Friends in Blogland...

Tracy, Wanda, and Leilani have all given me this "Karma" award during the past week. To say I am flattered is an understatement. I am supposed to post the "directions" (which are below) and pass the award on to other bloggers. Well, I say "right back atcha" ladies, and to all my other friends in blogland ... consider yourself duly awarded... and thank you for being my friends.

Here's the particulars:

The Karma Award: These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kinds of bloggers aim to find and be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these writers. Deliver this award to some bloggers who may choose more and include this cleverly-written text into the body of their award.

A little daydreaming...

Here's a little piece (it's 4" square) that I made this week. I finally got out my foils and used them. They are really easy to use, I don't know why they make me so nervous! The base of this piece is a paper towel which was used as a pressing cloth to iron crayon wax off a piece I did a few months ago. I painted over it, and I like how the wax resisted the paint. I even did some hand stitching (Clevelandgirlie will be proud of me!). But ... it's hiding a surprise, and I'm not telling what it is for a few more weeks, so you'll just have to wait. ;7) ~Michelle

Shakespeare was a working man...

I can't find my puffy paint!!!!!!!

(ok, rant over...)

This month I got to create a house front for the lovely Alis over on Textile Challenges. Her theme was "Shakespeare lived here?" So of course, being the creative working sort, where else would he live but the theatre? The Globe Theatre to be precise.

So here is my house front for Alis. A bit of a liberal take on the Globe. The "siding" is pages from one of his plays. There's even a "prithee" in there! The thatch roof is hand dyed raffia, which soaked up the dye in an interesting way. The windows are bits of leftover fabric paper and the shrubs are melted tyvek. I learned that it is not easy to stitch 1/8" strips of peltex with any precision. Still, I think it came out pretty well. I hope Alis will like it!

I am grateful this is a bi-monthly trade. I have until September to come up with the next idea. Now were IS that puffy paint? It's maddening really. Must be time to get organized!

An Emotional Week (but that was the point...)

The lovely Leilani issued a challenge on Fiber Art Traders to create a series of five 5x5 abstract fiber pieces that reflected five emotions (which she chose). Since I've hit a bit of a dry spell, I thought this would be a good little project to get me back into the studio. Below are the results ... see what you think!

"Joy"

"Sorrow"

"Surprise"

"Fear"

"Love"

Ahhh...summer

We've spent the last few weeks galavanting around the northeast visiting family and enjoying the slow pace of summertime. Here are a few photos for you ... it's back to the studio tomorrow!
To say that Rosi enjoyed the freedom of a big back yard would be an understatement...

Meet Mocha, the alpaca ambassador at the farm we visited. She followed us everywhere. Alpaca's are fascinating animals and oh so cute!

How's this for a 4th of July scene ... this is Saratoga Lake. We fought the clouds the entire time but managed to squeeze in plenty of fun.

We couldn't manage to get ALL of the cousins together, but I did tie dye shirts for all of them. Here are some of them modeling their shirts... the littlest one didn't want to be in the photo which made it a little difficult to get the picture, but I like how it came out anyway.

And here they are all smiling away ... along with grandma and a big tray of 4th of July cupcakes.

I hope your summer is off to a wonderful start - and if you are down under, hope you are cozying up to a toasty fire and enjoying the gentleness of winter...

It would have been a good blog post...

I've done something I haven't done in a loooooong time ... finished a fairly large (about full size) quilt. I free motion quilted it, with much denser quilting than I have ever taken the time to do. It's for my daughter's bed, and she loves it, although she keeps the bright orange and aqua batik I used on the back as the "up" side. lol. I need to take a picture of it on her bed - it looks great in her aqua and lime bedroom!

As I was quilting (and quilting and quilting), Robert Frost kept popping into my head. "Miles to go before I sleep" ... and then I thought, yeah, more like miles to go before SHE sleeps (with this quilt!). Of course this all transpired over the last few weeks when my computer was down in the dumps again and I did not have the capability of posting photos. So I took the above photo, thinking I had my next blog post lined up, and as it turned out, the quilt was completed before the computer was fixed!

So this is the finished quilt. The pattern is called "Yellow Brick Road" and I actually pieced the top a few years ago. The pattern is crib size but I enlarged it. I quilted blue free motion flowers over the entire top and then went back in and stippled around them in orange. I was inspired by the book Quilting in the Limelight by Philippa Naylor, which was given to me by my good cyber-friend Joanna. I have a long way to go before my quilting is as inspired as Philippa's, but I'm just glad that I actually completed the quilt before my daughter's tastes changed! Hopefully she will love it for a long time.

~Michelle

I'm IN!

I received a box from Quilting Arts the other day. In it was the bracelet I submitted to the Cloth Paper Scissors "Life's A Beach" reader's challenge. Also in the box was a comp issue of the July/August issue of CPS, with my bracelet on page 78!!! It was so exciting to see it there on the pages of a magazine.

I'm not going to show the bracelet just yet ... when the magazine hits newsstands, I hope you'll check it out! But here's a photo of the box I altered to send it to the magazine. I figured I will hold onto this piece and it needed to have a happy home.

I am really thrilled to be published, and hoping this experience will give me more confidence to put my work "out there".