It's almost turkey day!

Well let's see it took almost 12 hours to tow the Miata back to MI for turkey day!
The good news is we will celebrate with family...blessed to have one set of parents here...83 and 86 and in decent health. Sadly two of my kids will be in other states but we will have Christmas to celebrate!
Anyway sadly no time to quilt! But happy turkey day to all!!!!

Wow it's a holiday week!

Can you believe it's Thanksgiving already? over 1/4 of my school year is over ;-) nice thought........ but oh my, time seems to be flying by....

Well sadly I have all these ideas I would like to be creating and instead I am packing for a 10 hour drive up north! Yep we're going back to MI for turkey dinner..... A sad fact is we're getting older so the thought of working all day tomorrow and then driving 10 hours is not that exciting, just the thought tires me.

Will have to catch up with my art in a few days right now it's time out for family celebrations.......the bummer is one child will be in NY and my daughter and 8 month old grandson are in Denver so we only get to see one of the kids and then some other family members like parents, sisters, nieces....friends!

Sure hope we don't hit traffic or bad weather........

Here is another picture of view from our deck notice how the colors have changed...winter is coming!

Silk Challenge...are we having fun?

Silk Challenge... ;-) Well it started back in ?? gee I've already forgotten..lol... No seriously we got our material on Sept 22 and were given basic rules which really just told us we had to use 50% of each piece and then attend a 2nd meeting Nov 22 to show where we stood on our ideas or sewing and to receive a surprise piece of silk to put a kink in or accentuate our design. End size of art quilt is to be 144 perimeter or less. Well I bugged a fellow teacher who is also my quilting mentor (a position she took out of pity ;-) to do this challenge with me....See I have set goals for us this year to do this challenge and to also to enter a SAQA Art Quilt Show in the spring. She has begrudged me and agreed to venture as She puts it out of her comfort zone ;-)))) I keep telling her we are having fun! Hopefully we are....lol

Anyway here is the fabric we have been given and the surprise kink yesterday was a silk tie. We each received a different tie and must use a recognizable piece of it in our project.

So this is all I can show you till after the contest. Our deadline or the due date is January 26, 2008 at noon.

Tonight I am a teacher...it's conference night

So we have already completed 1/4th of our 2007-2008 school year! Tonight is conference night and usually as the art teacher I do not see many parents so I am using the time wisely to update my school web page with photos of student work, I'm matting items for the county fine art show and setting up new displays. I do want to share just a couple of my student's batik work. I call them our cheater batiks...meaning we do use hot wax, but then we paint with liquid watercolor dyes and only do one color bath. Still for 6th graders and cheater batiks......not bad huh? Enjoy.......

Life sure gets in the way....

So I have had a busy week between work, family and stuff! You have to know how frustrating it is to have a sick parent when you are miles away...MI versus VA! Thankfully it looks to be taken care of and mom is recovering or resting in hospital. Then work is busy this time of year due to class changes and now the art teacher is also teaching a 7th grade math seminar? lol
Heavy on my mind has been my first original painted canvas quilt. I had a design and want to stick near it but my famous leaves really do not fit my vision so I have been adapting and creating. Hopefully I have come up with the solution but now need time to work on it. We're off for the day to do the normal life demands and hopefully tonight I can return to create.
Here are some of the famous leaves.....

A lazy Saturday

Well went to brunch with a buddy quilter and then to GStreet for some metallic thread to possibly help me finish my art quilt. I also sent a teaser photo to my son of some of the future squares of his Tshirt quilt. I actually took up quilting at one of my son's request. He had saved bags of Tshirts from high school sports, concerts, etc. after seeing a friend's Tshirt quilt an aunt had made them and he has always wanted one of his own. So when I moved to VA I joined a local quilting guild. Figured it would serve two-fold purpose: help me meet new people and help me make the famous Tshirt quilt my son desired. Well that led to my quest to quilt. Of course if you're a mother you'll relate it's hard to make one child something without the others feeling where's mine? Well you guessed it by now...I have to make another Tshirt quilt and this time it is for my LEHIGH Grad (who played college football) If you have been to a LEHIGH Game you know their colors are what I used to call ugly Brown and Gold lol lol (must have been the mud from the field) anyway this is one of the no brainer projects I have to work with as I stay on my art quilt journey, gives me a break once in a while. Enjoy the peek..the best thing I've told them no deadline it will be done when it is done. Also thanks to batiks, LEHIGH colors have never looked better. Well off to create, it's a glorious day!

I love to experiment

Problem is when you discover so many neat things it becomes hard to focus. ;-)

Okay so I have been trying out a bunch of surface techniques. I've been having lots of fun.

I loved the bleach stuff and am excited to try more.... tie dye was fun and so many options there and so easy. The sun dyeing was first time attempts for me and proved interesting, I would like to try some more and possibly other colors but hopefully with some control now that I understand the process a little. Then going back to batik has been fun, wow I first tried batik back in college and wow actually high school lol....anyway I've been a busy bee..........

Now to try to focus enough to work with colors that will coordinate with some of my future quilt designs.