Coordination

 

Here I am with the same problem I have had before.

 Will I ever learn?

Not long ago, I made a cover for a new journal. You may remember it. It is magenta and aqua. This week, I started making some fabric pages to go in it. I cut all the fabric backgrounds and then started collaging and sewing. As you well know, it is a lot of work. Hours of arranging small pieces of fabric, cutting up others, stamping,  drawing and stitching. I have made four page spreads. The problem is, they don't "go with" the cover! How did that happen? I stuck with a color theme (more or less) and repeated shapes, but when I came into the studio this morning and looked at it again,

 it is just not going to work.

I will have to make a new cover, new pages or probably both! Last time I did this, the cover caused the problem, so come on. Learn something here. Make the pages first and then make the cover.

Next time.

Swimming in the River

 

From time to time, I may mention that I have gone swimming at the river. The river I refer to is the Guadalupe River in the hill country of Texas. Where I live in Hunt,Texas, we have a riverfront park with a deep swimming hole fed by springs. The banks are lined with Cyprus trees so on the hottest days, it is cool and shady. We gather at the river almost daily in the summer for a late afternoon swim.

Will you come join us?

But I Digress....

Infinity Pool
15 x 25
(in work)

A Sample Or Two

 I thought I would try doing that Sliver Quilting thing from Lisa O'Neill's book. I think it is an interesting approach and I will be able to use it, but I don't think I could make a quilt like this and then quilt it. Although I picked the light weight quilting cottons as she suggests, I still thought the resulting sample was too "thick" to quilt. Maybe I am doing something wrong? (highly likely!) If any of you have tried this, tell me what you think.

On the other hand, I think it has many uses in my white work embroidery.

A Rare Sight

 

No this is not actually the "rare sight".
 In fact it is quite common here in the Hill Country of Texas.
But unfortunately, I don't have a photograph of the "rare sight".
I was driving in town past a private office building.
The front door opened and
3 people, a
  large black dog
and a
DEER 
came strolling out onto the front porch!

What I am Working On Today.....

A Journal cover

This one is for an embroidery titled, My Baby Wants A Smocked Dress.

Transplanted

 

The first thing planted in one of the flower beds at the new house.
I spied it growing in the back forty and we transplanted it.
Looks like it is going to make it!

Peaches

 Yesterday was all about
Peaches.
I had a laundry basket full of them from a friends tree.
I peeled and cut, peeled and cut for hours it seems.
At least all afternoon. Everything was sticky.
Tessie stole a peach pit and wouldn't give it up.
But now I have three bags full in the freezer.
This batch will be pies or ice cream or something like that as I still have
Peach Lemon Marmalade from last year.
The next basket of peaches will be jam.
The deer got the trimmings.

New Socks

 

I actually finished all my "in work" socks! Hard to believe I know. My reward consists of starting a new pair. I do like plain socks in beautiful colors, but this time I wanted to do something different. After paging through all my sock books, I decided to just do my own design. Back in the middle ages when I was doing needlepoint, I discovered that doing my own design made the whole process more interesting and therefore, faster as well. I could hardly wait to see what "my design" looked like. So here is my new sock. Fun but not too complicated. Not a new design I am sure, but new to me, and it is knitting right up--lickety split.

No Stone Left Unturned

 

Mom and Me

 

Mom and Me
(will you look at my hair!)
My mom died a week ago. She was 91.
I took care of her for the last 12 years and we had some
wonderful times and some frustrating times
as she slowly lost her short term memory.
Her funeral took place Monday.
On the drive to the cemetery, many cars pulled over and waited
while we drove by. A road crew, paused in their work, took off their
 hard hats and held them over their hearts.
That touched us all.
If a funeral is passing you, please
pull over and pause in your daily life.
  It means so much to the family.

Happy Mother's Day

 

to the Mother's in our family...

3 Easy Pieces

    

painting not thinking

Sweet Dreams

 

My Mom
1920-2012

Completed Journal

10 x 10

For the last few days I have been playing with

 paper, fabric, paint, stamping, glue and stitching.

Did I tell you that already?

Anyway, I had a great time and finally finished the journal.



Play Date

 

Taking a little break and working on something
fun and spontaneous.
A new fabric and paper journal.
I have been sewing, gluing. painting and stamping.
Play Time!

Rebellion of the Machines

It has been Tech Hell around here for over a week. My cell phone never works consistently, deciding to drop calls at random one day and working perfectly the next, but for the last week and a half, it has been worse than usual. Then the Internet decided to be difficult and for more then a week, it took forever to download anything. On some days, I couldn't get my email open at all and forget about reading or posting on Blogger. That finally got straightened out thanks to customer service, but then last night, the TV couldn't find a signal. We would see maybe a minute of the news and then it would go off again. We tried everything to fix it ourselves, realigning the dish etc., but it finally found the signal all by itself about eight o'clock. I was glad I had a good book. I should ask Woman With Wings about the phases of the moon. Maybe she could warn me next time!

Painted Panel

Part of a panel for an upcoming show.

 

And Then There Was April

 

A Small Jacket

Taking a break to make some clothes.

Some shirts for me and a jacket for R.K.

A Little Blue