't have an army of tradespeople cranking it out in a week.

Anyway, I do have exciting news in that two of my projects are quickly becoming reality...a Thai restaurant that I did the design work for late last year is finally about to start upfit construction. It is going into the street level of a new multi-story high-end condominium project and will be a relocation and expansion for the restaurant. And speaking of condominiums, I have been working equally as long on a really cool rehab condo project that as of today has drywall going up!! This project is a conversion of an old downtown brick warehouse building and has been a lot of fun to watch evolve. It is now at the point of construction where things will start to happen more quickly, and I hope to be posting some before, during, and after pictures within the next couple of months. Stay tuned....

Eleven ALREADY??

I keep getting flashbacks to the episode of 'I Love Lucy' where she was working on the candy line at a factory, and the candies just kept coming faster and faster and faster and there was no way to keep up with the pace of everything flying by...

My firstborn just turned 11! How did THAT happen?? Where is the little baby that I just brought home...or at least it seems like I just did. Time sure does go fast. Now he's almost as tall as I am and I keep teasing him saying that now we'll have to see eye to eye on everything (he tends to like to debate...a future trial lawyer in the making)

In a moment of mild insanity I agreed to a camp-out sleepover party...for 10 boys! On Saturday afternoon about an hour before everyone was to arrive, the sky let loose with its own form of madness in one of the worst storms I've seen in a while...and it happened when I was out picking up the cake. There were trees down and a stoplight had crashed to the pavement...I wasn't sure I was going to get home, but I did...only to find the power was out. No problem...I already had flashlights for each of the boys. My concern was turning the camp-out to a camp-IN!! Fortunately for everyone, as quickly as the weather turned nasty it turned beautiful again. And with the drought we've had, even the vast amount of rainfall had not flooded out the campsite. So the tents went up and the power came back on and all was well.

It was one of the most fun nights we've ever had at our house.

The boys all got along perfectly...we had pizza and cookie cake...they played Spotlight Tag out in the dark yard until they wore themselves out, then piled into the biggest tent to play video games. I sat on the back steps watching the soft flicker of flashlights through the tent walls and listening to them singing and giggling - OK, it wasn't Kum Ba Ya, it was a sing along to a rock song from Guitar Hero - and it was one of those serene moments when everything seems right with the world and you know that lifelong memories are being made. It was just downright blissful.

And in spite of the attempted "spookings" by two of our neighbors (related to two of the guests) all but 4 of the boys actually stayed in the tents all night. (Two of those 4 stayed up until about 3:30, but that's another story! yawn!)

Happy birthday big guy!

Creature Comforts

Well, I'll just cut right to it. We now have another Eastern Painted turtle that my almost 11 year old 'rescued' from the lake in our neighborhood. He/she (how do you tell??) is a bit bigger than the original "Turtle Buddy", and seemed a bit freaked out by his/her new luxury surroundings at first. Luxury...that's what I call clean water and cool rocks to climb on...well, if I was a turtle anyway. As a human I have vastly different ideas about luxury....but I digress. Now the pair are a happy little duo. I wonder if we will be hosting a turtle nursery one day??

Anyway, it has been a fun week of discovery. We also spent the better part of one day visiting friends who have lots of land to explore and, yep, the boys found a turtle there too. A cute Box turtle. I didn't let that one come home with us...two are plenty, thanks! But here he/she is...

Don't you just love the colors and patterns on that shell? Awesome little creatures, turtles are. I can see this inspiring an art quilt...oooh, maybe that's where I can use my rust dyed fabric! Hmmm...

I had a wonderful, relaxing visit on the porch of my friend's home while all of our boys (she has 3, and another friend came with her 2) ran out some of their summer energy. Sometimes you have to slow down and enjoy the company of good friends, the beauty of the world outside, and the creatures you find along the way.

Ah, back to work now....

I'm Getting Rusty

Well, another beach vacation has come and gone, and I'm glad to be back at home. Because of packing limitations I couldn't take Bernie with me (my sewing machine...yes, my husband and kids got to go!), so I took a small case full of fabric to play with. I played with rust dyeing for the first time, which was really fun and I was pretty pleased with the results...

Here's what I started with...

...plus some plain muslin. I started confiscating everyone's empty water bottles and soda cans, then took chunks of these fabrics, soaked them in a white vinegar and water solution, bunched them up around the various containers, and wrapped them with silver toned florist wire. Then I tied them up in a plastic grocery bag and set them out on the porch to do their thing. At this point I smelled quite like a salad, which made me hungry for lunch...

Fast forward to the next morning and two of them looked 'ready', so I unwrapped the wire and saved it in a large plastic bowl, then took them down to the dock to give them a saline rinse. A couple of the others didn't look 'ready' so I left them - and almost forgot about them! They rusted for a couple more days, which was probably too long. But here's how they all turned out...

Cool huh? I also took another muli-colored piece of fabric and draped it over the unwrapped wire in the bowl (which was all curly springy)...I moved it around a couple of times over a couple of days and kept it covered while processing and here's how it turned out...

The larger areas of rusty color were already in the fabric...what the rusting did was leave the little trail marks. I really like this one...the rust over yellow is a yummy combination.

The other thing I did was some discharging...I've done that before with stamps, so this time I thought "why not try a reverse tye-dye?"...so I bunched it up, tied it off, and dunked it into a bleach water solution. I used the green and blue batik fabric shown above, which turned, well, mostly white! Ugh!! The blue swirls were still there - though much fainter but all of the green was gone. Plzzzz. >:-P

I tried to salvage it by overdyeing with left over coffee. There's a story there...see, my FIL thinks coffee is watered down shelf brand, and I think it's full-bodied coffee shop brand, so every year at the beach there is a race to "own" the coffee pot. (I never win that one...he gets up too early!) Anyway, it seemed to be working and I figured I'd continue to alter it with paints or something. Well, when I threw the whole lot of fabrics into the washing machine, guess what...the coffee came out. See, another argument for the benefits of non-watered down coffee!

I had good intentions of doing some 'regular' dyeing, but I didn't get around to that. Oh well. All in all it was fun to experiment. I think I could get used to being rusty...