Are you a Downton Abbey fan? I am, big time! So, I was very excited to see “Dressing Downton,” an exhibit of many of the outfits worn on the show. It’s currently on display at the Lightner Museum in St. Augustine, FL, which is a show-stopping setting in its own right. It was originally the…
When quilting my latest piece I decided to mimic the swirls/curves in the background. In addition to machine quilting, I also added some hand stitching around several of the curved shapes. My main reason for doing so was to add contrast to the white curves in the light areas. I intended to stitch around all the…
I recently added paint to a quilt! Gulp! This is something I’ve only done once or twice, so I definitely had to get my courage up. It helped that I had done a bunch of painted exercises a few months ago. So, I did some practice samples, held my mouth just right and gave it a…
Grove Park Inn, in Asheville, NC is an historic hotel which opened in 1923. Although it has many dramatic features, the western view is the star of the show. This view can best be taken in from the terraces on the backside of the inn. Here, it’s photographed from one of the two side wings. …
While in Asheville, NC, my husband and I attended “Winter Lights” at the North Carolina Arboretum. It was spectacular! Even from the parking lot, we were mesmerized by the beautiful light-wrapped trees. Tons of them. And when I say these trees were wrapped, I mean they were REALLY wrapped! Can you even imagine how many…
I have a new white blouse. One that I’ve already hemmed (as I have to do with all my clothes.) And there it was, lying on my work table waiting to be ironed and worn for the first time. And then I pulled out the paints. You can guess the rest: one tiny pale spot…
Now, THIS is exciting stuff! After doing deconstructed screen printing with randomly created screens, I decided to draw on my last screen, with a syringe. This is a technique I learned in a DSP class with Kerr Grabowski. That’s my screen above. I drew on it with very thick black dye. In fact, it was…
I recently got to play with deconstructed screen printing again, and I got some pretty cool results. The process is easy, but it also involves a fair amount of dyes, equipment, and set up. Here’s a brief video overview. You start by purposely allowing thickened dye to dry in your screen. A random design is…
Whoo-boy, the quilt of my brothers ended up taking quite a bit longer than I anticipated, but I’m very happy with the finished result. I got to show it to my family in the almost-complete stage, and they LOVED it. That was very gratifying. Here are few detail shots. My brother Ricky. My brother Todd….
A few months ago I was playing around with paint quite a bit and using a lot of palette paper. You’re probably familiar with it. It’s sorta waxy, so it can handle a lot of moisture. Often, the paint dried in interesting ways, so I decided to save the papers. (Yep, I did it again:…