Sunday, July 11, 2010

ocean homes & working art



I already have a beach well underway so I went straight to the water and the cottages but now I'm have second thought about all those red roofs, in fact this may be the only one.

I had to sit a while with the other house quilt and examine the various techniques and sequence of stitches to remember how it went. I may forget about the roofs altogether. I know they are houses.

The blue with hand painted red dots was a dye painting experiment from over a year ago that was "lost" in the studio.  And I've been waiting a long time to use the batik that Terry sent me. It has the most wonderful hand and a pattern woven into that you can see unless you are holding it in your hands.

For a while I've been thinking of fiber art in terms of functional beauty. Like most fiber artists, I started by making blankets and I always seem to find my way back to that starting point - witness the Flings and this will be another in that line, three or more layers of rescued or re-purposed cotton - mostly muslin, no batting and lots of hand simple stitching on a base that was machine constructed for stability and strength.

It's a form of self comfort for me to make "something from nothing" - something beautiful & useful from something else that was cast off and deemed no longer useful. This kind of  making soothes my frugal Yankee spirit both in the doing and the outcome.








I've always admired these and these.

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Building my own ocean

I've started building my own ocean. 

Been sleeping under hand stitched houses for a while now and always wishing it were just a little bit bigger all the way around.  This one will be lots bigger and it will have beach houses.


The studio help was just helping too much this morning so I've taken the whole business outside for now. 

Friday, July 09, 2010

salvation & inspiration

Most days I don't pretend to work out. The Manatee wallow is my stroke of choice.


There are those who say having a pool is too much work. I do it for free and this is my reward.