Take It Further Challenge

I signed up for Sharon B's Take It Further challenge in December and was lucky enough to make the cut off! I'm new at Sharon's challenges, and I'm afraid that if I don't blog soon about it, she'll give me the boot and let someone on the waiting list take my place!

So, here is January's challenge:

The key concept for January is a feeling we have all had, the feeling of admiration for another. Ask yourself who do you look up to and admire? Why? What is it you admire about them? This is a the first Take it Further challenge in 2008. Take the idea, develop it into a resolved design during that month and apply it to fiber or paper.

I have long admired Virginia Spiegel, not only for her creative and artistic ability, but also her tireless work for the American Cancer Society and Firberart For a Cause. My January challenge result is actually a "twofer" in that I honored Virginia with this piece and I also donated it to her Collage Mania II auction which will be held May 5th and 6th.

And if you missed my piece, here it is again. The photo that Virginia has is actually a scan that I submitted to her, and I was not pleased with it, so I've attempted to do a better job of photographing it here:

(I've added this photo to my Flickr site, so you can see it there, with a closeup.) Winter Sunset was indeed a challenge for me, as I have done very little collaging, and I had not worked with some of these fibers before. Having a play day in my studio is always fun, and then when Virginia emailed me that she would accept my little piece, I was blown away! Thanks Virginia for making my day! I hope to be sending more pieces your way in the next few weeks.

I have a few pics of the progress on Preserve and Protect. I spent several fun hours on it yesterday, and then ended the afternoon in the studio, painting more batting....oh darn, I hate that studio time!

The blue fabric which I had dyed last week to use as the background was so pleasing to me, that it wasn't difficult to pick out some new quilting threads to go with it. I started picking the threads yesterday morning, rather than cutting up the blue fabric, which just seemed too darned painful to me!

Once I took the first cut, it got easier and easier, until I was tearing pieces apart with gay abandon! Here I've torn a few of the screened trees and butted some batting over the edge and free motioned it in place. The batting looks more washed out than it really is.

The trees have so much blue in them and I was thinking that that blue wasn't too indicative of the drought situation. It suddenly dawned on me that when I screened this bunch of blues, I also had a whole other yard or so of rust colored trees!

So, after I had done a bit of fiddling with the top few "rows", I got out the rust colored trees and planted them across the bottom, adding a bit of rusted fabric as sashing:

I wasn't too keen on any of that, so I left it and took Barker for a nice long walk. That's when my brain cleared a bit and I realized that I just needed to paint some more batting in the brown, get rid of the rusted fabric and rip up the rust colored tree fabric into smaller stands of trees.

I am leaving Preserve and Protect for a couple of days. I haven't torn the rust colored trees at the bottom yet, because I'm not exactly sure how narrow I want the stands to be. The brown batting is just pinned on the design wall so far, and I think I will lower the trees a couple of inches. I think that I will probably put a narrown border in brown batting. (I also think that some of the batting on the left is too washed out, so I will go back in and give it another coat of paint...do you agree?)

"A penny for your thoughts"! Don't worry about hurting my feelings. I love good, constructive criticism, and so appreciated all you had to say the other day! Gerrie, I did make this one landscape...you've got a good eye to detect that error in the first one, as there was only about 3" difference in the length and width measurements of the first piece! Carol, I have saved the rocks for another quilt. You were right: they just didn't go! Joyce, there's enough of that blue left over for another quilt, perhaps with the pebble fabric! Kristin and Eva, thank you for suggesting more of the barren brown........is there too much now? I think I was trying to say too much at one time, so your comment helped me to narrow it all down. I also wanted to show too much fabric...so this has helped. Thank you all for posting comments!! Bring it on!!!!!

PEACE

janfemton

OUCH!!! Last night I decided that I was just fine thank you very much, and I no longer needed to take my Mucinex-D, so I omitted it and toddled happily off to bed: only to awake with the WORST headache I have ever had in my entire life! To top it all off, it was 30 outside, with a breeze, so the windchill was an ungodly 17....and it was my morning to walk Barker on the golf course AND I was scheduled to have my Mom at the eye Dr's at 10:10. Oh Lord!!

Barker and I survived the walk (he loved it) and as soon as we returned and I had had some breakfast I took my beloved Mucinex-D and got on with the morning. My headache subsided and all went well: Mom and I even had lunch out without a major attack of Pancreatitis on her part!

The sinus pressure returned this evening, but here is the solution:



my handy little buddy, my Neti Pot! Isn't she the cutest?!!! You simply dissolve a 1/2 teaspoon of sea salt in warm water in her little chamber and then irrigate your nasal sinuses. It is so much more gentle and earth-friendly than the plastic, non-recyclable contraption that I unfortunatley purchased out of desperation at the pharmacy last week. I found my little Neti at Whole Foods, but I'm sure you can locate one elsewhere or on line.

Twila, I hope you are feeling better........and don't forget to get yourself a Neti Pot!!

Thanks for all of your comments and very helpful suggestions on Preserve and Protect! I really do appreciate you taking the time to respond, and you know it was funny, but I began to think that it was the background that was bothering me, or perhaps the addition of the pebbles on the lake floor. I tinkered around with some solutions this afternoon and hope to have some samples to show you in the next few days. You guys are the greatest! Thank you!!

PEACE

janfjorton

My horrible cold is nearly gone! WooHoo! Thanks to all of you who emailed me and left comments wishing me well. I found a Neti Pot this morning at Whole Foods, and will begin using it tonite. I think that I owe my speedy recovery to Mucinex-D. Last night was the first night in about a week that I slept almost all the way through the night, only waking a couple of times coughing.

New Love:

Most summers we spend a gloriously peaceful week or two vacationing on the shores of pristine Squam Lake in New Hampshire. When we returned last summer, after a one year hiatus, I truly appreciated the tranquility of the area and the ever-present clean, clear water. It is a joy to lay leisurely on your tummy on a swim dock and peer down at the lake's bottom, with water so clear that you can see the details of every little pebble on the lake floor. So, I decided to honor that privilege in the form of a quilt. Little did I know then, that by the time I got around to making said quilt, we in the Southland would be in the midst of an historic drought! That factor changed my focus, but only slightly. I decided that water purity was no longer quite as important as water PERIOD!

Here is the background for "Preserve and Protect":

I had done some exercises out of Jane Dunnewold's "Complex Cloth" last summer and screenprinted this piece:
The work reminded me so much of our time on Squam that I knew even then that they would be the focus fabrics for "Preserve and Protect".

This afternoon I started playing around with what I had. Here is my first run:

The two blocks at the bottom are inkjet transfers of the photos I took of the pebbles on Squam's floor. My intent here was to go back in and machine quilt mirror images of those fabric blocks directly below each one.

I wasn't sure about that whole idea, so then I rearranged like this:


Naaaaaaaaaaaaah, how about this:

Nope, that doesn't really float my boat, so how about this:

What I'm saying here is not only are we almost out of water, but we are cutting down our trees too. Both are precious and we need to Preserve and Protect. So, that is how Preserve and Protect is looking right now. I'd love to hear your comments...Please???

PEACE