Makin' Stuff

On my trip to Maine, the Frayed Edges had a wonderful evening making stuff. We all brought "kits" to make ornaments and we sat, cut, glued, folded, chatted and enjoyed hanging out.

I brought four paper projects including this bow made from magazine pages. (Tutorial here.)

We also had some tasty beverages.
Kathy is knitting mittens.
More pictures of my crafty goodness soon. I need to take some nice photos of the completed projects.

The next day I spent some time with Hannah in her studio. She is all about felted, recycled sweaters!
Little Nina has lots of creative ideas too!

Here is a hat that Hannah helped me make.And, yes! It does get chilly enough in Texas to need a wool hat!

Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens

Sarah, Kate, Kathy, Hannah and I had a lovely day at the Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens.

Beautiful hard scape, plants, sculpture, patterns and plants.


Isn't this a strange, sweet little leaf and berry?
A beautiful labyrinth. If it hadn't been so chilly, it would be wonderful to walk this path with bare feet.
Crisp, clear, autumn.
Arms out stretched.
I have so many more pictures of rocks, patterns, leaves, etc. I'll stash those away for future inspiration.

We stopped for lunch just up the street, right on the water.I had a delicious lobster roll.
We also had leftover birthday cake from the night before. Yum.

Gifts

I just returned from a lovely visit to Maine. The Frayed Edges shared a wonderful weekend together, including celebrating some birthdays. I had a fantastic time doing these mixed media paintings which were wrapped up as gifts for the birthday girls.



They are all 10x10 on gallery wrapped canvas, which allowed me to do a little extra decoration on the edges.
More pictures of food, friends, fall and fun.... soon!

Autumn

We've had some lovely days here in Dallas lately.And several days filled with rain. These crows were probably visiting after a rain, picking those fat juicy worms right off the surface of the lawn.

Claire DID win the pumpkin contest! Both pumpkins are now decorating the dining room table. The kids have also been decorating cupcakes.

Aren't those just the cutest ever?!

12 Round Up

Wasn't that poll fun? You can scroll down for the specific results, but three quilts rose to the top. Seven Houses Five Trees (12 theme) had 12 votes and She Sits to Dream (chair theme) and Fractal Tree (math theme) each had 11 votes. Very close. I think you all have excellent taste. My favorites are certainly among these top choices.I would also agree that Attached Disconnected (community theme) is the least successful of the bunch. Not a single vote. Not from me either. Yuck. I'm not even going to link to a larger image. No need to waste your time looking at it.

I don't like Fractal Tree as much as most people seem to like it. It's fine. I like the concept. I love the little red Chinese inspired chop. But, it's not fully me. I'm glad you like it though.

I like Palm more than is reflected in the poll. Only one vote for that piece. I love the negative hand image created with freezer paper and paint.

I also love The Fourth Day. It was published in Quilting Arts magazine and kicked off my whole series of illuminated art quilts. That makes it a personal favorite.

I love the looseness of She Sits to Dream. I keep telling myself to loosen up, but it doesn't always happen.

I love the stone section in Cedar and Stone. You'll see that again, I'm sure.

But, my "favorite".... I think it's Seven Houses Five Trees. I guess I built up all the good stuff through the whole project and found a way to put it together in just the right way for the final quilt.

Of course, it's not really the final quilt. We've begun a new series called "color play." Each theme will be related to color. The first theme is Pink. It will be revealed on 12/12.

Have you been reading the award presentations on the 12x12 blog? They are so fun!

Pumpkin Decorating

Today is the annual pumpkin decorating contest at the kids' school. They both came up with great ideas and did an amazing job creating their pumpkins.

You may remember that Claire is the defending contest winner for her grade (two years running!). Here is her pumpkin from last year. And here is the previous year (actually it's three years ago, they skipped the contest one year). So, of course, she is hoping to keep her streak going. We'll see!
Yes, she spent quite a bit of quality time with the glue gun.

I just think those golf ball eyes look so funny! And isn't Benjamin a funny character, too?!
Still time to vote for your favorite of my 12x2 quilts! Scroll down.

Twelve Celebrations!

As you know, the 12x12 art quilt collaborative recently completed our twelfth theme! Wow. 144 amazing quilts that you can view on our blog or by theme and by artist on our website.

Beginning today, we are doing twelve blog posts for twelve consecutive days. Each artist will write a post announcing a clever "award." You can see the schedule for posts here. I think it's going to be super fun!

Our quilts are also going on tour! Check out our exhibition schedule here.

More big news on the way, plus we're already working on a second set of quilts with the theme "color play." The first quilts will be revealed on December 12 (12/12). The theme is Pink!

As if that's not enough to absorb, I'm curious which of my 12 is your favorite! After the poll closes in a week or so, I'll tell you what my favorite is (if I can decide).



Which is your favorite of my 12x12 quilts?

New Project

I'm doing a round robin book exchange with a group of local artists. We each created some kind of "cover" for our books and picked a theme. Mine is a three ring binder that I covered with words and images from magazines.
I used my ghetto laminating technique to cover it. (Shipping tape.) The theme for my book will be to pick one of the phrases or images from the cover and make a page inspired by the phrase.
I made a page with "directions." It's the one above with the orange ribbon tab. Then I made the first page...
It was inspired by the tree silhouette on the cover. I used some of the same painting techniques that I explored recently.

For the opposite side of my page, I taped a paint chip and stamped words associated with trees.
I think it's good to have one side of a page be more complex than the other.

Now, I don't think I'm supposed to be posting this next page, but...

This is the page I made for Michelle's book. Her theme is Birds.
Same techniques and colors as above, obviously. Again, the same for the back side.

I'm really pleased with how they turned out and I had a great time making them! Plus, I'm way ahead of the deadline for the next swap round.

Footwear

I visited the rumdum (that's what Mrs. Mel calls the thrift store) with a friend this week and look what I found!Those are almost brand new Merrill loafers -- for $5! I will admit that I searched for them on Zappos and discovered that you can still buy them at full price, which is much much much more than I paid.

What's that you ask? "Are they my size?" Well, they're close.

Luckily, my friend Sarah just sent me some fabulous, thick, purple, hand-dyed socks!

Reveal Day!

The 12x12 group is revealing our new quilts today. The theme was "twelve." Mine is titled "Seven Houses Five Trees."Be sure to check out our blog for eleven more amazing quilts!

This completes the twelfth round of quilts -- 144 art quilts! Wow. What an accomplishment for all of us. Tune into our blog over the next several days to see how we'll be celebrating.