it's fall!

we moved into the house when the trees were bare, and I still have no clue what some of those trees are, but one of them is celebrating the change of the seasons by turning it's leaves this glorious color

WOW

fall also means lots of pumpkins and apples in the stores

so we took a day off from other work and put up applesauce

it was a lot of fun to have my daughter here working on this project too -- 9 pints for us, 6 and almost another for her

yummy

 

the DH has been busy in the garage workshop

each of my stereo speakers now has a lovely solid wood stand -- gets them off the floor and really improves the sound -- nice!

this is a little project he's building for a friend of mine that spent several hours teaching me some new techniques that I believe are going to make an enormous difference in my art work --- this is a little "thank you" gift -- a stand to sit under her work table that has a lip around 3 sides so the sewing machine pedal doesn't scoot off the edge

we emptied 3 big trunks and 2 little foot lockers this week -- and most of the doll and bear collection has been found and installed

I have a few more little pieces that I want to put in cases in my bedroom, a few for my office and a few for the studio, but we're mostly done with that part of the unpacking

this picture could be labeled "future home of the design wall" -- we got the space all marked with blue tape yesterday, ready to hang it up as soon as I finish getting it covered

got these hung on the wall yesterday too

yup, there is a little space there for growth in additional spools of thread, and this does not include the hand quilting threads -- just the ones that my sewing machine will play nicely with

this is a lot easier for me to see at a glance what I actually have available

the week wasn't all about house work, however

the "suit" for the Ninja Turtle costume is all stitched together, so now I'm working on the accessories

I finished the bead embroidery on this piece -- I need to dig through the tub of leathers and upholstery velours to find the right material to cover the back of it

and yesterday I finished quilting around each of the figures walking on the trail and started quilting on the trail itself

I need to keep working on this every day as we are now in count down mode on it -- only 27 days left to finish the quilting, do the edge and get good photos before the deadline to enter

Must.Work.Faster!

putting the rubber where my mouth is

I know, it sounds like a really mixed metaphor --

last year at this time my friend, Barbara Beasley, was part of an open studio with Heidi Kummli

at the time I was still living at the other end of the state, and making that trip just was not in the cards, and I did a lot of moaning about not getting to go

this year was a whole different story -- I had no such excuse -- and it was a huge adventure!

you see, Heidi lives off the grid -- up in the mountains on a dirt road that Google Maps doesn't even recognize exists

and I'm a city girl -- yes, I grew up in Colorado, but I didn't go off driving the hills on my own, and then I spent a lot of years driving in freeway traffic -- a whole other kind of scary

so the drive there was one of the more nerve racking I can remember --- but the open studio was awesome!

I got to spend a lot of time talking to Heidi, one of the bead embroidery artists that got me started doing that work as well as enjoying conversation with Barbara and other folks that had made the trek up the mountain

and I came home with some goodies from Heidi's stash, a new book, and 60 photographs of the leaves turning gold here in our mountains -- and those photos will no doubt result in a number of new art quilts

it was great to go and "fill the well" creatively after a week that had included

putting up tomatoes from my daughter's garden

finishing another shed door piece

(and entering 3 of those shed doors in a quilt show that will be held in October)

completed the inking of the ghosts on this piece, so now it is ready to be quilted!

did more work on the Halloween costume for Mr Cute -- and had him here for a "fitting" which he was very excited about

worked on the piece of jewelry that is currently in process --- several of the items that came home with me from the open studios will be used in this piece

 last night I went to one of my art group meetings and was treated to this amazing sunset outside the windows as the meeting was going on

and had another friend drop this little bundle of goodies into my bag during that meeting

WOW

it's been a great week!

success, completion and fighting fear

From the Jewelry Studio:

it's finished!

this piece actually came together exactly the way I saw it in my head -- yeah!

it has been entered in its intended challenge, but even more important, it has a promised buyer

it doesn't get much better than that!

the rework on this piece is finished too

it originally had two small magnetic clasps, but it did not meet the "wear ability" test -- those clasps did not stay closed if you did anything but walk around holding your hand out for folks to admire the bracelet --- nope, that won't do!

so I took the back off, stitched on one of my new style toggle and loop clasps and put the back on again with a 3 bead edge instead of the 2 bead edge it had originally

much better!

so I have returned to trying to create a "chain" for this piece

attempts to create a flat beaded piece just won't work on this one since the piece itself is so dimensional, so I have decided to create 3 tubes of beads on each side and braid them together

something I've not tried before -- so what's new!?

so far, so good, but here I am again against a deadline -- I have 3 days to make this work to be able to get it into the challenge it is intended for

geesh!


A bit about moving in:

last weekend I had some help moving some furniture into my newly finished (by the contractors) studio

these two pieces of furniture have been repurposed from their former lives in other rooms of another house

this week we got them fastened to the wall behind them (tall, narrow pieces are at risk of being pulled forward -- not a good idea!), I scrubbed them with Murphy's Oil soap, cleaned all the glass and installed contact paper on the painted shelves (when I washed those the paint crocked off -- not a good thing!)

the very bottom shelf of each of these will be filled with art books, and I plan to fill the other shelves with my fabric -- it will be good to have that where I can see the color but it is safely behind glass to be kept clean


Taking a little break:

we invited our daughter, son in law and grandson to come and have dinner with us last night, and since my son in law was working yesterday, my daughter and Mr Cute came earlier in the day to spend some time

while Mr Cute was having quiet time, I gave my daughter a sewing lesson

she brought some flannel and made her very first pair of pj pants for Mr Cute

this is the face of a successful sewing lesson completed!!

and Mr Cute gave them the seal of approval by putting them on right away and spending the rest of the evening in them -- fun


Dealing with artistic fear:

I worked on this piece a little bit this week

I've done a lot of stitching on the bigger trees

True confession time:  while I am still committed to this piece, I am not happy with the way those trees look

it's time to "Be Brave" and risk ruining it

for the last two days I've been thinking that what I need to do is either a lot more fusing of more varieties of colored fabrics over parts of those trunks or to paint them

or there is option three which would entail many, many, MANY more hours of stitching

I'm leaning toward the fusing of more fabric -- mainly because I know I can do that in small steps -- and I'm really afraid of the paint thing because .... well, I just am (and I know that may be in the end how  I put the snow on them)

no wonder so much work has been done on beading this week -- I'm trying to deal with the "Fear Factor" on this piece!

like I said -- time to Be Brave!

making order out of chaos

even when you are really excited about a move, it is a lot of hard work

no matter what "stuff" you bring with you there are going to be surprises

and organization can be a key thing

these two pieces of organization happen this week --

in the garage there were brooms and mops and dust pans leaning against the wall next to the freezer (which I'm happy to report survived the move and is already in use here at the new house) -- tripping over all those things was making me a little nuts

in this case, since these hang out in the garage, I opted for the free organizing method -- the DH nailed a long 1x2 to the studs on the wall then I could put up as many other nails as I wanted to hang all those cleaning tools

in the kitchen pantry, however, I needed something a bit more than a piece of 1x2 -- picked up a wire rack system like the one my daughter has in her pantry and made a lot more usable space in there

this move came with some expected expenses

these three items for example --

we had expected to replace our mattress and step up into something that is more comfortable for our aging bodies

and we knew from the day we first looked at it that the refrigerator that was in the house would need to be replaced

the new grill is our reward to ourselves for having spent a year without one because we were not willing to buy one and leave it at the old house after the old one stopped working and could not be repaired (no small hardship since we usually grill all year round!)

and then there were those unexpected things 

one of the things that we moved was the recliner that I had been using for about 20 years

turns out we could have just left it behind as the first night it came out of the moving POD one of the supports for the back broke

the new chair, while it is not what I really would like to have, is quite serviceable and goes well with the other chair in the room, so I'm okay with it

and the little adventure of the dishwasher

there was a dishwasher here, which when the home inspector did is work before we bought the house made note that it was not attached to the counter top so when it was opened it fell forward out of the cabinet

of course we insisted that the previous owner take care of that -- which they did -- sort of

after the first long weekend of unpacking and washing dishing is that dishwasher, my daughter observed that it didn't do a really good job, it was noisy, and if you pulled the top rack out too far it came right off the rail and put you in danger of dropping an entire rack of glasses 

I made some noises about having to make do with it for now, etc., etc., and she said to me "Mom, you DESERVE to have nice things"

uh -- well, she has a point

so we ordered the new dishwasher, and when the installer came, he discovered that the "legs" under that old one were nothing more than some little pieces of raw lumber, and just as he started to work on disconnecting it, it started spewing water all over the kitchen!

I think we avoided a lot of hassle by being proactive on this one!

the work in the house continues, there is still much to do, but I'm going to take some time today to work on some art -- I'm feeling a little "out of sorts" and I know the best cure is to make some art!

moving along

there is actually much more quilting done on this than appears in this picture --

I took this picture right after I had finished doing all the machine quilting of the tiles and the arches

the sky has all been quilted now, and I'm working my way through the "sky windows" of the arches

I need to keep at this because I have only 8 days left to the deadline --- I'll be back at this again today!

because of that looming deadline, I haven't touched this piece for over a week, but just before I put it aside, I did finish the portion that will be red brick --- looks pretty good

and under the real title of "moving along", we have accepted an offer on our house and made an offer on a new one

if all goes well, this is where we will call home in April

March is going to be a very busy month!

At LONG last

the chair is finished!

finally got the braid and the tacks along the bottom edge

a very big TA DA!  

considering the fact that I had never seen this chair as anything but a naked wood frame (which had been moved around with us for over 30 years!), the finished product looks pretty great

I'm working on a new piece of jewelry

the stone in this is ruby and zoitzite, and I let the stone decide what color the beads should be (the biggest round beads in the "collar" are the same stone)

not sure exactly what the finished product will look like, but I'm enjoying the journey

this piece, however is much more planned!

I did this drawing last night -- now I need to go through the boxes of beads and stones and see what's available on hand to make it out of

the quilting has begun on this piece

I had started doing the space between the foliage and the wire one way then changed my mind and picked it all out

something different will be in order when I get back to this


today we have a lot of errands to tend to -- time to get to that!