It was busy work week… soon it will be EASTER/Spring break..Hawaii here I come…

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So this past weekend I worked the annual Fauquier County Arts Festival… It has amazed me during my 5 years teaching in VA how over 26 art instructors gather and put up an amazing student art display and along with us the music departments/instructors organize many wonderful performances that our parents have the pleasure of viewing during the 2 day festival.

We Art teachers show up on Thursday (after 3:00pm and a full day of teaching) and quickly somehow set up a wonderful display of easily over 1500 pieces of art. I know I had over 125 objects on display and then of course we also have the traveling show on display down the long hallway (which I have 8 students represented in). THEN the amazing part is just as quick as we put up the show we teachers have the show torn down and repacked…The show ended at 3:00 Saturday afternoon and my stuff was back in my car by 3:40 and as you can see from the photos most of the gym was emptied by then. School takes place Monday as though nothing ever took place… ;-)

The show was outstanding as usual!

Quick trip up north and now Art Festival

Sadly I have not touched my sewing machine for over a week….between the normal deadlines at work I have ill parents.      Just no time to sew.

Luckily I managed a fast Friday to Sunday trip to MI to spend some time with my folks..my dad was transferred to a health facility while I was there where we hope he will rehab and be strong enough to walk again. Mom has rallied at least for now.     My sister managed to bring my folks dog to visit dad, first time he got to see Sammy in over a week…we’re hoping it spurs him on to successful rehab. Gotta walk Sammy!

Tomorrow  we set up the County art display an estimated 25 schools (grades k-12) We all hang work from our talented students and then the music departments put on various performances Friday and Saturday.  It  amazes  me how quickly it comes together and then how quickly it’s over.

Here is a tempera batik painting by 8th grade female student of mine.

 

Fine Arts Festival

So busy time of the year once again……besides teaching my 6 classes today ;-) I continued labeling or matting my student work for our fine arts festival March 27 and 28.  Also still have to prepare lessons for my guest teacher (sub) to present Friday while I head to MI to see my dad and mom. My dad’s been in the hospital for over a week along with my mom who went in last Friday but she got out yesterday….of course then she spent last night there to keep a watchful eye on her husband of 63 years. The 6th graders finished these fun projects today…just in time for a few to be sent to the arts festival for display. The backgrounds are watercolor techniques wet on wet mainly and the fish are sand art.  I also found another project to use the fabric boards  I recycle from Kelly Ann….thanks Kelly. 

This project uses 4 of the boards and was a team effort. Two 7th grade female students, each worked on  two boards which then display as a 4 board unit.  Acrylic paint and various collage’ techniques.                                                                End of  year the girls can each take home their boards.  Well off to start packing for my trip to Mi.

Friday morning will be here before I know.

 

Just a quick note

Okay so just a quick posting. I finally got to one of my Yahoo book club’s homework assignments….we were to try lasagna silk dyeing….you layer 4 pieces of silk then dye…sort of drip dye application….then you leave the material dry without moving……

So here are a few pics of my experiment….instead of using all 4 pieces of fabric I choose 3. Wish you could see the details of thread….

Whew! The Weekend is almost over……

So thanks to a blog I love to follow I have discovered something new…..

So testing testing…… let’s see if and how this works??

Just a short posting to say it’s been a rough weekend….both parents in hospital in MI while I’m in VA! Sucks big-time….. The good news I have a very capable sister that is taking great care….she and a Dr.Lee even got them in the same room! My kids are calling it the honeymoon suite……my folks have been married 63 years!!!!Now if everyone could add them to your prayers. I pray they rally and get back to enjoying life…..

Life sure gets in the way...

So I am wondering how any quilt artist gets to be 100% focused?
Shoot even with my kids grown to adulthood stuff just gets in my way? Oh Well enough lamenting......
This week has been very busy time for me at work. It's that time of the year again...Did you know March is "National Youth Art Month" so to coincide our County Arts Festival takes place sometime during March. This year it will be March 26-27,2009.
Well it means we county art teachers need to get our student artwork ready to display. It's lots of work, but I love to display my student's work!! Even after 35 years of teaching.........
But back to my point...it has been busy week trying to organize, sort, mat and labeling student work.
To add to the turmoil my folks are both ill in MI (Remember I work and presently live in VA) and now as of last night both my folks are in the same hospital (across the hall from each other) with only one of my sisters having to do all the grunt work while she is also still trying to work at her job as educator due to us other 3 siblings being scattered around the U.S. I am trying hard to get my show items labeled,organized and completed due to possible emergency trips up north. My hubby and I are ticketed for fast 3 day weekend next weekend to see folks.
Then I am of course also have my yahoo art quilt book club so have homework there to get completed and posted, lol sure in my spare time. I have managed to get the 9 monsters for my grandson's quilt all fused and ready for me to complete by July deadline. Will add to the to-do pile. lol lol but oh well guess such is life.....
I've posted some various photos on my student's work...aren't the two 18x24 8th grade tempera paintings nice? I really do enjoy my students creations. Notice one photo is of the friendly monsters.
Oh well stay tuned...I am hoping next week life slows down a little so this quilter can possibly focus on quilting?

Busy time of year......

Well sadly this is the start of a very busy time for me at work since the annual All County Fine Arts Festival is in about 2.5 weeks. I still have a lot of work to mat or get labeled for the show. I get home beat.........sadly too tired to quilt during the week. This weekend I fused the rest of my fabric choices for my grandson's Caleb's big boy quilt.
I then cut out the shapes needed for the last 6 monsters. I will have 9 monsters in all. I do have a pattern that my daughter picked out 2 years ago but now she told me to improvise and come up with a quilt design using the monsters of my own ;-) This should prove to be fun so I will probably be anxious to get started working on a design.;-) Maybe I'll have more energy to quilt after I get home from work? ;-)))
As you can see from my photo there was a lot of cutting this weekend.
The other photo is a piece of my rusting that I want to try to float on my HQ16 and see what I can do as whole art quilt.

Busy Busy week! yet.......

What an interesting week yet busy!..... Our last week we were all fighting germs at school if you remember? (work) Students out ill the worst I've seen in my 5 years of teaching in VA. I finally gave in by Thursday, dropped by doctor and stayed home Friday sick. Laid low all weekend trying to get rid of the germs......then snow hit our area come Sunday evening AND suddenly March 2-3 = 2 snow days! ;-) WOW! What a nice reprieve..it gave me time to regroup AND two days of sewing and time in my studio.

So this week I finally dragged out a pattern I bought with my daughter in Denver when my grandson was born 2 years ago. It's a great pattern, the most I ever spent on a pattern but that is because it was a "block of the month" quilt and the patterns are for 9 wonderful monsters! It's a great design and I promised my daughter I would make it for Caleb's big boy bed someday.

Well Caleb is getting a new sibling come Sept 09 so figured I'd better get started? lol I have 3 monsters on their squares and am trying out fabrics for the other 6....the patterns mention/suggest colors but the fabric choices are up the quilter.

This is going to be a fun quilt!

Then I also fit in a little experimental dyeing this week I made 5 pieces of fabric using Tahitian blue and a red..you'll see the blue on the left and the red on the right. I then mixed the red and blue together in various mixtures... The dark blue fabric was from another time. I am pleased with the end results.

Next week I hope to experiment with yellow and blue dyes......and maybe try solid coverage.

Fun Sunday.....

So after a week of fighting the germs at school......cold, flu, coughs and then coming home each day zonked and heading to bed for comfort, I seem to finally be on the upturn to better health ;-) Took a sick day myself to regroup. Yay....feeling better!

So finally I got to mess around this weekend with some quilting....I got my 2 post cards for the pex winter exchange in their envelopes and mailed.....then got to have some fun with my HQ16 today ;-) and now am trying to remember how to reload the machine. I'm putting some simple black cotton as backing and a white muslin top that I hope to float some simple whole cloth quilt tops over to see what kind of free motion thread painting or other type of quilting I can experiment with? I have some ideas in my mind that I want to try....will let you know if my ideas or thoughts work out or crash ;-) Either way I figure it is just more practice to help learn the machine and get comfortable with it; tension and movement of handles etc. I have cut up the long practice piece I ended up with from the set up fabric and actually am not to unhappy with the bottom of my practice piece; which was nice discovery. I am going to zigzag on the edges of the cut up pieces then wash them and dry them and then do some experimental painting or dyeing on the fluffy quilted pieces.

It's something else I have had in my mind to try so looking forward to seeing the end results.

Figure nothing lost and fun to experiment. I also ended up with one practice piece I figure I can hang just for fun in my studio to showcase my first attempt on my new machine and to remind me of options or ideas for free motion quilting. (You might have to click on photos to get a clearer view of quilting stitches.)