There is a new book out from Lark Books in its “500” series, 500 Art Quilts.

I was thrilled when I received word that two of my quilts would be among the 500 (made by 369 artists).  A whopping 432 pages long, this book is, pure and simple, eye candy!  Edited by Ray Hemachandra with quilts juried by Karey Bresenhan, founder of the International Quilt Association and quilty godmother to hundreds of thousands of quilters for her incredible energy and devotion to quilting and the quilting industry–she’s one of the forces of nature behind International Quilt Festival in Houston (can you tell I think she’s the bee’s knees?).

Now that I have received my artists’ copy, I am even more thrilled—and humbled and astounted—to be included on these pages.  All I can say is that you MUST get your hands on a copy of this amazing compilation which summarizes the state of art quilting around the world today.  It is simply STUNNING!

My quilt A Sense of Place:  The Wall, has a page all to itself (on left):

And Koi (yippeee!) is included here, top of left page:

Throughout the book I was tickled to see names I know well, and equally excited to see quilts and names I’ve never seen before.  What a wealth of talent and creativity we have in this medium!  Karey did a fantastic job selecting a representative range of styles and techniques (jurying was blind, meaning she did not know who made which quilts), and Hemachandra and staff did a great job placing the quilts in groupings that complement the quilts.  There is almost no text, just name of the maker, size, materials.  The artwork speaks for itself…and it is singing in joyfullness!

A few days (week?) ago, I shared with you some of my first attempts at lino-cuts, here.  I then did the first exercises for the class. To become familiar with the techniques, Dijanne Cevaal (our teacher, blog here and is in the links on the left) has us do a nine-patch sampler of marks.  Of course I didn’t make mine quite like the sample, but you get the idea:

And an angled view that gives you an idea of the depth of the cuts.  For this one, I used the Golden-Cut linoleum from Dick Blick (link below).

One of the best suggestions / new to me, was to use a pale color of paint/ink for printing to create good background texture, then print over it with another lino-cut.  The pale background print adds subtle but effective movement to the print.  Here is my pale print (which I will over print, at least part of it, later on):

The trick with this 12 x 12 inch block is to get it all inked up without having the paint dry.  I have been using the textile paints I had on hand:  Jacquard Textile paint,  Setacolor transparents and Lumiere (a metallic).  For my second print, I used a pewter metallic Lumiere.  You can see pale spots where I didn’t get it inked up quite as well as I should have.

The third attempt was with some Jacquard Textile Paint.  Usually, I’m not as wild about this paint as it is thick and opaque,  so when painting or doing some stamping with it, it obscures the print of the cloth underneath (I like to shade the fabric usually, but not hide it).  However, this paint worked the best for this technique.  I REALLY like the way this one turned out.  I’ve ordered more of the Jacquard and some of the water-soluble Speedball inks that are for use on textiles to see how they handle, too.   Stay tuned for tests with those (the box should be here in a few days–ordered from Dick Blick, an online art supply store in the US).

Next, I’ll share some leaf / bud carvings and prints.

Logo designed by Jeanelle McCall of http://www.fivespoongallery.com/

Get ready folks…tomorrow is another Tote Tuesday fundraiser for the American Cancer Society, and it’s gonna be AMAZING… please visit Virginia Spiegel’s Tote Tuesday page, here.  There are THREE bags of delectables from Karey Bresenhan filled with goodies from her stash, her mama’s, and donations from amazing people around the world.  There are other amazing offers of books, totes, padfolios, artwork… it is just amazing!  Let’s make this an especially successful day!

Next week will be (I think) the last Tote Tuesday, and it will include my donation of a copy of Threadwork Unraveled, a spool of Superior Threads Rainbows in one of my favorite colorways, four pieces of my hand-dyed cloth totalling just over a yard of fabric, and a pair of hand-dyed socks (upside down to each other, AND a piece of artwork using one of my new lino-cuts (more on that tomorrow!).  Stay tuned, and DO surf over to Virginia’s and see if you’d like to bid tomorrow.

So often, we hear gripes about bad encounters with corporations (and wait ’til I tell you about Continental Airlines, it’s a doozy but that’s a different post).  This post is about corporate good behavior!

A while back I bought the Mighty Bright Flex2 light with ac adaptor (plug).  I liked it so much, and so did Paul, that we bought a second one for him.  Since glare from the sofa lamps on the TV screen bugs Paul at night for TV watching, I bought mine to use as a reading light while on the sofa with him.  Well, mine died after less than 3 months, and they have a bulb life of a few thousand years.

So I looked up the company and wrote, saying I didn’t know what they might be able to do, as I had thrown out the receipts.  I did test the light with batteries, and with Paul’s light with my plug, and my light with Paul’s plug, and was able to determine that my AC plug was fine, but the light was not.  Lo and behold, about 2 weeks later, a replacement arrives, no questions asked, no need to return the dead one, nothing…just a company wanting to make good on their guarantee and make their customers happy.  They succeeded!

This is what my light looks like, and here

is the info from the Mighty Bright company.  I bought mine at a Barnes & Noble.

The second story is about Delsey suitcases.  In 1987 or so, while moving with the US State Department to Bolivia, Paul and I bought our first hard-sided suitcases.  Those two molded-plastic suitcases were the first generation of wheeled bags, and they STILL function.  But, wheels and technology have vastly improved, so about 15 months ago I bought a new Delsey on sale.

Two weekends ago, while racing to get set up for a class (we got in to the building a mere 30 minutes before the class was to begin, and I usually need a good hour to set up for that workshop), I accidentally stepped on a buckle and broke it.  I wrote to Delsey USA via their website to describe the part I had broken, and ask how I could purchase a replacement part (it’s the gizzie that you can use to “chain” or tow another suitcase…if you look at the picture, it is the thing in the middle of the top).  A couple days ago I get an envelope in the mail with TWO replacement pieces, the whole thing not just the half of the buckle that I broke because I’m a klutz, with NO charge!  Once again, I am a HAPPY customer.

GOLD STARS to both Mighty Bright and Delsey.  It’s nice when huge companies do right. Thanks folks!

Harrumph!   January escaped, and I still haven’t shared pictures!  In my defense, Deborah’s birthday was this past month, and our activities were her birthday present, so I couldn’t blog about it until AFTER the date!  Since it is now February (SHEEESH!), I am safe….

We met at Hannah’s house on a snowy January day, shared a bit, then headed down to Hannah’s walk-out basement studio, with many lovely built-in goodies thanks to her hubby, and made some art cloth for Deborah, which we then mailed all together.  In a small miracle, we actually got it done, in the mail, and to her in Texas BEFORE her birthday (with a note on the envelope not to open until the birthday).

Here’s some of the cloth…the red with grid is (believe it or not) the before!  It got even better, the purple in the lower left is from Hannah and her daughter.  Alas, I didn’t get pics with everyone busily at work, as I was too busy at work too… then when I snapped these the others were upstairs starting lunch….

We had fabric hanging all over the place drying:

I took it home, ironed it after the paint dried completely to help set the paint, then pinned it up on my design wall for a photo–see how good we are?  We actually let these delectables GO and didn’t keep them!

The pieces here are by me (the green one), Kathy (orange, on the right), and it was either Kathy or Kate for the blue (bottom right):

Everyone LOVED this stamp Kate had carved ages ago.  See what good friends we are…we used it, but actually let her take it home with her LOL! (Laugh out Loud for those of for whom English isn’t your first language and who may not know some of our internet abbreviations.)

Those round dots, by the way, are the end of a wine cork.  I like that way of acquiring art materials….

Here’s the orange piece on a pile of fabric to go home with me (better picture below); Kathy dyed the base cloth this  past summer at my house, then added to it at Hannah’s:

And here are green (by me, the bottom part of it), the bottom part of the Kate-or-Kathy blue, the purple by Kathy (boy do I hope I am getting the right names on the cloth… if not, someone correct me Kate and Kath!), a lime green by Kate, and that salmon-y one by me.  We liberally used each others’ hand-made stamps!

And then:

top row: upper left purple (small) by Kathy, red by Hannah, blue-purple-plum by Sarah (on a commercial batik),

next row:  lighter purple by Kathy, darker purple by Hannah and daughter Nina

And finally–the top row is a repeat (duh) of the ones just above; the second row is a piece by Hannah and Nina on the left, and a lovely sheer piece by Kathy–she dyed this one at my house this past summer, too, then added to it–it its first life it was a sheer white curtain:

Here are some close ups….Kathy’s finished orange-ish piece…. heavenly–Kath used a stamp of mine and sequin waste as a stencil (to get those perfect circles):

I’m pretty sure Kate made this one using her hand-dyed and various stamps…the grassy bit is Kathy’s stamp made from adhesive-backed foam cut into wisps and mounted on cardboard (cheap, easy, useful, beautiful!):

Here’s a detail of that stamp we all wanted to swipe/copy:

And finally, part of my green one.  It began with hand-dyed by me fabric.  A bit over a year ago I did a demonstration at the Make It University section of the big IQA quilt show in Houston, showing leaf printing.  At Hannah’s I added the green squares (another foam-on-cardboard stamp, this one by me), and made swoopies of gold through sequins waste and printed with plastic needlepoint canvas.  I really like how this one turned out.

It’ll be fun over the next few  years to see bits of these cloths show up in Deborah’s work!  Clearly, we had fun (and missed having Deborah WITH us in body, tho she was certainly there in our hearts).