Leaves done, mini collage

Well, Christmas is over, the cookies have all been baked (and mostly eaten), the cards have been sent and the wrapping paper explosion has been cleaned up.

So now its time to get back to our regularly scheduled works already in progress. And there are a bunch of them! I'll just blog about a couple of them today.

At the top of my "must get done" list is the underwater/mermaid piece. I've been sewing all of those pesky seaweed leaflets down and they are finally done, outlined and the backs trimmed out. Whew!
That actually took quite a while (last week or so) but I haven't posted cuz, honestly, how many pictures of gold leaflets on a royal blue background does a body want to see?

OK, well, here are a couple, anyway. But I'm only including them because I'm done with the little buggers.

First is the whole piece (more or less), laying (as usual) on my bed. Its a long, vertical piece so I think I will have to start taping it to a wall to give a more accurate rendition. This shot probably looks pretty much like the last picture I showed so here's a detail picture.

Hopefully you can see some of the stitching. I'm happy with them and happy to move on to the mermaid and other elements.






One of my New Year's resolutions is to to be more active creatively on several fronts: start more art, finish more art and sell more art. That includes getting organized and entering more shows. I slacked off in 2011 and I feel like I need to get back in the groove. Pulling entries together and getting them submitted is always a chore and inevitably takes 5 times longer than you think it will and this past year I just didn't have the energy. But I feel like I can handle it again so I got an entry submitted (all online) today (deadline is tomorrow). Its a collage based show, so its kinda a new sort of venue for me. I had 3 pieces already completed that I thought were appropriate and I reworked/finished a 4th one yesterday for inclusion.

Check it out! Its a little piece (see the energy drink pop top?) with bright colors and lots of itsy bitsy details.

I sure hope it (and its brethren) get in to the show, but supposedly I won't find out until the end of March or so. Keep you fingers crossed for me!

Arizona as an inspiration

In case you haven't noticed, postcards are really speaking to me these days. So, no big surprise, I came across a fiber postcard exhibit and I just had to enter. For this exhibit at the Tohuno Chul Park in Arizona, artists were asked to design a fiber postcard that represents some aspect of, well, Arizona. See the details in their call to artists here: http://www.tohonochulpark.org/PDF/Exhibits/Entry%20form--Wish%20You%20Were%20Here--PDF.pdf

The interesting twist: we are to mail our postcards directly there! Then they display all of the cards that they receive. The entry fee and SASE for the postcard's return are sent separately. So all of that was intriguing and I was considering it. But then I looked closer at the entry form and saw that the park is located in Tucson where my sister lives. So then I HAD to enter so that she could go and and see my card in person. Sissy--this card is for you!

A little googling on the internet yielded some beautiful saguaro images. I was particularly struck with sunset and sunrise pictures. I decided to make two pieces: a postcard to enter the exhibit and a larger pieces (mmm-maybe placemat size) with more detail. I'll post the progress I made today on the postcard and save the larger piece for a later post. Here's the progress I made today. One of the fabrics that I chose to use is a lovely batik in orange to purple that just does not photograph well. Its not really as dark as it looks. I'll try to shoot some more pictures tomorrow under different lighting conditions.


I decided on a scene of two or three saguaros at sunrise. The intense colors of the sky contrast with the saguaros and the earth which are both still black. Here are my first few layers of sky streaked with colored clouds.


These are all of my sky layers. I'll have more on the larger piece but this is enough for a 4 x 6 postcard.


And now I've added the fundament. Looks pretty simple so far. Hopefully it will all come together.



I've trimmed the top to size and added two saguaros. I really like it!


Here's a close-up of the saguaro. As usual, I have added all my fabrics with "raw edge applique". I used a courser fabric for the saguaros and some of the thread edges have poked out beyond the satin stitch line I used to anchor them down with. Usually, I try to avoid that at all costs but in this application, I love it--it really calls to mind the halo of spines that a saguaro sports. Gotta love serendipity.


I got a a bit of a start on the quilting. There are lots of loose threads that I have to thread to the back. That will be my job this evening. That has to be my least favorite job, but is necessary for a quality job.