Fort Collins painters ROCK!!!

Kathy B. has a wonderful plan beginning with this in progress portrait.  She is redecorating her living space with matching neutral couch and drapery fabric... and creating matching fabric sofa pillows  with inserted family portraits on the front of each.  She'll proudly call this her FAMILY Room.

Tami is such a breath of sweet fresh air..  She has created a fun whimsical butterfly top right.
How cool this would look imbedded in a wearable.

This piece below is going to be breathtaking when finished and quilted.  A personal scuba diving photo of a near 3 foot tall tube is getting exciting. I'm so proud of every person in the class.

More talent abounds

I have to show some other results from Colorado... Painter Randi created a clear improvement over her original reference photo of a friends rooster. Background remains to be added but Randi is quite a talent!

Bright and fun Julie is in the middle of creating a portrait of her hubby's other love CiCi.. a spectacular Chevy from days gone by. This was a tedious effort really well done! Yeah Julie! Congratulations! CiCi did have a roof and background by class end.

Donna took full advantage of her reference photo on her Ipad. She routinely enlarged/reduced on screen to increase her understanding of the original source as she worked. She tells me she had started this painting once before and was unhappy with the result. A second go at it and we got what she wanted. This is her beloved pet , now 16 years old, so it certainly seems a good time to immortalize her dear companion. Great story and result. Go Donna!

Painted Art in Fort Collins

What a great experience last week in 3 days of painting with wonderful people. The Rocky Mountain Quilt Foundation and Jukebox Quilts Studio hosted me to teach my favorite class: Painted Quilt Art. Sixteen students and mascot german shepard Billie created original art on cotton. A few pics of the talented results follow: Same pattern... different result and orientation. Michelle went bold and strong. She likewise experimented with a border rubbing where rubber grid rug backing was placed underneath the fabric.. then rubbed with a Fantastix fiber stick atop. Very cool stuff.

Wendy more watercolor-like and painterly. Both wonderful.

I WILL post other photos when I can get to it.

Appearing At The Grand Galleries

WOW... what a summer!!! My to do list is exploding with upcoming events. This BIG event that follows is my first CFA exhibition since recently being asked to join CFA.. California Fiber Artists working in 2D, 3D.

This is an amazing group of artists so I am most honored to participate in gallery exhibitions with these artists. Click on photo to enlarge image. Click here to see represented artists (www.cafiberartists.com) My piece "My Kind Of Dragon" will be there. Full and Detail View pics follow. All pieces in this exhibition are for sale through the gallery.

For more info about the Grand Theater For The Arts (www.atthegrand.org), Click Here

A Trial Run on R66

WHERE HAVE I BEEN????.... well on the road for over 9 days.... first at the Rocky Mountain Festival where a first run display of Route 66 appeared. We did this to amongst other things figure out how to hang/present such an enourmous exhibit such that exhibiting shows can get all 49 quilts plus 6 large quilted highway maps hung in a reasonable time with reasonable effort. Here's a few pics of the initial effort

Following the 3 day event, we went back to the Jukebox studio to enhance and refine the hanging system... here you see one part of the exhibit representing the California Route. Thanks to Vinda Robison (shown here) for tons of effort and help getting things rolling. Vinda also photographed every quilt separately. Those will be available when I get access to them. The BUZZ over this exhibit is abundant and very exciting.

My mini Route 66 map

I'll be heading out next mid week to the Rocky Mountain Quilt Festival. This should be great fun to finally see the whole exhibit hung. YEAH. Kelly Gallagher Abbott ( my co curator) and I have been talking about the possibility of smaller exhibits of say 1 trunk for venues with space limitations. example... Arizona and California had so many entries that they each will likely fill a trunk for each state. That said, I decided I would quilt my original 60" Chicago to Los Angeles map that may be made available to join the trunk. There is a lot of open space on on these road maps and simple quilting is all that is required... so I've been doing a back and forth earth strata type of quilting.

This is much more simple than one might think... Here's the same area in a couple progressive steps. First quilting top toward the bottom, then reversing to meet bottom to top. The same could be done side to side.... but many machines like up and down better than side to side quilting.

Dancing In The Park

Birthday Girl (Step daughter Theresa hugs her daddy (my hubby) Ray)

Dancing to the "Ho-Dads" music in the park are Theresa (L), Mom Sandy (C) and step daughter Shari (R). SOOO Fun!!!!

Best Present Ever Given

Grand daughters Kaley(13) and Morgan(11) had 4 days of private self defense lessons last week. This gift was for me perhaps as much as them. This was well done training by Zultimate in Claremont, Ca. Sensa Alen was excellant. Grammies always want their daughters and grand daughters to be safe.

Pinkie Up!!

Last weekend Grand Daughters Kaley (L) and Morgan (R) went to tea with 'auntie' Lucy at The Tea Cottage in Seal Beach. Nice place. Lots of fun!

Still running with 4 grandkids here... ages 10,10,11,13