I'm getting a bit better with this blogging, just over a week since last post. Since then, I'm a year older, attended a weekend long family reunion, spent time with grandkids plus one, and attended my quilt guild's annual picnic at Round Top Park- a park between home and the NYS border.
This was the first year I have attended that I was able to get photos of the spectacular views of the surrounding mountains. Each of the past years, the weather didn't cooperate for photos- rain, thick haze, etc. Last year, I couldn't see beyond the trees in the foreground- the valley was completely blanketed in white. The view from here shows the Susquehanna river on the right. This photo was taken about 4PM when I arrived at the park. The Susquehanna river is to the right, and you can see parts of Sayre and Athens, PA, in the distance you can see New York State.
Here is a similar shot taken just before I left the park at about 7PM. The lighting is different and the mountains in the distance are much hazier looking.
This photo shows a wider view, the high school that my boys attended is just left of the lower center. I love the way the sky looked when I took these last photos. I have been playing around with my chalk pastels more since my workshop with Elizabeth Busch at QBL. I am working on a series of pieces depicting the mountain views from my deck and fields at home, and where ever I am travelling. I have been working with the pastels on bleached 7 oz duck, then I will add paints over the pastels. A bit backwards from what we did in class with pastel over wet paint. I need to work on getting the perspective right to show the great distances I can see to show. I will post photos of what I'm doing with that in a later post.
Here are some photos of a few UFO's I dug out. I am hosting a "Playing With Color" challenge through Sept. on a Yahoo challenge group. Members are being challenged to pull out all those art supplies laying around the house such as paints, crayons, colored pencils, pastels and more, to see what they can do to change the look of fabrics. I am challenging myself to take some old UFO pieces and change or add to them by painting, stamping, drawing, or more to see if they can become something better.
Here are a few pieces of fabric I pulled out to play with one day. I am also playing with printed fabrics instead of just the white I usually paint. I had just gotten my supplies outside to work when my son arrived with our grandson and his cousin (4&5 years old). As soon as they saw I was going to play with paint and fabric, they wanted to join in, so I set them up with their own pieces and some paints and stamps. They had a great time… I got nothing of my own done. By the time I got the kids started, the wind started blowing and I got tired of chasing things, so packed it all back in the house. I had taped things down for the kids, so they kept on playing while I put things away.
Here are a couple of old small hangings I used to make and sell. The center designs were free motion quilted with colored threads, and "framed" with other fabrics. These never quite got finished- the top edges didn't get closed after pillow case turning them. My plan for these is to add color to the flowers and butterflies with paint or pastels, and maybe even add to the borders with some stamping or something else. Not sure what will happen.
The photo on the left is a smiling 10 wk old, grandbaby Jenna. It's hard to catch the many faces a baby makes with a slow digital camera, but I got a few great ones.
The right photo is from my sister's gardens where we had our family reunion. I keep taking as many photos of flowers with the sky as I can find. We were lucky and got great weather for the reunion- cool for August, but not too cool, and the rain held off for night.
Here is another work in progress that I pulled out again. It has a photo of the old house along our road that is nearly falling down, and surrounded by scrubby bushes and weeds. I used the photo printed onto cotton to start with for this piece. I used the photo as the inspiration for "My Dream House", but turned the house into an English cottage for that one. The link takes you to the post about the process for the piece.
In this piece, I wanted to show what the house would look like surrounded by beautiful blooming gardens instead of weeds. I've often thought of this when passing by, so this is what I have so far. I'm still working on the large tree trunk to make it fit in better, and am adding some embroidered flowers to the bushes at the end of the house.
I am a former textile artist and new pattern designer with a degree in horticulture, wishing to share my love of nature, flowers and gardens with everyone through my photos, sunprinted fabrics, and now pattern designs. Chronic Lyme Disease has caused major changes to the direction my life. I have to limit the amount of time spent digging in my gardens, and quilting has become more difficult. I discovered pattern design as a way to get art back into my life. I now use my gardens and photos to inspire designs that can be used on fabrics and print on demand items.
