Just Looking

I went looking through my iPhoto to see if I had something inspiring to post here. I found a photo of eggs that I shot at my friend's house. Aren't they beautiful?

That be some happy chickens that make these eggs. Yup.

And then I saw this in-progress shot of Kerri's quilt. I'm making it for Kerri as a trade for the most beautiful red sweater that she is knitting for me. Kerri is really good at knitting!

I have now finished the quilt top, pieced the backing and chosen the binding. Its all folded up waiting for me to go get the batting and put it all together. I'll show you later how it turns out!

Tweedle Do Workshops

See tweedledo.ca events page for posters of the two workshops I am organizing this spring. Anna Heywood-Jones and Maria Shell are teaching in our week long art retreat. Go deep and join in. Elevate your art life!

First and Last

Improvisational Amalgamation

I'm working on the first quilt of 2014, which I actually made a point of having up on my design wall as the final quilt design of 2013. I don't know if thats cheating somehow, … calling it the last quilt of one year and the first quilt of the next…. in any case, one day rolls into another, quilts get started and finished, life goes on. The parts were made at different times, the funny little log cabiny bits were made in 2010, when my sewing room was set up on the porch in the first year we moved to the island. The triangle parts were made this year, one day at a sew-in with the guild, and the top left corner and other stripey bits were made with scraps from a workshop I did with Nancy Crow in 2012. So its a multi year endeavour, one that shows how my pack rat habits can pay off.

Improvisational piecing is so much fun. Sherri Lynn Wood at Daintytime has put out a call to participate in her new book on the subject, which I think is just great! If you like doing improvisational work, go look at her post, you can apply to play! I love collaborating and plan to do much more of it. Do you have collaborative projects you have worked on?

computer troubles

Phew!

Did I ever have problems with my li'l ol' MacBook.

It had been slowing down and acting strange for a while and I thought it was just getting old, or full, but who isn't?

Then it wouldn't shut down.

Then it was super slow and the little rainbow spun around if I went anywhere near the internet.

Then it died. Dead.

Or so I thought. My neighbourhood genius diagnosed it with a fried hard drive, so I got impatient and went and bought the new slender sleek lightweight MacBook. Shiney!

But as I was having buyer's remorse, my husband took it in to My Tech Guys and for a fraction of the cost of the new computer, we could have a new faster hard drive and save all my files! Yipee!

So today was a monumental town day - take the laundry in (our washer is not well), pick up the old fixed computer, return the new shiny computer (remove all personal information in the parking lot), take the new/used cat in for a check up, visit the care facility that may house my dear father, grocery shopping, banking, yadda yadda….

When really all I wanted to do was sew oven mitts (ala Maria Shell) and bacon ornaments!

So here we are, back on our island, cat is romping around outside, dinner is heating up, chili for Sunday dominoes night is under way, we are readying ourselves for a trip to Saltspring Island tomorrow to spend time with family and I am posting this on my old (new) laptop!

bacon for the xmas tree

Procrastination Production

I am newly excited that the 32nd annual Denman Island Christmas Craft Faire is starting tomorrow. Excited because I love it, I love chatting to all the people who come, I love seeing the halls all dressed up and excited to hopefully sell some stuff I have made.
I am really happy that it will be over soon so I can stop doing what I call Procrastination Pieces. These have certainly been fun to make, and have done a great job of distracting me from making Big A Art. Big A art is harder than owl pencil cases and handbags. It doesn't pay any better or worse. I use more fabric up when I make art. I use my brain better too, but sometimes it just gets hard.
Next week I'll find out what my art brain has in store for me! I'm excited!

Watch This Space!

I like to go deep.
When I take a workshop, I like it to last. I like to get in to the meat of the thing and study hard, seek out  possibilities, try stuff, go back the next day and try some more stuff. I learn better this way. I have a short attention span, and find that if a workshop lasts a couple of hours, I don't delve deep enough. I enjoy it while I'm there, but there it ends, as I tend to go home and fail to explore further. With a good long workshop, with time, I am in it, it is in me. I dive deep into the subject matter and I uncover many avenues of exploration. I am able to finish a thought, finish a piece, follow through, not putting it on the back burner for later. Working through an idea when its fresh is really important to me, working in the moment, spontaneously and directly is the way I get good work. If I think and plan, my work becomes stifled, lacking passion.
Long workshops, this is what I like.

So here I am, here we are - on the verge of offering high level textile art workshops in the beautiful and peaceful setting of Denman Island.

Our first Tweedle Do Productions project is a week of intensive creativity with two very talented and passionate teachers, each one a specialist in her field. Maria Shell is an artist I met in Ohio while doing a two-week long intensive art retreat at the Crow Barn with Nancy Crow. As well as being an artist, Maria is a great writer and talks about these experiences in her blog. She is coming from her home in Anchorage to teach a course called Pattern And Repetition In Contemporary Quiltmaking. She is very generous with her talents and invites all levels of stitchers to participate. I can hardly wait! A week of patchwork, great food and nature. Leave your phones at home, bring your hiking shoes and your sewing machine and join in.

We are still getting things up and running at Tweedle Do, but this is too exciting to leave under my hat. Mark your calendar for the week of May 25-30, 2014 to be on Denman Island for a creative blast.

Leave a comment if you are too excited to wait!


Next up - Anna Heywood_Jones. Stay tuned.

Ketchup

I really need to get more regular with this!

Now I have to catch up again.

Above you will see a photo of my beloved Bernina 1090.
I've had it for about ten years, but its been around for longer than that. These guys were made in the 1990's sometime, and this one was used in a fabric and quilting store to make samples, drapery, pillows and probably just about everything else! There is nothing wrong with this old beauty, but the old style light is dim and there is a bit of a whine in the motor that makes me nervous that I'm going to lose her....
Add that to my yearning for a machine with more throat space and to my having the opportunity to sit down and try a Juki TL98Q straight stitch machine, and whoosh!!! a new machine was on its way to my little shipping container studio!

So I packed my Bernina into its beautiful hard case and put it away in a safe (and easily accessible) place, cuz she'll do things no other machines will do, and I unpacked my new machine...

I cleaned up a little... but not too much, because I had better things to do with my time than cleaning- like SEWING! This machine is fast! its a Juki TL2010Q, which replaced the 98Q, it goes 1500 rpm, (1500 stitches per minute = 25 stitches per second, according to my husband) which I assume means 1500 stitches per minute, but whatever the rpm stands for, its fast! It has a nice bright light, and it has a biiiig space to the right of the needle in which to stuff a quilt.

Let me tell you one thing - on the Bernina, when you press your heel on the foot pedal - the thing that makes your machine go - the machine does a half rotation, meaning if your needle is in the down position and you give the foot pedal a tap with your heel, the needle comes up, and vice versa, if the needle is down, it'll come on up. I loved this feature - I could set the machine to always have the needle in the down position when I stopped sewing (great for machine quilting), and if I gave it a bump with my heel, the needle would come up. Great. Used it for years, it was second nature for me. Okay - now on this new speedy machine, if I bump my heel on the foot pedal, guess what- the thread cutter is activated!!! It will take me a while to get used to this.

But its fast, its really fast. And I love that. I have never really been a lead foot on the sewing machine, I'm a pretty careful stitiche, slowly and majestically as the sign says, but I really am enjoying this speed!