The end of July

Here it is, the end of July. I think August is a sad month. Summer is winding down, and all the fun things you did when the weather first got nice are sort of old hat now. The garden is tired looking and it's too hot to plant anything. Even if you could stand the heat, the plants couldn't. Even the dog is listless.

I didn't have any plans at all for August, until last week. My sister and I are going to Virginia to see our dad and stepmother for a few days, and then we, along with our dad, are going to South Dakota for a family wedding. And it won't be any cooler there, trust me.

Trying again

I managed to get one more photo uploaded. This is called "Get Over It!"

The first one I did was very colorful, and a friend wondered aloud what it would be like in black and white. I had to add the green shoes, and then of course the green lettering. I just couldn't make myself stick to black and white.

Here She Is

Here is the latest in a series of "Spokeswomen." I used to call them wild women, but it seems too trite to me these days.

In a class I took recently, there was a lot of talk about "the big idea" behind artwork. I don't think I have a "big idea." Hence, this piece.

I've been trying for 3 days to upload photos of her sisters, but Blogger isn't cooperating. Maybe tomorrow.

Another Chasuble

Here is another chasuble that I designed for a priest here in Baltimore.

The fabric is hand-dye European sateen, bought from Heide Stoll-Weber, from Frankfurt. The inserts in the sleeves are heavily stitched silk dupioni. The silk was green to begin with, but I put it in the same dye bath as the sateen, to be sure that it blended.


You can see from the detail that there is stitching in the background, too. This chasuble is lined with rayon, and the stitching holds it all together, similar to quilting, only without a batt. I think priests' clothing is hot enough without adding the batt. The stitching is green pearl rayon, in a grape leaf design. The altar set that this chasuble complements has a grape vine design. I'll post photos of it later.

Absence Explained

Back in the spring, I took a break from blogging. I was working on a commission pretty much all the time, and didn't really have anything else to talk about. Thinking that it wasn't really fair to show images of the commission to the blogosphere before the client saw them, I just took a break. But now the pieces are finished, and here they are, for the world to see.

I had been asked to create a 5 piece altar set for St Thomas Episcopal Church, in Richmond, Virginia. The stained glass in the church is from about 1910, and is a sort of prairie/Frank Lloyd Wright style. Each window has a simplified dogwood motif, and that's what I decided to use for the altar set.

This is a detail of the altar frontal. This is the right side, and the left is identical. The entire frontal is 72" wide and 7" deep. The dogwood is painted and couched on silk dupioni.

The chasuble is a festival garment worn by the priest. This one is made of raw silk, and the design is painted and couched onto heavily stitched silk dupioni.







Here is the stole, also made of heavily stitched silk dupioni, painted and couched. The other two pieces are lectern and pulpit hangings, and have the same design on the heavily stitched dupioni.

I worked constantly on these pieces for most of the spring, and delivered them to St Thomas right before we left for Spain.

Photography woes

Photographing my work is like a comedy of errors. Every time I set everything up, it begins to rain! Today is no exception. At least I got one piece shot before I had to quit.
But, first I used a gray card to get the settings. I set the camera for aperture mode, set the aperture at 8, and filled the screen with the gray card. Shutter speed indicated was 1/5. OK, I changed to manual mode, used those settings, and the exposure meter said +2.9. Naturally the image was wildly over exposed. I cropped this image, but didn't do anything else to it, not even rotate.


So, I set the camera back to aperture mode, and used the exposure meter to find the shutter speed. So this photo was taken with aperture 8, shutter speed 1/80, exposure meter -0.1. I clearly don't understand the gray card business!

When it stops raining, I have another piece to shoot. Let's hope it doesn't get rained on, too!

What Kind of Coffee are You?

I'm not sure that this is flattering!

You are a Black Coffee

At your best, you are: low maintenance, friendly, and adaptable At your worst, you are: cheap and angsty You drink coffee when: you can get your hands on it Your caffeine addiction level: high

What Kind of Coffee Are You?

I'm testing this image to see how it looks on the web. It's the lettering that worries me: is it legible? So we'll see. I've been working on my images in PhotoShop Elements, changing all the backgrounds to white. It's a chore, since my pieces generally aren't exactly square. I usually trim the edges without a ruler.

Animals and cool shoes

The part of the Camino we were on is in Galicia, the northwest part of Spain. It's very rural and agricultural. There were animals everywhere, very close to the road. Often, actually, *on* the road. This cow watched us eat lunch one day.



Check out these shoes. They are very common among farmers. They are carved from wood; the funny sole keeps the feet out of the muck and they are easy to hose off.



These chickens were also guests at one of our hotels.

More Camino pictures

A lot of the time the Camino looked like this. We were often in forests, with no one else around. I walked alone alot, pretty much going at my own pace. Other pilgrims were respectful of one's need to chat or not.






This is a typical village. Narrow streets going between ancient stone houses and barns. There was always a little church, too, usually open. In one little hamlet, there was a woman standing in the path, selling fresh sugared crepes (I don't know the Spanish word for crepes.)




This woman was walking between her home and a nearby village. 250,000 people walk the last part of the Camino every year, so she hardly noticed us.

Camino de Santiago

My husband and I went to Spain, to walk the Camino de Santiago. It was a beautiful trip, but not for the faint of heart. We walked 140K, or about 85 - 90 miles, in a week. We had great weather, and I took loads of photos. The shell is the image of St James, and it's everywhere. Here is the shadow of a fence in Samos, at the monastery there.

This is our group, starting off on the first day. There were eight of us and a guide walking every day. There was also a "sag wagon" for anyone who was tired of walking, and every couple of hours it would be on the side of the path somewhere, where Carlos , another guide, would make sure we all had water.



Here we are on the second day, at the highest (and coldest!) part of the trip. See how the pilgrim in the statue is leaning against the wind? We were way up in the mountains, and the wind was sometimes fierce. Fortunately, after this, the weather warmed up, and we weren't quite so high up. The rest of the week we had great weather - cool mornings and no rain.

Tomorrow, I'll post some photos of the Camino. I'm hoping to use some of the recurring images in quilts.

Home Again

We had a great weekend away, sewing. Seven of us met at the Methodist Retreat Center a few miles south of Annapolis Maryland for 3 days of sewing and catching up. The weather was almost perfect - one brief downpour, but the rest was sunny and bright.

I have a million purses, and I hate them all, so I'm constantly on the lookout for a better one. After making a bunch from other people's patterns, I took matters into my own hands and designed my own. It was pretty successful, and I carried it for so long it fell apart. So this weekend I dediced to make another one out of an old pair of jeans. Here's the result. I took this pocket off the rear and sewed it onto the front, but it's not really functional because everytime you open the purse, anything in this pocket will fall out!

This pocket is on the back of the purse, and it too is a rear pocket. Here, though, I just cut the fabric so that the pocket would land there. It might be useful for keys or something like that.

I'm pleased with how these pockets worked out. I can use the little key pocket for my cell phone - it fits perfectly! The bigger pocket will hold my camera. I made pockets for the inside for other things like my iPod and lipstick. The lining fabric is from a dropcloth I used while doing soy resist painting at

Cathy's

house one day. After I finished the purse, I decided that the drop cloth fabric should have had a higher use than as purse lining, but oh well.

It needs *something!*

It's really too sunshiney to day to take photos, but I did it anyway. You can tell that the lighting isn't right; it's much lighter at the bottom than at the top. Anyway, in person, so to speak, I love this piece. It's 2' x 3', intended to be a processional banner. In the photo, however, it seems to lack something. But what? I've covered this olive green silk with layers and layers of thread, and I think I'll paint on it with gold paint. I love the effect of the paint over the thread.

You can't see it, but the photo is in blogger somewhere! And I've spent enough time messing with it!

I've done another, as well, with a bluer green silk: "irredescent emerald" I think the bolt said. It's intended as a pulpit hanging, and I think it needs rethinking completely. It may end up as a painted banner, too, and I'll do the pulpit hanging again.

Anyway, I'm off this weekend to sew with 6 other art quilters:

Cathy,

Floris,

Mary Beth,

Elizabeth,

Linda, and Dale. We have done this every spring and fall for TEN! years, and here's a photo of us from last fall, when Mary Beth's sister joined us. That's the West River behind us, and aren't our shirts cool? Elizabeth and I found them at KMart for $1 each last fall, while on an emergency search for a coffee makerand barbie shoes.

Unfinished projects

I haven't posted since last week, before I went to New York. We had a great time, visiting galleries and museums. We saw the Munch exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and clearly we haven't suffered enough! He was really depressed. There is a scathing review of the show in today's Washington Post, saying that Munch wallowed in his mental problems and used trite and bland imagery. Other reviews have been more positive - there's one in a recent New Yorker Magazine, and this month's Smithsonian Magazine has a big article, too.

Anyway, back to the topic. I have had to put off finishing a couple of things (no deadlines!) for working on things that are coming due. This past week I was in Virginia with my sister, putting a stained glass mosaic on a counter top. We got carried away and put one on the back splash, too!
The photo of the counter was taken from the stairs, leaning over the railing; that's why it's so skewed.

We arrived at the house about 2:30 on Monday, and by 3 we were hard at work. We worked steadily until about 11, except for a sojourn to the emergeny room for a tetnus shot for Nancy. She cut herself on a sharp piece of glass and since her last tetnus shot was way more than 10 years ago, I made her get in the car and drove her to the hospital.
But other than that, it went quickly and by Tuesday evening we had both surfaces ready to grout. The grout needs 72 hours to cure before sealing, so next time I'm there, I'll seal the backsplash and pour a two part epoxy resin over the countertop to give it a smooth surface and protect the glass from us and vice-versa.

Off to NYC

Well, I'm off to New York tomorrow with three friends for the weekend. We're going to see the Edvard Munch exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, and other than that, we're playing it by ear. No husbands, so we get to do as we choose. The weather is supposed to be warm, with only a chance of showers. Warm is the operative word here, in my opinion. So, when I get back on Sunday, I'll have photos to share.

Dallas Miniature Textiles Exhibit

I am participating in the International Miniature Textiles Invitational-Dallas. I decided to try the iridescent fabric on darks for that piece, and here's what I submitted: Night Garden.

While I worked on this little piece (11 x 14) I struggled with being so rigid. I need to think less about fabric and more about value. Maybe I should re-organize my fabric, but OH! what a chore that would be. Maybe a big sign over my work space would do: THINK VALUE

The Waterfall Diptych is finished.

I finished this piece last week (a month ahead of the deadline!) and we hung it yesterday. I'm pleased and so is the client, and the decorator who recommended me, too. It's hung on either side of the entry from the client's living room to the dining room, pretty high up. Each piece of the diptych is individually lit, and the lighting emphasizes the iridescent fabric. The beads look like stones, and the client actually thought I had sewn stones on it. I put way more beads on it than I had planned, but I love the look.

Progress in the Dirty Workroom

Finally! I painted that white plywood this wonderful red-purple color: Dark Iris. The color (on my screen anyway) is pretty accurate. Next I taped it, with the idea of adding stripes.

The blue tape will come off, revealing the original Dark Iris color, with stripes of a lighter color in between. I painted the edges of the blue tape with the background color. It makes a seal, so that blobs of the next color won't ooze under the tape. Well, that's the theory, anyway.

This is the room where I paint stuff. Fabric, furniture, floor cloths. To the right of the newly painted plywood is the utility sink, and under the work surface in the foreground are two small dressers and a rolling set of drawers. In another space I have a raised work table, and there are shelves along one wall. There are also a freezer, miscellaneous chairs and most of our holiday decorations.

A Blank Slate

I was messing around in my utility room, also known as the dirty workroom, and I wondered if my husband had ever put up those plywood sheets he bought for me. Voila! there they were, and I have no idea how long they've been there. The idea is to hang shelving in front of them, and the plywood will keep the stuff from falling off between the studs. Ask me how I know this.

Anyway, all that bare wood called out for paint. So here it is, all primed and ready to be tarted up. Or Nancy-ed up, as we like to say, since my sister will paint anything that stands still and isn't suitable for mosaic. Stay tuned. As soon as the primer dries, I'll start with the paint.

Weather Notes

Last week's snow storm left us under 18 inches of heavy wet snow. It split two branches on an ornamental red maple outside our front door and was generally a nuisance. But it was pretty while it lasted. My town, Columbia Maryland, was the "epicenter" of the storm. We're finally in the middle of something, and it turns out to be a major storm!

My husband and I spent the weekend on Virginia's lovely "Northern Neck." The weather was gloomy and wet, and it snowed a good bit on Saturday. It didn't amount to anything, but the sky was an interesting mix of clouds and clear spaces. We took this photo on the way back to Maryland, outside of Warsaw, Virginia, at about 5:30PM Saturday. I like the shaft of light radiating upward from the setting sun.