Quilting Arts Magazine®

Ocean's Blooms is featured in
Quilting Arts Magazine®
this month in a fabulous article I wrote about dyeing and using silk in your quilts. I hope you all have an opportunity to read it .

Hand made wooden boxes

I didn't have the information before about where you could view all his art pieces.
Here is an URL to his Etsy site
http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?ref=sr_gallery_10&listing_id=11267534

He used to work for Chris Roberts Anteau.

He is also making wooden cabinets using old books as drawers and doors on them. They are really something to see.
I hope you all go and buy one for somebodies BD or start your Christmas shopping NOW and really get ahead of the curve.
Enjoy

Unexpected gifts

Yesterday was a big day in the mail department. I received TWO unexpected gifts. The first gift is a potholder made from fabrics that my new friend and student Shelby made in TN last week. This was a great surprise and welcome addition to my kitchen. We had such fun in that class and it is nice to have a reminder of that. Shelby is also an excellent cook, and she sent me two recipes that she made while I was a guest at her charming home that I really enjoyed . I will post them later.

But besides the pot holder I received a really unexpected gift from my pal in MI Gayle. Her son created this charming and useful box. She said he is making these now as a new enterprise. Let me know if anyone wants Gayles email to order one of these treasures. They are little boxes for holding your sock knitting needles. I travel with my knitting and I only knit socks while I am on the road. This will be a great addition to my knitting supply bag. Add of course I love boxes, who doesn't, little containers to hold stuff. I have had an infinity for small containers since I was very young. Maybe it is the idea of hiding stuff, or just the fact of something with a lid that looks interesting, I don't know what the attraction is, but I love small lidded, hand crafted boxes.

So thank you girl friends, you certainly made me feel special. I most be the luckiest person in the world today.

Top of box.

Anne Lullie

Anne Lullie is featured in a article today in the Daily Herald. Check it out.

Art Work

This is the wonderful painting from Melody that I came home with, "Little Green Apples". It looks terrific in my kitchen and what I really like is I see it everyday all day long.

While Melody and I were in Chattanooga we went to the Hunter Museum of American Art . There was an instillation called Myth Object and the Animal by artist William Morris. He makes class pieces. These are a few of the pieces that I really liked. The top one is a small wall decoration.

This "jar" was so cool with the bats.

This piece sat at the end of a huge structure of tusk like ribs that reminded me of a viking ship. These shells are each about 6 inches.

Bloomingdale Park District Museum show

Yesterday was the opening of the Chicago School of Fusing Woman packing Irons and Quilt National at the Bloomingdale Park District Museum. It was great, there were so many people there to see the two shows. This is the third year that we have been invited to hang a show in conjunction with the display of Quilt National so I guess we are getting a wonderful reputation.

But what I want to show is this fabulous quilt by Elizabeth Brimelow. The book just doesn't do it justice. The first image is of the front. The quilt is made from silk, I believe, and each of the white areas of the trees is cut out from the whole cloth of silk and then inserted in that space. The tree, the fruit, and leaves are raw appliquéd to the top of the structure. Then Elizabeth went in and sliced the silk in a pattern to create the textured around the trees. It is fabulous. You know me and trees.

This is the back of the piece.

Close up of the trees and fruit. The leaves seem to be made from organza, and the over lay of the fruit does too. I love it!

Flooded with Color

We had a fun time in Franklin TN doing my "Flooded with Color" class. We started out the two days by discharging black fabrics. This process is especially fun because you never know what color the black will discharge to! We used diluted bleach as well as Clorox bleach pens and soft scrub. Each medium creates a different diffusion of the color. The gals barely wanted to move on they were having so much fun.

After lunch we started our gradations. I have the class do three different color value gradations. Some of the woman did their gradations on white on white fabric and the results were spectacular. They work in pairs. Each pair has a clean person and a dirty person. Of course everyone wants to be the dirty person. But in reality we make very little mess in this class because of the way we have everything contained.

On the second day we did more gradation and in the afternoon we did direct application dyeing. We do stand and pour, over dyeing of the discharged pieces, free form application to larger pieces, and thickened dyeing. Towards the end of the day I couldn't get some of the ladies to quit! That is the sign of a good class. But the best part was that the weather was incredible! Warm and dry with no humitity and no bugs. It's a good thing!

Visiting Melody

After teaching in Franklin TN, Shelby my hostess was kind enough to take me half way to Palmer TN, where Melody and Dave have retired. It was so great to see their new home and hang out together. You can read all about our adventures at Melody's blog. The visit was just the right length of time. Long enough to catch up on everything and everyone, and of course do girlfriend things and enjoy Melody's great cooking.

The scenic view half way to Chattanoga TN.

Dyeing in Tennesse

I am in Franklin TN again to do a two day dye workshop. We are going to start off by discharging black fabric and t-shirts and then move into gradation dyeing and finally experiment with different kinds of direct application dyeing.

I will post more pictures as we work. I know we will have a great time and everyone will be flooded with color.

Student work

I always tell my students that if they finish their pieces from my class and send me digital images I will post it on the blog.
So I got this from my recent class in FL from Ginger. She made both sizes of the Tulip quilt and got them finished and quilted. Fabulous job!!! It only took her a couple of weeks.

Large version 16" x 20"

Tiny version 8.5" x 11"

Shooting the DVD

Yesterday I shoot a DVD to accompany the paper pattern for Autumn Mums. This is a new direction for me, and a big step. The DVD will be available on line by Houston Market. Don't worry I will send out emails to everyone I know when it is ready for purchase.

It actually was a lot of fun doing this. My friend Todd Underwood is filming it for me. It was just like teaching a class.

What a ham I am!

And my good friend Laura was the producer. Of course the animals had to get in on the act. I hope they make the final cut into the production. Stay tuned!

Dog Days of Summer

This week the DAMES took a few days to lounge at the lake. Our friend Randi has this fabulous lake house and she invited Deb, Betty and myself to visit. We (Deb, Betty and Randi)brought lots of good food and wine to help us relax. I want to thank Randi, Deb and Betty for making me stop and smell the lake water. I have been so wrapped up in getting ready to shoot my DVD and preparing fabric and kits to go to England, that I have hardly enjoyed the summer. But this was a great break, and I even got a little bit of tan to prove it.

Breakfast lounging.

The view from the house

My next fun summer activity will be visiting Mrs Mel. I can hardly wait to see in real life her fantastic new home.

These are what memories are made from. I hope everyone is out there enjoying their DOG DAYS of Summer.

Using Adobe Illustrator

Linda in Sarasota asked why I use Adobe Illustrator and not some other draw programs. I thought I would comment to all.
I first started using Coral Draw, which I liked very much. Caryl Bryer Fallert uses it and I took a class from her on how she uses it.
Several years ago I decided to take a class at the local community college with the idea of getting into graphic design. The industry standard is Adobe Illustrator, and Coral Draw is not taught or used. I also took a class in Quack a page layout program. It has now been replaced with Adobe's
product InDesign.
I find the product pretty easy to use. Getting used to the beizer tool took some doing, but it really isn't that hard. I certainly don't know all the ins and outs, but I have an easy time getting around. There are lots of great books out there on how to use the program. Periodically I take one out of the library and do the exercises in it. That really helps. But my version is older and I need to update it.
I keep meaning to take a class in Photoshop, because I know I would really use that. Maybe next year.
The programs are expensive, but if you take a class you get to buy it a student discount, well worth it I think. Think about what you pay for your sewing machines etc..

4th of July Special

Firecrackers, hot dogs, potato salad and RED & BLUE. Happy 4th of July. To celebrate I am offering a gorgeous combination of 1/2 yard of Brilliant Reds and 1/2 yard of value graduated Blue for the special price of $23. That includes shipping. You can never have too many blues for all those patriotic projects. And what a beautiful blue it is. Check it out today.

Process

This is my line drawing for Whispering Pines. I scanned in my sketch (which I can't find) and placed it in Adobe Illustrator. I opened up layers and and put the sketch under template. That let me add layers on top of it and using the biezer(?)tool draw around my sketch, moving from the back to the front as I worked and creating new layers for each step. Doing it that way allowed me to draw freely and not pick up items I had already drawn when I wanted to move or re size something. By putting it in Illustrator it also let me add color and move elements around. Once I was happy with the line drawing I then printed it out and took it to Kinko's and had it blown up. Or I could have project it with my digital projector and laptop onto the wall and drawn it out to any size I wanted. I like taking it to Kinko's it's faster and easier, as I don't really have any large blank walls to project onto.

This was my first effort at making the quilt. I love the trees but I got lazy and tried something different with the backgrounds. When I fused it to the batting it had problems and I was terrible disappointed in the end results. Then Melody came over and looked at it and accidentally spilt coffee on it. It was doomed.

But it allowed me to remake it. I am so happy I did. I stayed with the original detail in the borders and used silk behind the trees. I am much happier with the results and it has won awards to boot!