Catching Up

Wednesday evening I participated in another watercolor class with Steve Filarsky at Art Student Academy.  The subject was a vase of tulips.  This time there were only three students, so we had more space, a more relaxed atmosphere, and more time for Steve to work with individuals.  He gave me a few tips that I appreciated.  I am not totally happy with my painting so far, but I think I will spend a little more time on it and see what emerges.  One of the things he showed me was how to get the little highlight on each tulip.

I have also signed up for a six-week watercolor class with Mary Benejam-O'Connell through Wake Forest Parks and Recreation. I think I will benefit from concentration on the basics.  One of my art quilt bee members has also signed up.  It will be at Flaherty Park on Wednesday afternoons starting on February 29.  I hope more people sign up so the class is not cancelled!

On Tuesday I went to Physical Therapy for the last time.  My very sweet therapist, Pamela, said I had met all of the goals she set for me.  Unfortunately, I have not met my personal goal of being able to walk without pain from my old sprained ankle injury, but I am hopeful that it will continue to get better.

Yesterday my sister and Dad came to Raleigh, and Charlie and I ate lunch with them again at Simply Crepes.  Then, last night was a meeting of one of my quilting groups, the Cyberbee.  It was the smallest group ever:  exactly two of us!  Martha and I had a great visit and dinner.  I got to know her a lot better, so it was a good evening.

This should be a quiet weekend at home.  Charlie had some oral surgery yesterday, and can't eat solid foods for a few days.  Since it turned colder this morning, I guess it will be a good weekend for soup.

I took my dog, Kasey, to the dog park in Wake Forest the other day.  This was a first!  She is sometimes very territorial on the greenway and growls at other dogs, and sometimes people, who approach her.  I thought maybe she would learn to socialize a little better.  There were about nine large dogs within the fenced area, and Kasey did not really want to go in.  She sat and looked around while all the other dogs were romping and playing.

After awhile I took her for a walk around the perimeter.  At least we got a little exercise after a couple of laps.

Dogs that never get to run free without a leash probably appreciate the acres of space and the joy of being unleashed to catch balls and chase frisbees.  Kasey gets to be off leash often, both at home and in the mountains.  We have a big yard, and she does not run off.  And, although she looks like she is part golden retriever, she does not retrieve anything.  Throw a ball or stick and she just looks at you like, "Why?"  But she will chase a squirrel, rabbit or deer, with no victories so far!

Now, my granddog Roo is the perfect example of a dog park lover.  His yard is small, and he has lots of stored up energy.  And he has become an expert frisbee dog!

This morning it was really cold, and Kasey and I went to the Sanford Creek greenway where we often walk.  Unfortunately, the earth movers were hard at work clearing the woods behind the creek to build yet more roads and home sites for the Heritage community.  The air smelled like diesel and the noise of the equipment was deafening.  They have installed orange fencing almost down to the creek and cleared out acres of trees.

They always do a nice job on the Heritage projects, but we will probably walk the other greenways and parks while all this construction is taking place.

And when the walks are over, it's time for The Furminator!  This dog brush helps get rid of the undercoat of thick hair- as seen on TV.  And guess who loves to be Furminated!  Ah, bliss!

Art Quilts a la Pamela Allen

Yesterday was a fun day with my Anything Art quilt bee.  Last month we met at my house and I introduced the group to the Pamela Allen method of making art quilts.  Several of the ladies had made great progress on the projects they began at that meeting.

Roberta Morgan absolutely loved this improvisational method of quilting, and had several quilts in her signature bright colors that pop against black and white.  Her self-portrait with cat is a work-in-progress, eliciting big smiles all around.

She also made this teapot quilt that reminds me a bit of Mary Engelbreitt.

She also made a vase with flowers that is already finished.

Peg worked hard on her color study of a Monet painting.  We had several suggestions for her to improve the barn on the far left and to add a dark hillside behind the barn.  What was really fun was that the lavender cloud behind the house on the right looks like an ethereal spirit when you look at it closely.  Peg was not even aware of the ghost watching over the house!

We watched a Kerr Grabowski DVD about Deconstruction Screen Printing, and may try that as our next group project.

Another Lady's Face

When I went upstairs to get the backing fabric for the Cassatt art quilt, I saw my unfinished lady's face on another painting...and decided to work on her instead.

Island Girl, Jeanne McBrayer, 2012

She is done in acrylics.  Some of the background is colored with water-soluble crayons and outlined with paint markers.  No collage this time, I just drew on the paper to make the doodles.

I'm not sure why I am creating all these island girls, except that this time last year I was planning to leave for a dream trip to Hawaii!

But anyway, I did finish stitching the autumn barn, and it is ready to be machine-quilted.

I will quilt in some lines on the barn to represent the boards, and add more branches and tree trunks.  I am thinking that this one might get a little paint embellishment after it is quilted.  I want to catch that sunlight hitting the goldenrod and the autumn foliage.

So, what did you think of 53-year-old Madonna cavorting at the Superbowl halftime show?  Pretty obvious she was lip-syncing, but the Material Girl still looks awful good, doesn't she?

And Now, Something Different

I have posted before about the 2012 free Strathmore Online Workshops.  The first one is hosted by Traci Bautista and is called Doodles Unleashed.  In the fourth lesson, we created a beautiful background with acrylic paints, stamps, stencils, doodled text, etc. 

We also created doodles on a separate sheet with India ink and paintbrush.

The final step was to paint a face onto the background, and collage some of the ink doodles as a headdress.  Traci's looked like this one on the cover of her latest book.

She creates stylized lady's faces that she calls "glam girls" who have one very elaborate eye, no nose, sexy lips and curly long hair.  They also tend to have green, purple or other colorful faces.

I did not want mine to be a copy of Traci's.  Since I have been trying to paint faces for awhile, I decided to try a more realistic face.  When I collaged some of my doodles, the India ink smeared all over.  I had to repaint them.  Here is what I came up with.


Island Bride, mixed media painting by Jeanne McBrayer



She ended up being a bride because I went a little too wild when I painted in her hair.  I gessoed over the black paint, and it looked like a bridal veil.  So I added some stenciling with white acrylic paint.

I have no idea what I will do with this.  Maybe cut it up into postcards or journal covers?  It is fun to try new techniques.

I also began several other backgrounds that have faces in progress, so I will get to those sometime this week.

Are you ready for the Super Bowl?  It is cold and rainy today.  I think I will spend the afternoon before the big game quilting my Cassatt portrait, and maybe its companion, the barn picture, as well.  I have almost finished stitching it.

Whacky Ladies February Meeting

Thursday night was the monthly meeting of The Whacky Ladies, my local quilt bee.  We met at Irene's, who lives less than three miles from my house.  I will share some of the show-and-tell with you.

First of all, Donna Sontag finished quilting the stunning American Flag quilt that Kathy Miller and several other women made to give to the Veteran's Administration Hospital.

Donna really outdid herself on this one.  The white stripes feature stars and words written in script.  This quilt will be used to honorably drape the bodies of deceased Veterans at the hospital when they are being moved from their rooms.

Donna had other impressive work to show us.  She has been designing computerized patterns for customer quilts.  Here is a T-shirt quilt that has various-sized baseballs for the quilting pattern.  I was impressed that she even has the stitching on the baseballs included.

The next quilt is a customer's Double Wedding Ring with huge blocks.  She used a variegated blue thread with custom quilting. 

 

Here is the center block design, a cluster of oak leaves.

The back is solid white, and looks beautiful with the blue thread.

Donna also brought in a customer's quilt that has the Grinch Christmas fabrics.  Unbelievably, the quilter cut the notches around the panel figures to make them look lie postage stamps, and zigzagged around each one.

Lori has designing talents, as well.  She used a geisha panel fabric to make this oriental-style quilt.  The diamonds are made from the extra panel fabric cut into strips.

Carolyn is participating in the House Block a Day project, where you make a different 3" house each day of the year.  She is not sure she will make all 365, but she has made some really cute ones so far.

Marilyn was working on the applique border of this beautiful pineapple quilt.

Irene was not able to attend our Charity Quilt Sew-in Day in January, so she made a baby quilt at home from her own fabrics.  Yes, it is another Warm Wishes quilt.  Our bee has made many of these to donate! Sorry that Irene is sideways in this picture- sometimes Blogger does funny things to photos.

I showed my Mary Cassatt color study art quilt.  I wanted to make it more like the original Impressionist painting with lots of dappled sunlight and reflections.  I stenciled Shiva Paint Stix over a fern stencil, and I think it really added to the Impressionist look. 

Here is the original painting, Mlle. C. Lydia Cassatt, and my version in fabric with the addition of paint.

Here is how it looked before the paint was applied.  Quite a difference!

Janice brought a basket full of beautiful quilt projects, but I am going to refer you to her own blog to see them.  She is becoming quite the quilt artist!  Love the quilts on this post, as well.  Janice recently won 200 spools of Aurifil Wool Thread, and generously let each of us choose two spools to keep.  I have not tried mine yet, but am excited to give it a try!

Really Cute Baby Quilt

Here is a customer quilt that I love so much that I might have to make one like it.  (Please excuse the glare from sunlight.)

The owls are adorable, with googly eyes made of French knots.   There is a patchwork inner border of quarter-square triangles in bright colors


                      


The center medallion has four trees in bright yellow-green shades.

The backing is a bright polka dot.  I used Pear Green Signature thread and made lots of leaves for the trees and owls.

The quilt was made by Jessie Oakley from a commercial pattern called Hooterville from Brandywine Design.  The designer is Linda Hohag.

I am still behind on my baby quilts, and getting more so all the time.  Here is my newest great-niece, Holly.  Holding her is her "big" sister, Lacy.

I can't wait to get my hands on her!  Congratulations to Jason, Robin, Anna, Tyler, and Lacy on the newest addition to the family!

Deja Vu

I could have titled this post the same as the last one, "Another Charity Quilt...and Another Win."  Unbelievably, I won another blog drawing, this time a Jelly roll of Moda's "Little Apples" by Aneela Hoey.  Thanks to Lindsey from Interweave, and to my friend Janice for alerting me to the win!

The next charity quilt is made from those raggedy circle blocks that were quite popular back in the 90's.  I had a book called Quilts From Aunt Amy that had the directions for this quilt with freehand-cut circles that are sewn a quarter-inch in from the edge.  The quilt is pictured on the cover of the book.

When the quilt is finished, you are supposed to wash it to let the raw edges fray and form a kind of textured ruffle. 

 I made a lot of the blocks using muted Civil War repo fabrics.  I decided to donate the blocks at our bee's sew-in last month, and Marilyn Featham stitched them into a quilt top.  I got it quilted yesterday.

 

 

I did some bouncing curves around the whole thing until I got to the circles.  Then I just went round and round, spiraling in to the center and back out.

I had no idea this would look so nice when it was finished!  We had thought this would be for Quilts on Wheels, which is Capital Quilters' Guild's charity for rest home residents in wheelchairs.  But I am thinking now that it might sell well at the Heritage Days auction in the fall.  I will check with my bee and see what they think when we meet tomorrow night.

I found the perfect soft plaid flannel in our basket of donated fabrics.  It has cream, peachy pink and soft green plaid, and is so soft.  I had just barely enough to be able to pin it on the machine.

The quilting shows up nicely on the back.

When I do charity quilts, I try to use up some of the bobbins that are leftover from other projects.  For this one, I used every shade of off-white that I had already wound, which included Linen, Parchment, Ivory, and Sand Dollar.  They all blended in just fine.  Between the three charity quilts I did this week, I freed up about twelve bobbins!  Yippee!

That reddish check fabric in the border of the quilt was left over from my granddaughter's nursery fabric.  She had a double- or queen-size bed in her room for company, and I made this quilt from the fabrics her mom had picked out plus some brighter pinks and greens.  I had some orphan blocks that I added in with the Yellow Brick Road blocks.  The center medallion is a Carolina Lily, which I just had to make since my granddaughter is Lily from South Carolina.

I actually scalloped the border, which made the quilt a bit more feminine.

I had fun doing lots of pretty flowers, swirls and feathers in the quilting.

I also made her a wall-hanging using some of the same fabrics.   I designed the fancy letters, and used patterns from  Bugs, Blooms, and Bullfrogs by Pat Sloan for the flowers, dragonflies, and ladybugs.

I added Swarovski hot-fix crystals, yo-yo's, buttons and beads to embellish the quilt.  The vine is one of those fusible bias strips you can purchase by Clover. I got mine at Mary Jo's Cloth Shop in Gastonia, NC.

This was one of my favorite projects of all time.  I can't believe how fast the years have gone by.  Lily is now in Kindergarten and will be six in June.  But that big quilt I made for her ought to last her until college!

You can see why she got the nickname "Lilybug" from this picture I put on the label.  She had the biggest eyes on her tiny face!