A Bit of This, A Bit of That...

Its been a busy, creative week. I finished the Studio Tour and had a marvelous time, lots and lots of people through and many positive comments. The Studio looked fabulous, it was tidy, with lots of art hung up and space to walk around. The hot apple cider was a hit, as well as the shortbread.....
I finally finished the quilting on my largest art quilt to date, its about 48" square(ish)and many times I wondered if the quilting would ever be finished? As you can see, its pretty heavily quilted.

Right now its back on the design wall, being blocked out. Then I'll put the backing on, do a light amount of stitching to keep the layers together, and add the binding and a sleeve. I have two shows in mind to enter with this and for once I might be able to submit before the very last minute!

When I'm teaching surface design workshops, I do a lot of demos! so I come home with piles of little samples....what to do with them? OK, I know I could always mail them to you! Instead, this year I bought a couple boxes of the cards with window frames and fused the little samples to a bit of paper backed web and slipped them into the frame. They were a bit hit, I almost sold out of them!
Have you got some scraps or bits that you think might work, then turn them into cards.

On my trip to Italy, I took over 1200 pictures, thank goodness for big media cards and iCloud!
I was particularly taken with the architecture, and today made a prototype for a new workshop and used some of my Colour Blocking samples. Just getting started....

Studio Tour...... for another year

Well, the Oak Bay Artist Studio Tour is over for another year. I loved every minute of it and hope that I'll be able to do it again next year! Since we just returned from Italy 5 days before the tour, I didnt get any new work finished in those few days......but spent the time cleaning and sorting and arranging all the furniture and art.

 Visitors mentioned how tidy and well kept my studio is, but they didnt see the piles of stuff at the back of the basement. Today I'll be pulling that stuff back in and it'll look like a messy working studio once again!

I love being able to talk about my work and how its created, most visitors are curious about the products I use and the stages of development, they are surprised when I tell them that all the fabric I use in my work has started out as plain white or black and I've dyed, painted, and printed on it. I see these tours as an educational time for the visors and they are always appreciative that I spend time talking about the process as well as the end results.

It's interesting to see which pieces engage the viewers, it's often either my most representational or my most abstract, not so much the art in between. As I'm working more and more to the abstract, I wonder what their responses will be then. My plan for next years tour is to have all completely new work in two very different styles that I've been developing......we shall see what happens!

I was tickled that one person came in because her friend in Ontario gets my newsletter and told her about it. Another visitor recognized a piece from the Sooke Fine Arts Show and another person asked where "I was represented", meaning what galleries took my work.....oh, I wish!

I had a display of samples for the workshops I'll be teaching here early next year and got some good responses from those. Workshops always fill for me, but its nice to start early to promote them.
So those are some observations, the hot apple cider and shortbread cookies were a hit too!
And now....back to work!

You Say Uffuzi, I Say Fabric

There are as many places to view art in Florence as there are days in the month, maybe in the year.......
It's an absolute art lovers dream, particularly if you are studying Renaissance and Italian masters, sculpture and more.
Rather than taking pictures of the countless Madonna and Child variations, I thought I would focus on the ways that the artist incorporated embroidery into their work. I saw a few samples on embroidery in the museums but didn't get a chance to go to the costume museum in Florence.....maybe during my next visit. So here are some pictures you might enjoy, in no particular order...



























































What do you think?

Looking a Little Closer.....

When I teach Design Classes, I always encourage students to look closely at their surroundings. Design doesn't have to be a far off, grandiose concept that one has to agonize over. It can be found in the veins of a leaf, the patterns of a carpet, light pouring through a curtain or many, many ideas within our immediate reach.
Here's a picture that I took during a our tour of Ephesus, Turkey. It was a fantastic day spent amounts the ruins, I had no idea that the city once had more than 250,000 inhabitants. If you ever get a chance to tour the ruins, don't turn it down!
One of the photos I took had so many ideas for design, whether you choose appliqué, paint, stitch, embroidery.....
Here's the full photo:

Now, let's look at some of the parts:

I like those plumes, all in a row.


How about this as a repeating border design or painted shadows.



More plumes, but a really great design along the bottom.


More plumes or leaves and a little beaded line underneath.


Now, how about these leaves, gorgeous line and shadow.
Do these give you some ideas of what is possible by just looking and trying to use small sections of a picture?

Three Reasons to Ignore Pompeii

So, one place on my Bucket List has always been a visit to Pompeii. What could be better than a chance to visit an ancient city, preserved for centuries and waiting through time to be alive once again.
When planning the trip I realized that a trip from Rome to Pompeii would be a long, long and very tiring day. A better option was suggested in the guide books as the port city of Ostia Antica, a quick train ride from the centre of Rome. (Reason #1)
We arrived and took a short walk from the train station to the main gate, there were probably several hundred people touring the ruins but the city was so large and well laid out, it never felt crowded. (Reason #2)


















There was lots of green space around to sit and enjoy the cool breeze (did I mention it was hot?) just outside the city is the Necropolis, which is the burial grounds.....burial and cremation was done outside city walls. The openings in the walls was were the urns were placed.






There were cooking areas, an ancient shopping mall, worship places and lots of inscriptions.....I wish I could read Latin!











I loved every minute of our visit to Ostia, and would go back again and again, as we only saw a small part of it. But we got back in time for a little refreshment. (Reason #3)
Doesn't it all sound like fun?