Monday, February 5, 2024

Stuff

 I'm here in Florida. I wish I could say warm and sunny Florida, but it has been a cool and cloudy January that is continuing into February. Looking at the weather in the rest of the country, I guess I shouldn't complain. We have no extreme rain, no flooding, no bitter cold and no snow storms.

I celebrated my birthday here, twice! The first one on last Friday with a group of friends. We went to a fabulous museum exhibit at the Baker Museum in Naples. Then out to lunch, of course.

 Dinner at another great restaurant last night. My cup runneth over!

Here are some pictures from the exhibit. the artist is Tamara Kostianovsky, who makes her art from recycled clothing. I am hoping to try some of her techniques in a future piece.



Several pieces were free-standing , such as this and the next one.



Some pieces were hung on the wall.




This is a technique I hope to try when i am back in CT with all of my supples. This looks like cotton T-shirt material, cut into strips. I know that it will roll on itself when cut. The large stand-alone pieces used the same technique. I'm not sure what was underneath.

This whole section was called Abattoir. The artist lives in Argentina, known for its meat. When I was there several years ago I ate more meat than I had previously eaten in probably five years.
There were several of these life size carcasses, showing the inside and the outside. 

This was a decent led tour and our docent was amazing. 

That's it for now. I'll write again when I have something worthwhile.

Sunday, January 7, 2024

Stitching

 I finished December just a little late and now my whole year is finished. I really enjoyed working on it and especially liked having a theme each month, whether color or topic. December, of course, was Everything Christmas.






Saturday, December 30, 2023

I'm Still Here

 A long time out-of-town friend sent me an email asking if I was OK since I hadn't blogged about the holidays as I usually do. No reason, just lazy I guess and not a whole lot to blog about. 

Thanksgiving was lovely, as usual at my niece, Lauren's. Great food and decor. Christmas seemed to come and go too fast and now I am in the process of un-decorating, not my favorite task. 

My son was here for a few days for Christmas. He lives so far away so I cherish the time he is here. We usually will spend one day in NYC, but this year we went to the NYBotanical Garden for its annual train show. We had gone several years ago, but it is different each year. All of the  buildings are replicas of authentic NY buildings, some still here and some that have been demolished, like Penn Station.  Kurt took a lot of pictures so here are a few.

Since the gardens are in the Bronx, we went to Arthur Avenue, NY's little Italy for some fun food shopping and lunch. Delicious!


This is the conservatory and where the train show took place. All of the roofs of the real thing are glass. I don't know what plant material was used to look like glass. All of the buildings were made of plant material.


Some of NY's more recognizable buildings.



I think this was the Penn Station that was demolished in the 60's to be replaced by something ugly.



There were model trains all over, including overhead and on bridges, also authentic replicas, like the Brooklyn Bridge and others.


PanAm Terminal

So thanks, Judy, for getting me off my doff and onto blogging again. I am still working on my daily stitching and as you may have guessed, I am behind with December. But I will post a few pictures soon.




Friday, December 1, 2023

November

 I finished November, except for one small block that I will do tonight. I didn't know if I would like working with such neutral colors, but I did.

Next month will be mostly about Christmas and lots of color







Friday, November 10, 2023

October

 Leaves for October. Some I like better than others. I thought I would color them in with crayons and then iron them. I did two that way and really didn't like them and there was no way to undo them.



My sister and I and two good friends had a very nice five day trip to New Orleans in mid October. None of us had been there before and we had a great time. We had some fabulous food, listened to jazz and took a couple of tours.

Halloween is a very big deal in New Orleans and we saw some incredible decorations, but this house was our favorite. It was a huge old house with spacious front and side lawns covered with life size skeletons. Each one sported a sign with a witty name/ and or saying. These are just a few of the pictures I took. Click on the pictures to see the details. 











I'm working on my November page and it is all in neutral tones, grays, blacks, taupe and brown. I read a saying somewhere about the month......NO sun, NO snow, NOvember. It's probably my least favorite month, except for my son's birthday and Thanksgiving. 

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday.


Saturday, September 23, 2023

Finished early

 I finished September a few days ago. I don't know why these circular designs go faster, but they do. I will be taking a couple of small trips in Sept and Oct. so it's alway good to be ahead of the game.



I need to put a little flower in the Sept. block, not much room there. Maybe a small Black Eyed Susan.

I received an email yesterday that my SAQA Auction piece that I showed last week has sold. That's always good news. 

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Friday, September 15, 2023

SAQA Benefit Auction

 It's that time of the year where you can buy some wonderful affordable art from the SAQA Benefit Auction. You can read all about it here.

My piece, All Buttoned Up, is in Section 1. Bidding is between Sept 18- 24. Please read all the bidding info in the link above.


It is 12 inches square, as are all the pieces in the auction. Mine is comprised entirely of hand sewn buttons, sewn on in an ombre effect. There are tabs on the back that allow you to hang it in any direction. 

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.

Wednesday, September 6, 2023

Finished

 Finally finished August. All those fiddly little flowers took a long time. I'm looking forward to Sept when I am going to make circles that encompass more than one block, as I did in June. But I think I will use autumn colors. I know I am going to look at my quilt with the embroidered circles for inspiration.



Friday, August 25, 2023

Stitching

 It's been over a month since I've posted. I don't know where the time goes. How can it be the last week go August? 

I finished July, staying with my red, white and blue theme.




I am behind on August where I am doing only flowers. Pinterest has been a huge source of inspiration. There are a lot of narrow vertical blocks, and I am finding plenty to choose from




Each year my fiber group, FiberWorks, puts on a show at the library. The theme this year was Inspired by an Artist. I chose Picasso and his blue period.


I printed several of his blue period paintings onto fabric. Since they were small, I could do them myself and did not have to rely on Spoonflower, a company that will print your photos on any size fabric. My piece measures 25 x 18 and is mounted on a black 30 x 30 canvas, as are all the pieces in the show.

When I dye fabric I often do a six way gradation. I had a whole set of this blue and some curvy pieced strips that I had never used. I thought the colors were a perfect match for Picasso's blues. As I often do, I added narrow strips of bright orange to give it a little zip.

I quilted each little piece onto one layer of batting with no backing. Then they were pieced into the whole quilt. I had to do a little extra quilting on the pictures so that they would not sag. 


I took some creative license and embellished the figures with curls or flowers or wallpaper. They still all look very sad.






I've titled my piece Moody Blues.  We hang the show next week at the Cyrus Booth Library in Newtown, CT, where it will hang for two months. 

I am linking up with Off the Wall Friday. Go see what others creative folks are up to.

Saturday, July 15, 2023

On the Mend

 I'm feeling a whole lot better, but behind on my daily stitching. I'll get caught up soon. Funny thing is that my stitching has suffered. My outline stitch, which was pretty good does not look as good as it was. I'll get back in the groove, I hope.




This is all I have to show for the week. Doctor visits seem to have eaten up a fair amount of time and some days I just don't feel like sewing (horrors!). I'll get there.

I'm linking up with Off the Wall Friday.