Dye Pot Day!

It's about time. Spring is here and I felt inspired by the beautiful weather to dye some fabric. You can see that my method is casual and the kitchen's the perfect place. I took time to dye some sheets of warm & white all cotton batting. I'm thinking about making some books out of it and wanted some bright colors!

Mini Stitch Image Books

Continuing in my book theme, here are some smaller notebooks made of watercolor paper with fabric stitched images on the cover. I've colored the interior pages with washes of watercolors and bits of collage and sewing so they're inviting to write or draw on. The spine is bound with a basic running stitch in waxed linen cord. One is for a gift and the others are just experimental.

Sew Once Books

These are books I made as thank-you gifts. They're basic watercolor paper pages bound to a cover made of fabric. The image is printed on fabric and then painted and stitched. These are essentially blank books for the recipients to enjoy. And I hope they do!

Self Portrait Day

A creative friend at work inspired me to have a self portrait day with my daughters and niece, after hearing about her mother-daughter project. We used "Taking Flight" by Kelly Rae Roberts as our model, and spent the day building layers and creating our portraits. It was fun for everyone and so relaxing. Here are our finished works, done by three effervescent teens and myself (not so effervescent and only faintly remembering teenhood).

Stitch Imagery Workshop

My very own DVD is here, brought to you by Quilting Arts Workshops. I haven't seen it yet, but I did live it, lol. I feel pretty confident that *anyone* can create really fun images from photos. The cover image here mentions Photoshop, but that's a teensy mistake. You don't need editing software to do this technique. Personally, I use the GIMP, which is an entirely free software with all the delicious features of the expensive ones. The DVD is one hour in length and is available for pre-order from Interweave Press. It will be out on April 1. I've purchased a number of the workshop downloads and can recommend them.

Give Me Not Fame Nor Fortune...Make it Fabric!

Check this out! I got a fab stash of fabric goodies from Pokey's treasure, plus a beautiful hand-printed and stitched journal and some carved stamps from Lyric. These fabrics are all thermofax printed and they are AWESOME. Do I dare use them? They're so lovely!

What the F.O. K.?

Here are some of my things set out for the Quilting Arts Workshop I just taped on Stitch Imagery from photos. My funny story is this...we try to tape in one fell swoop, so you'll see me trip over my words quite a bit. Is it a sewing machine or an iron? Jeez. There are no cue cards or prompts except for the camera guy holding up the occasional time card, so you have to memorize your steps. During the last segment of my workshop camera man Billy suddenly got a buzz in his ear from the Director, so he wrote me a special card and held it up. It said "F O K." I kid you not. I was trying to keep going while I pondered this...what could it mean? I finally decided that my "F" was "ok", though I had no idea what the "f" was, so I just ignored it. He seemed pretty insistent about it however. Lol. I must look pretty strange in that segment, since I nearly came to a halt. When we were done with the taping I asked him to hold up the sign and everyone started laughing. He apparently wrote "FOIL" because I had forgotten the foiling step, but the "L" was sideways and it sure looked like FOK! Fortunately, I remembered the foil at the last minute on my own. What a crazy day!

On the Set of Quilting Arts TV

Here I am with Pokey Bolton (she is the small, adorable one, I am the giant), on the set of Quilting Arts TV. Everyone is incredibly wonderful to work with and they bend over backwards to ensure your success. Helen and Catherine were tremendous helpers. I wanted them to come home with me. That goes also for the make-up artist, who had a giant case of delicious Mac cosmetics. Kathy Stull makes the magic happen from the booth, and she whispers all sorts of things to the camera and sound guys through their ear mikes. They're probably telling dirty jokes while those of us on camera are sweating! It was great working with the Bernina whiz Jeanne, who introduced me to her machines and swapped needles for me. The sewing machine I used was incredible--there were floodlights on my work and I could actually SEE what I was free-motion stitching. Woot! My own sewing machine is in the shop, booooo...hoooooooooooo!

And Miss Pokey Herself

And Miss Pokey herself, fiddling with my veggie pillows. She was an unflagging ball of energy all the way through Saturday, before she ran off to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The rest of us limped off like wet rags. She is the evil mastermind behind a whole lot of quilty goodness.

Lyric on Set

Here's Lyric Kinard doing her thing on the set of Quilting Arts TV. She was so professional and a delight to get to know! That's the marvelous Helen assisting. We had dinner with Cedar Canyon Textiles guru/founder Shelly Stokes and her visiting artist Sue Kelly. I learned so much!