Field Trips in Fiber

Houston - Day 1 - Love at First Stitch

This post will probably be full of editing errors - it's late and I'm tired! A good tired though! Today was the all day design class with Jean Wells Keenan. What a super nice lady! The class wasn't exactly what I was expecting but it was good. I thought it was a pure design class but we actually did a lot of sewing. So it became more of a techniques class than a design class and that was fine too. Mom and I fell in love in this class with this

What a sweet machine! It's the new top of the line without embroidery. We both have the 7550 model and like it just fine but this one was a real dream to sew with. I'm not buying it but I did buy a new 1/4" foot. They finally made one with a blade.

Here's a photo of Jean teaching class with one of her art quilts behind her.

We did an exercise on identifying the colors and amount of colors in a photograph, some play with value using the 9 log cabin blocks (we picked the colors so I chose that odd palette!) and we ended the day with some curvy stitching.

It was lots of fun.

We left class and headed to the preview opening of the show. Mom and I made it though 8 of 21 rows of booths and we only accomplished that because we didn't stop much! On row 8 we found Sue and Terri at the MistyFuse booth.  Then we met up with Amy and Sophie at the Hoffman Challenge exhibit. We missed Debra and Rian. Hopefully we can catch up with them later. I have photos of everyone but I'm not able to upload anymore photos tonight so I'll try again tomorrow morning and also share my purchases - so far very few!!

We're here!

A smooth travel day. I knew it was all going to go well when my luggage was weighed. Chris weighed it before we left the house and I was a few pounds over 50 so I removed a few things and stuffed them in Mom's bag. Got to the airport and my bag weighed 49.5 lbs! Perfect!

We are staying in a suites hotel in the Galleria area. We are actually right across the street from the mall so we have a Friday or Saturday night activity close by!

Nothing else to report. We have a quilt design class tomorrow with Jean Wells Keenan - owner of The Stitchin Post. Hopefully I'll have photos to post tomorrow night or Thursday morning.

Getting antsy

Mom and I leave for Houston tomorrow afternoon! I have a couple of work calls tomorrow morning before I leave and I have to finish packing and straighten a little around the house. No problem though, I'll get it all done in the morning!

I've made a little shopping list for things I am looking for there:

• new cutting table - mine is old and the leaves are warped so I'm due a new one
• a quilt storage chest - I have a corner in the upstairs hall that doesn't get any direct light but needs some decoration. I've seen the ones with the glass fronts and top and I think I want one of those.
• a surprise birthday gift for my friend Anne
• anything else that strikes my fancy!

No budgets for this trip. I'm also looking forward to meeting Debra, Rian, Judy, Amy, Sue, Terri and anyone else I can find! Debra has organized a meeting for preview night for some of the bloggers.

I have to share this little bit of excitement that we had yesterday. We live on a small river and had about 3 days of rain last week. Apparently a group of 7 friends decided to kayak our river Sunday afternoon. None of them had been on the river before. Things didn't go so well. One lady (grandmother of 13 with more guts than I've ever had!) lost her kayak and was fished out of the river behind our house. Fortunately we were about the same side so I had some warm, dry clothes for her. All of the others got out about 2 houses down. What a mess. They left too late to really get to their destination anyway (it would have been dark), no one knew the river and they were not dressed for the cold. if you ask me, they were all very lucky!

It wasn't nearly as exciting as the guy that I saw down there on a very cold day 2 years ago. he was dressed only in his BVDs (white undies) and climbing through the briers on the little island in the middle of the river. He had taken his clothes off because the water was cold and, I guess, he wanted to have dry clothes when he got back to the other side. It turned out he was trying to get his hunting dog to cross the river. The man got over to the island and it took a long time to get the dog to come to him. He sat on a log for a while to try to get the dog to come to him. When he stood up he had a brown spot on the back of his undies. He finally got the dog and started carrying it back across the river. The dog jumped out of his arms and swam the rest of the way. I think I would have shot the dog at that point. (Not really, but....) The whole thing was hilarious to watch from the house! I don't think he knew that anyone was watching him.

Off to bed for one last sleep before we leave!!! I'm taking my PC and the hotel has free internet so I'll try to post each day with lots of photos.

Chinese Coins QOV Done!

I've been emailing with Terri about how we are having trouble concentrating on anything. It's all because of the excitement of going to Houston Tuesday. I just hope I can concentrate on work tomorrow because I have a LONG to-do list there before I can leave.

I finally decided that I could get the Chinese Coins QOV done - the remaining tasks didn't require any decisions or thought! So, here it is done. I really like it and I'm glad that I decided to start another in blues and browns.

The finished size is about 65 x 89. I plan to make the next one a little shorter - about 80".

Here's a close-up of the back showing the quilting in the sashing. The backing fabric is one of my hand-dyed fabrics and I really like the result.

I cut the leftover backing fabric into 2" strips and have enough for the center strip for another string quilt like the Heartstrings quilts. If anyone would like to have these strips (already cut) leave me a comment. First come, first served! (I already have another set to do one myself and don't think I would get this one done anytime soon.)

Last night I made 2 pillowcases for both QOV quilts that are done. Here they are ready to pack and ship when I return from Houston! Did I tell you that I'm going to the Houston Quilt Festival with my Mom?? I'm really looking forward to it, in case you were wondering.

QOV Booth in Houston

Does anyone know anything about the QOV booth at the Houston Quilt Festival? I jsut finished another QOV quilt and I could probably get one or both of these quilts in my suitcase and drop them at the booth. But I don't know if they are accepting donations of completed quilts at the booth. Does anyone reading this know?

It seems like forever...

since I last posted. I was in beautiful Deerfield, IL this week at our office there. I'm going to digress from fiber-related content for a couple of minutes to tell you about the awesome trip we had there. I work for a company that has grown by leaps and bounds since I joined 10 years ago. When I joined we had 6 or 7 subsidiaries in 5 cities, all in the US. Today we have 9 subsidiaries in 23 offices in 6 countries. Our company also has a very unique and truly special culture that is very important to the overall success of the company to date. (It's so different/good that when I interviewed with the company as a favor to a friend I never expected to want to work there. After the first interview I went home and told Chris if I didn't get the job I'd kill myself. OK, it was an exaggeration, but it was that clear in one interview session that it was a different place and I wanted to be there.) About a year ago, three of us were asked to propose one way to help bridge the culture gap between all of our offices and between the Executive Committee and the mid-level associates. We developed something called the Associate Networking Forum. When we proposed it to the Executive Committee and the 9 Presidents, they were so supportive that they actually expanded the scope of it. I was so excited about it that I asked begged to run the program and then recruited another co-worker to run the program with me. We started with 19 associates in the 2007 class. There have been several activities, training sessions and events throughout the year but the culmination is the presentation of their corporate-wide project proposal. That's what we were in Deerfield for this week.

The project co-manager and I worked with them to refine a few of the details and their presentations this week and they presented to the Chairman, Vice-Chairman, EVP, HR Director and one of the 9 Presidents Thursday. I was a nervous wreck! I now know how parents feel watching their children  in a high risk situation. Our Chairman and Vice-Chairman, two very intelligent men that I have tremendous respect for, can torpedo a proposal faster than you can blink. They will not tolerate unpreparedness. I could barely get through my introduction - I've had loads of meetings and presentations with the executives but I was more nervous that day than ever! And it was totally unwarranted. They made a dead on presentation and their project was so solid that they were asked to expand the scope AND the BUDGET! It had to be the single most rewarding event of my career. These associates, in their daily positions, are several years away from that kind of contact with the EC but this gave them the opportunity to show the EC what kind of talent we have hiding in the organization.  The funniest part was that the Chairman and Vice-Chairman had to attend by conference call and forgot to mute their speaker - as each ANF member got up to do their part of the presentation you could here the Chairman say "he's good!" or "wow, she's good too!" We bought them champagne!

And how did they show their thanks? Someone gave me a stomach flu. That's why you didn't hear from me yesterday - I was in bed all day!

RESUME FIBER CONTENT........

But I'm all better today and was very happy to get back to quilting the Chinese Coins QOV quilt. I actually just finished it a few minutes ago. Here's a photo of part of the back. I'll show full view photos once the binding is done and the quilt is washed. This was fun to do but I am a little distressed that I have a couple areas of fullness in the back - not pleats really but excess fabric at the edge of some SID. it's not horrible so I think I am going to leave it. I'll see how it looks after washing and I may try to fix it on the DSM. Bummer though.

I'm not sure if I'm going to keep on with this and get the binding done or go back to sewing more Churn Dash blocks. Decisions, decision!

The other thing I am doing this weekend is PACKING FOR HOUSTON!!! Mom and I leave Tuesday and I can't wait. Packing for a quilt show is a little tricky because you have to leave room for all the items that you are required to buy there. So a couple of years ago I came up with a quilt show packing plan. Almost all (and sometimes it is all) of the clothes I take get left behind. I use the time before the trip to go through my closet and find those outfits that I no longer wear (but that are still acceptable in public). That's what I pack and I leave it all behind! I became even easier when I started wearing only one brand of clothing for work. (I like the idea of a uniform and found this about 7 years ago). It's all knit, all based around black and is super comfy and it doesn't wrinkle. After I get tired of pieces or the pants get worn I just shove them to the side of the closet and the next quilt show wardrobe is packed. Yes, I even take shoes and undies that are about to be tossed too. I also replace my bed pillow before the trip and take the old one with me. Without the clothes and pillow I have loads of room for the purchases!

For any allergy sufferers out there here's something else that I travel with - Blue Air Air Pod. I bought this on a lark with very low expectations but it really works! I put it on the hotel night stand by my head and it blows clean air over my face at night. It really helps undo the exposures from the day and to clear out stale hotel room air. When I check into a hotel I also leave a note for housekeeping to not use any scented air fresheners in the room while I am there. That makes a big difference. They spray Febreeze and a lot of other scented air fresheners all over the hotel rooms and furniture every day! So, you see, I have to do the disposable clothes thing to have room for all the extra allergy crap that I tote around - I usually even pack food but on this trip I know there is a grocery store near the hotel and we will have a car.

It's going to be a fun trip and I will get to meet some blog friends there as well! My shopping list is coming along well too.

Oh, one last note - primarily for Mom - remember the reference to the "dead stick bush" at the end of the post about the wonderful  landscaping that Chris and Mom did? Well, what a surprise to come home and find the dead stick bush gone and new plants purchased! He's out there now building the beds. Aside from the little stomach bug it's been an A+ week all around!

Piecing a perfect corner

Today was yet another great sewing day and a beautiful weather day on top of that. I did some more quilting on the Chinese Coins QOV quilt. It's officially half quilted now. I spent most of the day, however, on the pink and brown Churns Dash quilt blocks. I now have 18 of 30 done and here's a photo of them up on the design wall. I love how this is turning out and have decided that I will work on this to be a show quilt and I've started to think about quilting options. It will still be Kim's quilt, she just won't actually get it anytime soon!

Sewing a 1/4" seam - it's not about the 1/4"

I make a lot of quilts with quick piecing methods - like the foundation piecing that I used in the Chinese Coins quilt. But in the recent Snails Trails (here, here and here) and this quilt I have been concentrating on more accurate cutting and piecing. My favorite resource for learning better piecing skills is Mastering Precision Piecing by Sally Collins. I thought I'd share a couple of tips that I am using in this quilt.

1. Seam Allowance - I did a lot of experimenting on my machines with 1/4" seam allowances. I quickly learned that it's really not about the actual 1/4" seam - it's about the EFFECT of whatever seam I sewed - thread and fabric have a lot to do with the actual effective width of the seam allowance. Garment sewers deal with "turn of the cloth" all of the time and know that a thicker fabric will have a bigger turn of the cloth impact than a fine fabric. For quilters (well, for this quilter), I have found that there is a fabric effect (there are different thicknesses/weights) even in cotton fabrics but there is a bigger effect from the thread. A thicker (heavier weight) thread will effectively create a wider seam allowance than a thinner thread. When you press that seam allowance to one side the top fabric has a deeper fold to fold over a thicker thread. A lot of teachers use this as the excuse to recommend special fine weight threads (Aurafil 60 wt, Masterpiece, Mettler Fine Embroidery). I have some of these threads but I also have some other threads that I refuse to toss out. I use the thread that best matches/blends with the project fabrics. When I start sewing a new quilt I test out my effective 1/4" seam allowance on the fabrics in the quilt and using the project thread.

2. Starch - Any time I am cutting fabric that will have pieces with bias edges (half square triangles) I starch the fabric before cutting. I use a homemade starch of 3 teaspoons of cornstarch dissolved in 1 cup of cold water. I spray the starch liberally over the fabric and let it soak in for a bit before ironing. Letting the starch absorb into the fabric eliminates the problem of the starch flaking off the fabric.

3. Measure at every step - As much as I am careful about my cutting and pressing, the blocks can get out of square. I measure and trim after EVERY seam. Even on this HST block I trimmed off a tiny sliver to square it up. It may not seem like much but over the whole width of the quilt this could make a big difference. Imagine a 1/32" difference on every piece might make a 1/8" difference on this block and that would set the whole quilt width to be off 3/4".

4. When I find that I have cut a piece a little short (even just a thread or two), as I did in the cross piece of this block, I create a template to help me absorb the mistake as I piece the block. In this example, the HST block is 3 1/2" square and the bar block is 4 1/2" x 3 1/2". I discovered that I had cut some of the bar pieces just a hair short of 4 1/2. I created this little template by drawing a 3 1/2"  square and another mark at 1" to the left. I placed the HST block in the square, right side up and them placed the bar block on top (right side down) aligning the block on the 4 1/2" mark on the LEFT. You can see that there is a sliver of the HST block showing in the seam allowance. By aligning to the finished size I am able to absorb my mistake in the seam allowance. Does that make sense?

And that's how I get these pretty points!

I'll be out of town for a few days on a business trip so no more sewing until next weekend. I hope I can get these and the quilting on the Chinese Coins quilt done next weekend before I pack for Houston! I also still have to plan a border for this quilt.

                  

Ahhhhh.......

What a great day - a whole day of uninterrupted sewing! The activities of the last few weeks have impaired my sewing so it was nice to get back in the sewing room and have the whole house to myself. Chris was out dove hunting all day. Doesn't it just change your whole attitude to have some quality sewing time? I could feel my blood pressure dropping all day! The best thing is that I'll have another big sewing day tomorrow! The only chore that I do on Sunday is laundry and with 2 people, it's not much. 

I did exactly what I planned today. This morning I sewed pink and brown Churn Dash blocks while I finished listening to The Book of Fate. It took me several attempts to get into this book but I was hooked by the end of the 2nd CD and didn't stop sewing until the book was done. I'll post the progress on the Churn Dash blocks tomorrow.

The other thing that I did this morning was wash this big bag o' fabric! This is the same fabric that I used when I first set up my dye space - 404 bleached muslin). I bought it at my local Hancock's because it was cheap (1.99/yard). After testing lots of other fabrics I determined that I like this fabric more than the expensive Kona or Pimatex. I stopped by Hancock's Friday and bought the whole bolt (43 yards). Because I bought the bolt I got 10% off! This isn't a PFD fabric so it had to be scoured. I cut it into 4 big pieces and washed and dried it. Now it's ready for dyeing!

I have a question for any dyers out there. I used Dawn dish detergent (as many of the books and web sites recommend) to wash the fabric. Is there any reason that my normal laundry detergent wouldn't work? The Dawn has fragrance in it and it set off a nice asthma attack. I suppose I may have to revert to Synthrapol if I can't use laundry detergent. I didn't think the fragrance from a little Dawn would bother me but I was wrong!

This afternoon and evening I worked on quilting the first Chinese Coins QOV quilt. I actually did SID on this one around all of the green sashing. I love the look of SID and I knew that I needed more practice. It actually went pretty quickly. I started quilting the border, sashing and blocks. I am using a "fern" meander for the coin strips and the sashing. This is intended to mimic underwater foliage where the fish hide. The green sashing is done with swirls the way that the water swirls when there is a big fish feeding frenzy. I know, it's weak, but I like how it's looking anyway! You can see it best in the photo of the back on the left. I am using Bottom Line thread top and bottom and it's quilting beautifully.

Recently the Q4P list was cleaned up to remove blogs with broken links or low/no activity. I had not checked the ring in a while so I did a tour today about found a lot of new blogs to add to my reader (egads! I have 330 blogs in my reader now!). If you haven't surfed the ring (Q4P or Quilt Studio), give it a try, there are some cool blogs out there! 

I'm finishing off the day watching the Virginia/Maryland. Chris went to Virginia so I will root for them when they are not playing getting beaten by Virginia Tech. It's not looking too good for the 'Hoos so far. Guess I'll have plenty of time to work on my little powder room rug tonight!

Coins Quilts and other projects

I feel like I haven't been sewing in weeks and that might actually be the case. Last weekend was about tie dyeing and before that was about allergies and before that it was the surgery stuff. So I am so excited to come home tomorrow night and have a real sewing weekend again!  I decided to get a jump start tonight and get things going. It would be really nice to finish a project before I go to Houston and buy stuff that I don't need for 5 new projects.

Quilt Shows

Only 12 days until Mom and I leave for Houston! That's 8 working days and 4 weekend days. I haven't been since 2004 so I'm really looking forward to being there again. It's Mom's first trip. We are taking 3 classes:

Quilt Design Explorations - Wednesday with Jean Wells Keenan

Mixed media Miscellany - Thursday

Fantastic Fabric Foiling - Friday with Melody Crust

I am looking forward to meeting up with some of my blogging friends! I know that Sue, Terri and Debra will be there. Will anyone else?

In addition to getting ready for Houston, the MQX catalog arrived yesterday. I've already marked some a lot of classes that I am interested in. Now I just have to decide if I am going to MQX or MQS.

Postcards Received

I can't leave the day with only a non-sewing post so here are a few postcards that I have received lately. These are from two different swaps. The first two are from the "New Beginnings" swap at MQResource. If you are a machine quilter and aren't a member of MQResouce, check it out! It's a great on-line community for machine quilters. The last 2 cards are from the "Great Outdoors" swap on Stitcher's Guild, a great general sewing forum.

From Lyn (New Beginnings)

From Danetta (New Beginnings)

From Joie (Great Outdoors)

From Gail (Great Outdoors)

Thanks Chris and Mom!

Warning - no sewing content! This one is all about my new landscaping. We live on 10 acres - all very "natural" but I have wanted some landscaping around the buildings for a while. About 18 months ago I asked the landscaper that mows our lawn (4 acres) to build some beds for me. I can't spend much time outside so I didn't want anything fancy or anything that require maintenance. He started with a bed beside the garage (which wasn't that nice anyway) and unfortunately, he fell out of a tree while deer hunting last winer. He is sort of recovered but still isn't able to do much heavy work. That's where Mom comes in! She has the vision and Chris has the brawn. The weather finally cooled enough for them to work outside. I'm soooooo happy!

Welcome new readers!

Holy cow! Someone must have posted a link to my Pillowcase tutorial on a Yahoo! group because my blog traffic is soaring today. Welcome to all of the new visitors and thank you for taking some time to look around! If anyone knows where the link was posted I'd be interested in knowing.

Tie Dye 101

This really isn't a lesson but I am very excited to share the results of our first tie dye experiment this weekend. In fact, I didn't get anything else on my weekend list done except for fabric dyeing. Chris and Mom have worked very hard landscaping and have a few more things to do tomorrow before I can share photos of that. The rest of my weekend was spent cooking - not a normal task for me - but I do like making things like spaghetti sauce and chili to freeze. If I'm going to cook I need to get multiple meals from the effort. All in all it was very busy and very productive! So, on to the tie dye party.....

The weekend list...

As you know I did not accomplish much this week. Occasionally the allergies interfere and there's no stopping them for a few days. But after working in the bubble (home) for a couple of days I am energized! So what's on the list? Unfortunately, not much on the sewing front. My Mom is here for the weekend. She and Chris are going to do some landscaping. Our yard guy started doing some last year but all work came to a halt when he fell climbing down from a deer stand last winter. He did a lot of damage and is just now getting caught up on just his mowing clients. So Mom to the rescue. Give her some dirt and and shovel and she is happy. I can't do the outside thing so Chris will be her helper. I gave them very specific rules - do whatever you want but it can't require maintenance. I'll share before and after pics but if you are a gardener you will not be impressed! You would be more impressed with Mom's yard. I really just want a couple of bushes. While they are digging and planting I will be making chili and spaghetti for the freezer. Once that's done I can do some sewing! Here's the plan:

• Load and start quilting the Chinese Coins QOV
• Work on the pink and brown churn dash blocks
• Prepare a class outline for a new class at the LQS
• Dye my basement floor. Actually that's not the real plan. Mom wants to tie dye a whole quilt back! Have either of us ever done tie dye before? Even a small t-shirt? Heck no! Might as well start big and go ahead an plan on some art for the basement floor because that's exactly what is going to happen! Don't worry, I'll take lots of pictures of that disaster!

What are you doing????

More support for Munsell

I haven't accomplished much sewing this week but I have made a little more progress in my personal study of color theory. In my last post I concluded with this statement:

I believe that color systems for dyeing/painting fabric are different from color systems for putting already colored fabrics together are different from color systems used by artist painters are different from web designers are different from........learn them and use the right one for the right job.

Since I am approaching this study more as a user of materials that are already colored, I determined that the Munsell system is the best for my purposes. I knew that there was a student's guide to the Munsell system out there somewhere so I began a search for it. What a surprise to discover that the author, Jim Long, resides right here in Richmond, VA and is the Chair of the Film and Photography Department at Virginia Commonwealth University. I found his email address to ask where to find his book (Amazon.com). That led to a few email exchanges. I eventually had to explain why this random person was so interested in color theory - a topic that he says most artists aren't interested in at all! I told him about my background and the root of my interest (proclamations about there being only one right color system) and my conclusion that there are several that are right for different uses but that for fiber artists I felt that the Munsell system was most appropriate. Here's what he had to say on that:

"Color theory can get a bit sticky because there are several systems. Regarding color wheels it is important to recognize that there are different types. The Munsell color wheel is based on human perception, NOT paint mixing. Artist color wheels generally are based on paint mixing, although pigments of the same color but different chemical composition will mix differently. "

A little validation is nice! So here I am $100 poorer but 3 books richer. The yellow one, I believe is Munsell's original work. I just got these in today so haven't had a chance to look at them. The Student Color Set is the one that I was specifically looking for. Aside form information on the Munsell system it has little paint chips for the colors and gradients on the system. Now I get to paste all of these tiny chips onto corresponding pages. Now if I were a real art student at university I would hang myself before doing all of this. Things really change when it's something that is holding your mind hostage! Off to find the glue stick.........I probably should get some kind of medication too.......

Just playing around

I haven't done any sewing the past few days, still dragging from allergy issues. But Judy L issued a design challenge on her blog and I decided to give it a try.  She provided the block and we are to design a quilt. Since I have a tendency to get carried away with things like these I decided to limit my time to 1 hour. I came up with several possibilities but here are the two that I am least embarrassed to show!

This was fun to do - I should play with EQ more often! I would never make either of these quilts but this might be a good jumping off point for some more successful designs.

Not much to report on the weekend.....

except that I learned that I am more allergic to grapes (wine/brandy) than I thought! Chris made a really yummy brandy sauce over duck Saturday for dinner - I had just finished the Churn Dash post. Things went downhill from there. Fortunately I am not anaphylactic so no trips to the hospital.  I was just mostly miserable. It happens from time to time! Too bad too because that meal was out of this world!

Anne did come over and quilt a quilt for one of her nephews and that was the extent of sewing time for my weekend. Here's to a better week ahead with safe food!

I finally have a Churn Dash pattern!

I think most of you know that I like to design fat quarter patterns for myself. I love scrap quilts and love buying fat quarters so designing quilts around fat quarters works well for me. I don't buy many of the books that have patterns for quilts using fat quarters because I find that most of them aren't really designed to optimize the use of the fat quarter piece of fabric. So I started designing my own. The first was a quilt we call the Gift Quilt. Anne and I designed this one to use 20 fat quarters and to be really fast to make when we need a quick gift quilt. The next two were my Snails Trail and Baby Snails Trail. I've really loved the Churn Dash pattern so I decided to do that one next. For some reason this one has taken me hours to optimize but I finally got it!

The weekend and I'm tired....

Traveling is no fun at all. It's great to be in a different place, it's just the getting to and from that's a total hassle. I did have better seat-mates on the trip home than I did on the trip out so that helped. I got in about 11 pm so I'm very tired today. I was giving some thought to what I might do this weekend and I'm not really sure. That's bad because it means that I'll wander all weekend! My nephew wants us to drive to Baltimore tomorrow (3 hours) to take him to lunch! The boy's just not right - as we say in the South. I'm offering to send a goodie box instead - a 3-hour drive for lunch is a LONG lunch trip!

So, depending on what we do tomorrow, I may work on these projects this weekend:

• the Churn Dash pattern
• help Anne quilt one of her 2 quilts that she made for her nephews
• work on some class planning for the LQS
• relax and sleep

Right now that last one is looking the most appealing! What are you doing this weekend?

Color Theory – Last post on the Color Wheel, maybe

This post actually deals with two points: one on additional color wheel research and a tiny rant about an article I read.

Another project that I did during Craft Week (the first week of September) was to work on my color study a little more. I had a full set of Color-Aid cards so I decided to create my own versions of the Process, Pigment and Munsell color wheels. As I mentioned in previous posts, there are lots of other color systems but I believe that these three are the most relevant to our work in fiber – putting fabrics together and dyeing fabrics.  I left these photos formatted very large so that you could print them if you want. Click on the image to see it full scale. I am certain that the colors are probably NOT translating perfectly from my camera to my PC to your PC but you will be able to tell the relative difference between the colors on each wheel.

A really good work day

I'm still at my conference in Scottsdale, AZ but today the conference ended at noon so everyone could play golf. I don't play golf, so what to do??? Why meey up wit a sewing buddy of course!

Your humor for the day

Let's imagine that you are staying at a beautiful resort hotel for a few days for a conference and the hotel looks like this. You arrive at dark and awake in the morning excited to see your view. Well, if your conference host is paying for your room, here's the view.......