33.........weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

Some of you may recall that I donated some silk yardage to our church's youth's auction last Spring. The yardage was designated for a kimono styled jacket, one of which I had sewn as a model to be displayed at the auction. A friend of mine ended up making the winning bid on the jacket fabric, which thrilled me to no end! I did not want to be responsible for the jacket construction and had contacted an Atlanta seamstress friend who agreed to construct the jacket. However, my friend (the silk purchaser) wanted to wait a while to have the jacket made, as she had had some health issues and wanted to regain some weight before being fitted for the jacket. When she was ready, my Atlanta seamstress begged off! I couldn't believe it!!! I was really upset and didn't know what to do. In the middle of the night, I woke up and remembered that I had taken Swedish lessons (yes Swedish: my family is Swedish and I had wanted to be able to converse with them in their native tongue!) from a delightful little woman here in my home town AND she was a seamstress. I dropped by her charming little Swedish shop and she agreed to take on the job! Well, that was months ago..........maybe September? There were lots of roadblocks (she had other clients, she misplaced the pattern, yada, yada, yada), but she, the seamstress, FINALLY called me last weekend and said that the jacket was ready!! WooHoo!!!



Can I tell you that there's nothing better than seeing someone else's fantabulous interpretation of a piece of complex cloth that you have created....and seeing it oh so much better than you ever dreamed possible!!!

I almost cried!!!!

It had been a long and extremely nerve-wracking haul, but we all had finally gotten there! And I was so pleased!! I am so in love with this piece!

Here is my friend modeling her new jacket:

My Swedish seamstress friend and I are considering a partnership where I produce the silk and she produces the jacket. She has a client who wants to sell our product. So, ok my friends: comments?????????? What do you think? I feel that I need to be paid for the silk I produce when it leaves my hands. Right? If you agree, what price per yardage???

PEACE!!!

Frosty Morning

Tis a frosty morning here in GainesVegas! When Barker and I went out to walk the thermometer registered 31.5.........and that didn't include the wind chill. The gusts off of the lake onto the golf course were exhilarating, to say the least!

Back at home, this seemed the perfect picture to sum up the weather scene:


The last leaves of Fall:



Remember this?


I added some soy wax to it yesterday


and then overdyed it with khaki and truffle brown


Haven't decided where to go with it next.

PEACE

A Most Spectacular Day

When I'm feeling down in the dumps, I must always remember that a lovely day will follow. As if it wasn't enough that I had a spectacular time dyeing sock yarn with Roberta, and then received so many positive and constructive comments on the blog (thank you all!!), but then this came in the mailbag:


Not only did my Complex Cloth and RR buddy Marga send me her fabulous thermofax screen that she had used on my RR piece, but also some lovely handmade Almond & Kelp soap...handmade by Marga herself!

Oh, I wish that I could hyperlink to the lovely aroma of the soap!! Needless to say, I have put it in the bag with my latest hand dyed yarn! MMMMMM! Thank you Marga!

I picked up these books at the local library the other day:

Actually, ahem, C picked them up for me, I simply put them on hold on the computer! I am such a lucky girl to have such a willing and helpful man! I have been a Kaffe Fassett fan for many years, but this book is so dated that most of the pieces are actually coming back into style now! I like the Nancy Bush book and may have to get a copy of my very own. Kristin had talked about the Last Minute Knitted Gifts book last year, and so I was pleased to find it in our local library. There are many interesting projects in there, especially the Chevron Scarf that Kristin knit.

Here is the first layer in a complex cloth piece that I started yesterday........

wait for pics of more steps!

I love this week's cover on Time:


Oh yes: WE DID!!!!

PEACE

Party On!

Yesterday was our cousin Catherine's birthday. She is a lot younger than we are, but was feeling 'old' at the young age of 42.......groan! Catherine is very bright, witty beyond words, loving, giving, caring, and was suddenly struck with the horrible disease MS several years back. She conducts her life with a grace and dignity that is amazing, and I hold her in the highest regard. She doesn't stop at anything: living alone, swimming daily, singing in her church's choir, etc. I consider any time that I have the opportunity to spend with Catherine to be a very special gift.

Coincidentally, our cousins from Florida and their young, hip, and good lookin' NYC chilluns are vacationing about an hour north of us for two weeks, so we all got together yesterday to celebrate Catherine's day. Our weather here has been delightful and deliciously cool, which made our get-together even more pleasant. I snapped a few candid pics and will share them with you. I hope you can get a feel for the fun we all were having.






I dyed that tee for Catherine and had a ball creating it. The colors are just wild and they make me very happy. I hope she will feel a similar exhilaration when she wears it. Here is a closeup of some of the happy colors:

Catherine's Mom asked me to dye a jacket and pants in blue for the birthday girl. Once again, I had fun with this project, but since she would be wearing it in church while performing with the choir, I decided they needed to be a bit more subdued. Here's the jacket:


and here are the pants:

the colors actually do coordinate......the lighting wasn't always the same when I snapped these pics

Here's my faithful studio dog, doing his guard duty as I worked on Catherine's duds:

Thanks to all of C's fabulous family for making yesterday so much fun. Barker was exhausted after his day with Gus and Noelle, but he was happy to have made some new friends.


My friend Barbara sent me a fun link: go here
don't hit your mouse once you've clicked the 'play' button

PEACE

ComplexiTEES!

Our new condo association is having its Spring Market early next month and our realtor suggested that I offer some of my new t-shirts for sale there. So in my spare time, I've been dabbling with some designs. I've decided to market them as "ComplexiTEES", as they are really complex cloth t-shirts.

Here are a couple that I finished yesterday:





I've also been hard at work creating the design work on the silk charmeuse for our youth group's upcoming auction at church (this will be for one of those Kimono Jackets like the one I showed you a couple of weeks ago.) I just love the salting effect! Here's a closeup shot of a bit of the blue with the salt crystals still on there. Isn't it fun!


I finally finished the auction piece late yesterday afternoon, steamed it in the evening, and was found ironing it at about midnight last night. Here it is:


I'm also taking part in a round robin with the compex cloth group that I belong to. Here is a pic of the piece that I am sending off to be complexified:

When I fall into bed, I'm exhausted but very happy! This is the most fun I've had in years!!!

Hope you are having fun too!

PEACE

Color!

As promised, here is a bit of a better photo of the t-shirt that I have been tinkering with:

I am pretty pleased with the outcome, and have decided to try my hand at some more. My motto is: the brighter the better..........my Daddy would be proud!

C and I found the lights we want for over the kitchen island yesterday on our drive down to Atlanta. Phew: we can now check that one off of our to-do list!

It was a lovely afternoon in Midtown, so we walked up to the High Museum to see the new Georgia O'Keefe exhibit. While it was interesting, I must honestly say that we both were a bit disappointed that there were so few of her works on display, and not one from her Santa Fe years. That said, I felt that my thirst for color had been quenched and my artistic was further inspired. I picked up a box of notecards that contained some of my favorites of hers included. Here are three:

"Yellow Cactus Flowers" 1929

"Poppy" 1927

"Red Canna" 1924

couldn't you just dive down into the center of this canna?

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