Serendipity Exchange piece

 I have an exchange piece due for my Serendipity group. The  theme for this exchange is "The Writing's On the Wall". I don't do a lot of pieces with words in them, so I decided to keep that part simple.

I did a painting of  bonsai tree a year or so ago. I ordered some fabric with the painting image printed on it through Spoonflower. The printed fabric piece is shown to the right. It is about 4" x 6". Next I placed the printed fabric on some white corduroy and satin stitched it down to my background fabric. Then I added some lace to frame the painting.

For my next step I had to add some words to the piece. I had some fabric with scrolled letters as if they were on a chalk board. I cut out the letters for the word "bonsai" and stitched them down to another piece of white corduroy. Then this was satin stitched to the background. It is a good start!

Rural Mailboxes - Mixed Media Painting

This is a mixed media painting that I recently finished. I took a photo of some mailboxes on a country road somewhere and have always wanted to do a painting from it. I started this with watercolor paints, and then glued on some papers. I finished it off with some watercolor pencils.

Road to California is this Weekend!



Approaching Mott Bridge

 I love the Road to California show and it is this weekend. I am always overwhelmed by the quilts and art pieces in this show. I think the show gets better each year. It also has a lot of high quality vendors that you don't see at all the local quilt shows. I will be shopping for some pre-wound bobbins and maybe an accessory for my new quilting machine.

I am showing these two art quilts because they will both be at the show. The one to the left will be in the Quilts on the Wall Bridges exhibit, and the one below will be in the Nobel Seasons - Winter exhibit.

I hope you have a chance to get to the show. Maybe I will see you there!


It was a cold and stormy night...



Good-bye to my Chief Inspector

I am sad to report that I recently had to say good-bye to my wonderful pet and chief inspector, Skagit. He is pictured here on my sewing table overseeing my work. He was the best pet I ever had and I will miss him very much. My work will surely suffer without his input!

Blue Asian Quartet

Here is another in the blue asian series. I used machine quilting to depict some curling foliage coming out of the vases. Then I echo quilted around them. I love little pieces like this!

Free Motion Quilting

In my last post I mentioned goal setting for the year. One of my skill improvement areas for the year is free motion quilting.

I have a new quilting machine and I want to be able to use it to its maximum potential. So one of the things I am going to do is participate in a Free Motion Quilting Challenge. This is a montly challenge organized by another blogger. The details for this challenge can be found by following the link below. Maybe you will want to participate too? Here is the link:

http://sewcalgal.blogspot.com/p/free-motion-quilt-challenge.html#up_source_language=en&st=%25st%25

I hope this works!

The Start of a New Year - Goal Setting

First let me say HAPPY NEW YEAR  and welcome to 2012! This is my first blog post for the year, and it seems like a perfect time to set some artistic goals for the year. I like to do this each January because it helps keep me on track during the year. I write down goals for the year in a book and look back at the end of the year to see how I did relative to my goals. I also record all the projects I have completed during the year in the book. Focusing on completing projects before starting new ones has really helped me to be more productive. I have plenty of UFOs, but since I have started setting goals, the number of UFOs started per year has decreased, and the number of completed projects has increased.

Anyway, my goals for this year are going to focus on a list of the projects I want to finish, some skill improvement areas and working on "putting myself out there more".  I will expound on this more in a future post. But in the meantime, let's all think about goals for our artistic endeavors this year.