Website

For those of you who visit my website, www.headyfiberarts.com, I'll be making some updates to information on it very soon...all by myself! I'm taking an online class to learn Dreamweaver, the web design program, and I plan to try to make some of my own changes this week. Specifically, my e-mail link and some schedule additions.

If you like my website (I love it!), it was designed by Will Weems with Athens Web Group, http://www.athenswebgroup.com , here in Georgia. He's done a wonderful job and has helped me a great deal in learning how to keep my website beautiful and well laid out while being frugal with my business $.

I'm off to work.
A

My Piece in Art on the Creek

This coming weekend, Aug. 30 and 31, my photo transfer piece that was made using our son Bryan's photo (see Aug. 4 blog entry) will be exhibited in the Art on the Creek arts festival juried show. Johns Creek is northeast of Atlanta and the show is being held at John's Creek Methodist Church just nort of the intersection of Hwys. 120 and 141 on Hwy. 141.

Studio activity

As I said earlier, it's been busy around here. One can always peek into my studio to verify that fact.

It doesn't look so bad in the photos, but fabric and tools cover every inch of flat space in my studio today, haha. I'm working on items to sell at the Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation Holiday Market, http://www.myocaf.com/, so hopefully they'll accept my booth request. This quilt top, which still needs a border, is one of two I've made in the last two days. This one was finished between 2:00 and 4:00am when I couldn't sleep. It will be a good size for a child's nap quilt. It's colorful and bright with lots of children's prints. Geeze, I just realized that I put two of the same prints next to each other...I'll have to un-sew the two left rows. This is the perfect example of why I photograph my quilt art as I work on it...the photo sees what the eye misses.

Can you tell how we created my studio in our home? We connected two bedrooms by blowing through a large closet to make a doorway. The front room with the big windows is where I sew and press, and the other bedroom holds most of my fabric, work table, supplies. I also have a whole corner in the garage for dyeing fabric and other messy projects. This closet now has deep shelves on one side and a place to hang clothes or quilts on the other side. It's a great setup, and now I get all of that wonderful sunlight from the big windows in both rooms. When company arrives, we put the closet door back on, I move everything to the other room, and we pull down the Murphy Bed for the guest. We also have Bryan's bedroom and bath upstaire for guests when he's not home.

The baskets on top of the murphy bed hold lots of strings (fabric strips) that I'll use in quilts and wall hangings. This is a new side-drop Muphy Bed which takes much less room than the type that folds down from the foot of the bed. We had a huge wall unit Murphy system in our last house with desk and cabinetry, but this one is perfect for this room.

I'm off to work. Have a good day.

A

Lovely Asheville

My studio has been humming with activity lately, and my car has been putting on some miles...

Last week we drove to Asheville for the quilt guild yearly picnic at the Governor's western residence. The residence is atop a mountain overlooking Asheville. We enjoyed the pavillion and were able to walk through the home which is completely furnished and decorated with items made by North Carolinians.

The next day I took an all-day Judy Simmons fabric dyeing class through the guild which was wonderful! We each had 10 - 15 yards of dyed fabric by the time we were through. I have been dyeing fabric since early Spring, but I knew that I could learn even more about low-water immersion dyeing from Judy's class.

Bill and I stopped in for a coffee and desert at the world famous Grove Park Inn. We sat on one of their beautiful terraces and enjoyed the view, including this little woodchuck (?) who was checking out the vegetable garden for a treat.

Bill, always the jokester, had me take these photos as he stood in front of one of the two huge fireplaces in the main lobby of the inn. He wants me to send this one to one of his buddies. Oy.

Too much has been happening to put into one post, so I'll be right back with more...

String Table Runner

This week I made an application to have a booth at the OCAF (Oconee Cultural Arts Foundation, Watkinsville, Georgia) Holiday Market in December. Hopefully, I'll get juried in, but this is the first time I've planned to have a booth and this is a distinguished market, so my expectations are low.

My first project is to make some table runners/wall art using the string method (narrow strips) sewn on a foundation fabric for stability. I love these colors and am running out of these beautiful batiks, but I'm hoping they will draw people into my booth. These blocks are not sewn together yet, but they will be soon and then I'll add a border and quilt the table runner.

Break is over, so I'm off to do more sewing. TTYL

Anita

Correction

Contrary to the obvious facts, I do know that my angles should total 180 degrees in a triangle, but the #60 was stuck in my head. The isocoles triangle is componseed of 45, 45, and 90 degree angles. I'm not that far away from my last math class. :) Well...yes I am.

TTYL

Striped Fabric Trick

Last month I taught a demo on using black and white fabrics at the Dragonfly Quilt Shop in Watkinsville, GA. I talked a little about using striped fabrics to make beautiful and simple blocks. When cutting the striped fabric for the block, use an isosceles triangle (for those of us who are years away from math classes, that's a 60, 60, 90 degree triangle), which is basically a 1/4 square triangle. Line up the longest side of your triangle with one line on the stripe and cut 4 triangles. If you want a block that looks the same on all sides, cut all four triangles with the longest side on the same line. If you'd rather save on fabric, you can cut the triangles as shown in the above photo. Cutting them this way will mean that only the opposing sides will be the same in your block...

I made the pillows (below) years ago, but they are some of my favorite. Sure wish I could find a stripe as wonderful as this fabric again. Both pillows were made from the same fabric, but I placed the long side of the triangle on different stripes for each pillow. Because each pillow block is symmetric, you can tell that I cut 1/4 square triangles on the same stripe of the fabric. You can get two blocks using the fabric-saving method by cutting the 4 lower triangles on one stripe and do the same with the 4 upper triangles. Does that wording make sense? If not, let me know and I'll blog with pictures and another description.

Asheville Quilt Show

I try not to go this long without writing a blog entry, but we were in NC for the Asheville Quilt Show from Wednesday to Saturday (Aug. 2). On Sunday we picked up our soldier son, Bryan, in Atlanta as he arrived back in the States for the first time since his 15 month deployment to Afghanistan ended (that's my husband Bill on the left). All in all, it was a great weekend! Bry looks good, but he's lost a lot of weight.

Asheville was a lot of fun, especially since one of my two quilts won an award. This was my double-secret quilt for a couple of months, haha. It's called "For My Bry, I Pray for Peace"and is a photo of Bry in Afghanistan that I built a quilt around. The photo size is about 14" x 16" and is a photo transfer onto fabric. The award was a "Merit Award for Best Use of Photo Transfer". All of the background is fabric and the details are in paint and quilting. The rocks in the rock wall are many layers of fused fabric rocks to give that area dimension. The note in the sky is the actual wording from a note Bry left for me when he deployed: "Don't worry about me...I'll be home soon enough. I love you, Mom. Me". This art quilt was a lot of fun to make and the creativity came so easily while I was working on it. All of those PBS painting show tips came in handy when I needed them, too.

The second quilt I entered is called "Purple Heart Quilt of Valor", and as the name indicates, it is a Quilt of Valor for an injured U.S. warrior. There was no room at the show to have a QOV Foundation booth with information, so I printed up informational flyers and put a quilt in the show for exposure for this wonderful non-profit foundation (http://www.qovf.org/).

I'll probably write another blog today since there's more to tell. WTYL