The Bay Area offers so much to do and see that it is difficult to make a choice! Sometimes, we just act as if we were tourists and choose to do something that we’ve never done before. For this outing, I purchased tickets for a gondola ride through Gondola Servizio. We caught our Venetian-built gondola at […]
Blog
San Francisco Garden and Flower Show
When I attended the 2011 SF Garden and Flower Show I fell in love with the dovecote that Succulent Gardens had on display. I was inspired to plant a few panels of succulents for myself. You can read about that trip and the subsequent planting here. I attended the annual event yesterday and was in […]
Beads — so many choices
I have been invited by Dinner at Eight Artists to submit work for a juried invitational exhibit which will premiere August 1-4, 2013 at the International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, California. Though I’ve been working on it since December, I haven’t been able to share it here because one of the stipulations of the […]
Wearin’ the Green
My Sunday morning ritual finds me at the local farmer’s market. I do my part to give my greens to those who grow the greens I eat. It only seems right. Today there were bonuses everywhere I looked. For instance, this pup wearin’ the green A stroll through the stands reveals that just about everyone […]
Buddha Hand Bonanza!
Spring officially arrives on the 21st of the month but my Buddha Hand tree doesn’t keep a calendar. It is loaded with blossoms and nearly every cluster has a fruit well on its way. See the small one developing just NE of the open blossom? This fruit is already about 5 inches long. A few […]
Put Your Best Foot Forward – A must-see exhibit!
Put Your Best Foot Forward will open April 1 featuring foot-square works from 26 artists of the Northern CA-Northern NV Region of SAQA. This is not just ‘another exhibit’ my friends. This is the first exhibit for the SAQA region I have been a member of since 2005! And it will feature some of the […]
Improvements at Asilomar Conference Center
Improvements galore are in the works right now at Asilomar Conference Center. The signs indicate that the project will take two years. Right now the work is focused in the area surrounding the Phoebe A. Hearst Social Hall, Merrill Hall, Pirate’s Den and the Sea Galaxy buildings at the far south end of the center […]
Surface Design on Textiles with Lonni
I’ve just returned from Asilomar Conference Center in Pacific Grove where I took a class with Lonni Rossi through Empty Spools Seminars. Lonni has been designing fabric collections (5 or more a year) for Andover Fabrics for 12 years and she shared her techniques for creating designs on textiles using Setacolor paints, silk screens, stencils […]
Wordless Wednesday
Sunset Over San Francisco
Domestic Projects
I’m just back from a heavenly four days in Carmel with four girlfriends who love to quilt, eat, shop and walk along the beach. My idea of bliss! A stop in San Juan Bautista for lunch at Jardines de San Juan begins the whole decompression experience. A relaxing lunch outside on the large patio is […]
T is for Toile
Postmark’d Art is wrapping up a trade inspired by the alphabet. It has taken us four rounds of trading to get through the alphabet — and what fun it has been! For this round I selected the letter T. Along with a love of gardening, I thoroughly enjoy spotting birds in the backyard. We have […]
Pence Gallery: Opening of By Hand Exhibit
I attended the opening of By Hand, Extraordinary Fine Craft in California in Davis last Friday. The whole of downtown Davis was buzzing with activity. The restaurants were full, parking lots were packed and so was the gallery. A very refreshing scene in these times. The large flags, well-lit sign and peek at the crowd […]
Door as Inspiration
Inspiration is everywhere. When I traded a trellis for a used door last year, it fired up inspiration for finishing off a neglected side yard. The first thing was to install the door. Once installed I couldn’t wait to see some terracing done. The 4 mini rock walls will ensure that the soil doesn’t move […]
Lover’s Bridge
While I was at a meeting in Sacramento, my husband was in Napa taking photographs of a particular train engine. He couldn’t help but notice this bridge and I can’t help but share it here. Such a nice warm up to Valentine’s Day.
Pence Gallery Exhibit: By Hand
When I dropped off my quilt Forget Me Not, Collaboration with Grandma at the Pence Gallery last week I was given postcards to promote the exhibit. It was a very nice surprise to see that the gallery chose a detail photo of my piece for the postcard (bottom right). The Pence presents its first juried […]
Titmouse Nest
Last year a pair of Titmice found the nesting box and raised a clutch right under our kitchen window. It seemed that we had barely cleaned out the Bewick’s Wren nest from the year before, when the Titmouse spied the box and started building. We removed the nest this past weekend. The difference between the […]
Sunflower Scrap IV Fini
Done. And I’m rather happy with the nuanced differences in this one. I outline quilted the vines and leaves with the gold-orange thread and tried my hand with some new quilting designs. I used two colors of beads in the center. See the first three in this series here.
Sunflower Scrap IV Progress
When I put this small quilt on my design wall for further consideration last week, I thought my dilemma was the next step in the background quilting design. Yesterday I realized it wasn’t the background that needed clearer thinking, it was the foreground. Here I have added a leaf and tendril to the bottom right […]
Goodies From Houston Deux
I couldn’t wait to share these! Here are more handkerchiefs I found in Houston. This one is cotton, measures 11 3/4″ square and is in pristine condition. Another cotton one in the same colors — this one measures 15″ square. There is a bit of staining, but I don’t mind that. The edge is hand […]
Sunflower Scrap IV
I’m making progress on the 4th sunflower art quilt in a series. The background fabric is a beige upholstery cotton left over from a window seat project. The weight of this fabric will enable me to quilt with fewer stops to block during the process. This sunflower is the largest one yet, so it dominates […]
Goodies From Houston
Distracted by fast-moving life events, I am just now getting around to integrating the few treasures I purchased in Houston at the Quilt Festival. For years I have prowled antique shops, thrift stores and kept my eye peeled at venues like Houston where antique dealers appear. One of the dealers had a sizeable stash of […]
Word for 2013
It’s the first day of 2013 and I am looking forward. A review of 2012 was done on a monthly, if not weekly basis, with the words simplicity and focus as yardsticks. I need to keep a tight rein on my actions to avoid the R word — regret — which usually leads to another […]
Accepted!
I’m thrilled to share that Forget Me Not: Collaboration with Grandma has been juried into By Hand: Extraordinary Craft in California which will open at the Pence Gallery in Davis, CA, on February 8, 2013. This is the first juried exhibit of fine craft that the Pence will host. Their definition of the term ‘fine […]
Wordless Wednesday
Unconditional Love
Can anyone have too much? I think not! Mendelssohn has once again inspired a design in fabric — this time for the postcard trade I’m doing with the Typography theme group of Postmark’d Art. (I shared two of the postcards I’ve already received from this trade here.) Here is Mendelssohn digitized — that’s software speak […]
Peace
Let There Be Peace on Earth, written by Jill Jackson Miller and Sy Miller in 1955, has been running through my mind since last Friday. Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me. Let there be peace on earth, The peace that was meant to be. With God as our Father […]
Creative Procrastination
My holiday cards arrived yesterday. But having just rescued my muse from captivity in Illinois (If this sounds confusing, become enlightened here.) I am more keenly aware of her bidding so I’m in the studio. Another scrap of sunflower fabric has presented itself for audition. I have appliqued it to a soft peachy fabric and […]
Wordless Wednesday
Typography
Postmark’d Art is in the midst of its 16th round of trading. One of the themes that I am trading in is Typography. I’ve received two that I can’t help but share here. Lynn Chinnis used a quote from Ellen Lupton to illustrate her point. Click on image to view larger image. And […]
