Work in Progress

Before the holidays I cut out a couple of windows from white fabric backed with fusible web, then added some landscape fabric in the background. Then they went into a drawer and were forgotten.

I just came across one of them and decided to put a woman and her cat in front of the window. I made a little sketch and tried it out.

I got my inspiration from this pretty vintage photo I found on the internet, which I modernized.

Then I wondered whether the figure in my first sketch was a bit small, so I enlarged it. Better, I think.

I think there needs to be a table with a lamp or flowers in front of the widow. We'll see!

 Fun to play!

This is how I do many of my appliqué pictures. Now to transfer the elements to fabric, cut out the small pieces, put them all back together and sew.  I'll share it when it's done.

Thanks for visiting.

Hope you're having a very good week!

AEDM Day 10

The thing I'm enjoying most about Art Every Day Month this year

is the fact that I've decided to use the month to finish up old projects

as well as to create some new ones.

This is a piece that has been hanging around my studio, unfinished,

for quite a while. 

I added embroidered details and finished it up today - a great feeling!

I was also so happy to see my Christmas cacti blooming today.

They always remind me of my mom!

Hope you are having a good week -

Thanks for visiting!

AEDM Day 8

Such a beautiful day here in New England. Having voted early, I was free to spend some time on the porch in the afternoon sun. With days shortened by the recent time change, I feel like I'm chasing daylight lately, the sun begins to slip away so early. The trees behind the house are glowing with autumn golds and greens and the colors shimmer outside the porch windows.

When I'm working on something, I always seem to create a mess!

I want to finish up this little floral piece and I auditioned

 some embroidery thread colors.

Then I snipped some little pieces of fabric and that's about

as far as I got today.

Now that I've chosen colors in daylight I can work on embroidering tonight.

I'm avoiding watching election returns until later,

praying that the "right" decision will be made.

AEDM Day 5

Antoinette

She is warm and witty

and her  fiery hair is the outward manifestation

of an unexpectedly mischievous sense of humor.

She delights in surprises

and is known for leaving small gifts 

  on the doorsteps of those

who need a lift, some consolation, 

or even a tiny token of love.

Landscapes in Process

Today was a full day of designing, preparing and sewing landscapes.

 I feel like I have a handle on the pieces I'll be offering

 in the local show on November 1.

I have many of the pieces pinned up on some foam core on the mantle

 in our living room. I'm preparing white linen borders for all of them. 

Hopefully my system will work and I can get them mounted

 assembly line style. And, of course, I need to add more details

(such as leaves) to some of the pictures. 

Time to quit for the day, make dinner and rest my eyes!

Hope you've had a very good day!

Felting Away

Yesterday I got in a groove and worked on some needle felting.

I had already wet felted a base of sky, clouds and grass, which I then

placed on white wool and needle felted everything together, adding shading and details.

The felting gives such a dreamy effect and now I have to figure out

how to present it for the show. Frame? Glass? Wall Hanging?

To be determined!

This second piece (photo taken on a sunny surface) is one I've

been tinkering with for a while. The background and trees are fabric,

the foreground is felt. I have to figure out whether I like it today, or else 

let it go and move on to something else. As usual, a deadline is spurring me on 

to be very productive. Show is November 1 and I have much to do!

Fortunately, I'm in "the zone" and love doing it!

Hope your week is off to a good start!

Feeling Creative

I always say there's nothing like a deadline to stir up creativity, and I'm scheduled to participate in  two shows this Fall, which is right around the corner! If you talked to me yesterday, you would have heard how anxious I was about this, but I feel much better today, having broken through the creative block I had been dealing with.

This morning, I spread out my materials - my hand painted fabrics, roving, etc. - and propped up a piece of foam board with the beginnings of some landscapes pinned to it.

I worked on the two top landscapes simultaneously, concentrating first on the lower one. I do love purple and green together, so this one had me excited. I audition many fabrics as I go along and lightly tack the pieces to some white flannel, which I use as the base for my landscapes. So, I started with this...

and proceeded to this point...

Here's a higher contrast photo, where you can see that I draped the dark green sheer fabric in the foreground and ironed it down, but not entirely flat. I'm happy with this technique which I had been wanting to try. I need to mull over this now and decide where to add details with roving, threads or beads. And I need to decide where and whether to add trees, so I'll just sit with it for a few days.

The second landscape started with this orange/pink fabric I had painted some time ago. I really just wanted to experiment with it, but it seemed to come together pretty quickly (meaning, in about two hours with auditioning fabrics, etc) and I went out on a limb and added some bits of wool roving and hand dyed cheesecloth for texture, then finally, a setting sun. Or is it dawn? That will be up to the viewer!

I'm happy to have started this journey, which will be going on until November.

Thanks for reading, and hope you're having a lovely week!

Now to clean up my mess for the day!!!

A Completed Project

I'm finally able to post a photo of this appliquéd picture

which I finished recently for someone who is very dear to me.

It is a project I have worked on for many years, due both to its complexity

and to my own procrastination. I'm so happy to have completed it and sent it to its owner.

I do very few house/building portraits these days, but this one has

a special meaning for its owner, and I was happy be able to do it.

Hope you're having a wonderful weekend!

Window Dressing

Our town's Art Walk continues, and I stopped last night to snap some photos

of my movie star pictures in the window of Florence's Fashions.

Audrey and Marilyn look comfortable amidst the glitter and glamor of the window decorations,

don't you think?

(I love that there is a chandelier in the window!)

Thursday and Friday nights there will be receptions for some of the artists, so we'll

be party hopping in our own little town!

This is such a fun event!

Hope you're having a good week!

New Work and a Learning Curve

I'm finally finishing up this piece, which I'm calling Nora's New Kitten.

It started out as a quick fabric sketch...

but I wanted to take it further, although I did like the original piece. I wanted to teach myself some new things about outline stitching, composition, and bringing a picture to completion. In fact, I have one more thing to do to this, and that is to finish off the edges and mount it on canvas. I have a couple of shows coming up, and I'm looking for a clean, consistent way to present work. I'll show the completely finished piece when it's done.

I do apologize for being so absent from my blog, but I've tried to keep up with friends' blogs and to see what everyone else is up to! It's hard to believe that this is the last week of August. Where does the time go?

I hope that you are enjoying these last days of summer and that you're having a creative day!!

Gifts for a Friend

A good friend celebrated her birthday recently and I sent 

her this hand made card...

and a pillow with an appliqué of her cat, Tweenie!

Just finishing up some other projects which I'll show soon.

Hope everyone is doing well and that your week is off to a good start!

Flag, continued...

I finished the flag this morning, in time for the shop's opening. Lots of sewing last night and this morning, but I LOVE checking something off my to-do list! I have other projects lined up, but need to release a little creative energy first after a structured task like this. A bit of whimsy tomorrow!

Happy Weekend!

AEDM Day 2

                

After the Rain

This is a piece of fabric art I had fused together a few years ago, but never stitched. I used some of my hand painted fabrics, commercial cottons and sheer fabrics for the background trees and yellows on the grass. It is backed by thin craft batting, so when I stitched it all down today, it took on a bit of a quilted look. I love the way trees in Autumn look after it rains. The colors of the leaves intensify and the trunks become nearly black with moisture. 

Hope everyone is having a great week!

Birthday Love

Thirty years ago today, a beautiful light came into our lives.

 Funny, smart, inventive, creative, savvy, kind, 

thoughtful, independent, resourceful,

loving daughter:

We celebrate you today!

Happy, Happy Birthday, Kate!

Five Faces in Five Days - # 3

"Molly"

I don't know where these faces come from, but Molly reminds me of a "nice" girl from the 60's - someone I would have gone to middle school with - and this is how she would have dressed for a school dance! No plunging necklines for kids in those days! I can't believe what kids wear to proms nowadays -

don't get me started!!

Anyway, this was done with applique, pigma pens and colored pencils!

Latest Projects

I recently finished up this house portrait for a client. It was a very simple house, interpreted with a combination of fabrics for texture, and the background trees were watercolor painted with Setacolor transparent paints and then machine embroidered. The picture was stretched, matted and framed, and the clients were delighted. A happy ending!

I'm also working on this fabric landscape. The background is hand painted fabric, on which I loosely painted some trees with the Setacolor paints. I plan to enhance the trees with machine stitching and add more hand painted fabrics and stitching to the foreground.

Hope everyone who reads this is enjoying a great weekend!

A Creative Gathering

After the sadness of losing our Kristy, I was so happy to look forward to an "Artsy Craftsy Extravaganza" with my friends Elaine and Karen this past Monday and Tuesday! We met at Elaine's house, had a fun lunch with Karen, her mom Elaine, aunt Margretta and and sister-in-lawSarah, swapped ATCs, shared our artwork and handwork done since our last meeting in November, and perused and shared wonderful books around the dining room table. Much chatting, many laughs, an overnight leading to a delicious breakfast at "Amber Cafe" and a visit to a great fabric store all added up to a wonderful time! How lucky am I to be a part of this group and we're planning to get together again in the fall!
I knew that Karen's birthday was coming up (it's today!) so I made her a portrait of her beautiful cat, Henry, taken from one of her own photos which you can see here.

Karen seemed to like it and it was a joy to spend time with this wonderful family! Just what I needed!

Tomorrow I'll share some of the ATCs we exchanged.

Hope everyone is having a great day!!

Happy Birthday, Karen!!

Flowers are blooming,

Birds are chirping,

Spring is in the air!

Here is a stitched piece I just completed,

Inspired by daffodils on my porch!

I've missed my blog, and I'm glad to be back.

I wish each and every one of you a Happy Easter,

a beautiful Spring day

and a joyful heart!

Blog Changes

I keep changing the header on my blog, and today I learned how to change the background. Do you like it? I've been wanting a linen-look background, but I'm not sure whether this is too dark - I've since found a lighter color!. In any case, it took me quite a while to set this up, so I'll keep it for a while - at least until I want to lighten up for Spring and Summer!
I'm thinking about starting an etsy shop this summer, and trying to figure out what to create for sale. In the 80's, I belonged to a wonderful craft co-op in southern Massachusetts and sold little matted and framed fabric pictures like these:

                                      

                                                    

These are actually scanned color copies of pieces that sold, but give you an idea of the type of thing I did back then - lots of commercial fabrics, appliqued and satin stitched. Since then my style has changed a bit,

but I'm hoping I can come up with some nice pieces to sell. By that time I hope to have a solid look for my blog, but for now it's fun to play with different options!

All is Calm..

rush, rush, rush

go, go, go

stress,stress, stress

and then...

SNOW!!

We've had a storm, everything is frosted, and the scene is set for Christmas!
 Kids are happy, snowblowers are roaring -
 looks like winter around here!