Monday, May 27, 2013

Quilt National 2013

Finally! After waiting nine months I can post the image of my quilt that is now in Quilt National 2013. It is titled Post No Bills and is the result of a "what have I got to lose" feeling when the piece was not cooperating with me and I didn't like what was happening on it. Big graphic black X's, I mean, haven't you wanted to do something like that on a piece that just wasn't working?


Post No Bills
©2012
25" H x 45"W

The opening was this past weekend at the Dairy Barn in Athens, Ohio and 69 of the 85 selected artists attended, along with the 3 jurors. This is my second acceptance in Quilt National and this one was just as exciting and humbling as the previous one.


The sign that greets you as you walk in the door to the Dairy Barn. 


A few days before the opening I had a terrible dream. I went into the exhibit and the quilts were hung very strangely - three high, with one above the other, and they used clothespins. Sort of like they had been hung at a state fair. But worse than that, I walked 'round and 'round, and I could not find my quilt. Not a very good situation. So, just to prove that it is actually hanging there, here is a picture.

The catalog is very well done. The pictures in the catalog never capture the essence of the work, but this one comes fairly close. And the colors are mostly true. They have changed publishers this year to DragonThreads and the catalog will not be available on Amazon. You will have to purchase it directly from the Dairy Barn or DragonThreads for $29.95 plus shipping.

Friday, May 10, 2013

Donation to SAQA Auction

Today I put my donation for the annual SAQA Benefit Auction in the mail. It's a continuation of my Scribble series, now up to 18. The background fabric looks like it's monoprinted on a gelatin plate with the impressions of a furnace filter (the turquoise blue circles) and a thermofax screen taken from a picture of a fence done with curlicues. Not totally sure about the monoprinting, it may be screen printed with thickened dye.



The Benefit Auction is the main money raiser for SAQA and I have donated every year that they have had it. That gets me a bunch of stars on the listing page. This year they are putting all the quilts on a pinterest page, I guess so that people can repin them to their own pinterest pages. I have a pinterest page, but I don't think there is anything on it. Occasionally I get a notice that someone is "following" me, and all I can think is that they are going to be pretty bored because I have not gotten into the pinterest thing.

I have been spending lots of time in my garden. In previous years, my garden was not very interesting since it was in deep shade. I grew lots of impatiens, hosta, and ferns. Last year all my impatiens died, due to a fungus, and so I had no color at all in the shade. (This year the garden shop is not even selling impatiens.) A few weeks ago we decided to take out the maple tree that was shading the deck and garden. It was a very messy tree and dripped sap and all kinds of other junk all summer long. The huge up side of taking this tree out is that my former deep shade garden is now a full sun garden. Yippee! There are so many more interesting plants available for a sun garden and I want them all! And because I had an electrical outlet put on the outside of the new garage, I was finally able to put in a water feature - this little fountain. I bought a fountain kit online, but it would be easy to construct this just by buying the parts locally. The only semi-difficult part would be drilling a hole for the tube though the rocks. The water drips over the rocks and down into a 5 gallon bucket buried underneath the stones. 


It makes the most pleasing water dribbling sound and I love it. I decided I needed a second water feature, but didn't have another available outlet that I could use. Guess what - they make immersible pumps powered by solar panels. Of course, this means the pump only works when there is sun shining, but I found one that has a battery that will store energy. I installed it yesterday, and even though it was a mostly cloudy day, the pump ran for the rest of the day and even after dark. It was still running at 10pm, so that's pretty cool. I hope to gets lots of bird visitors.