Latest work

The problem with a blog is that you have to keep adding photos and typing...what if you have nothing earth shattering to say that day or that week or even that year...I can hear my friends getting a good giggle from all of those...but its easier to say than to continually write it...you get out of the habit...so instead of writing i guess i will just post some photos of what i am working on...IF i can upload them from my photo stream...hope they are there!!

added some of my hand dyed raw silk and that terribly expensive yarn I got from Carol Taylor (YES $55 a skein is ExPenSivE!!) to this old ufo...i like it now...hmm i liked it before but now it just needs a back HURRAH!!

The iris are very large...done on kona pfd 54" wide with portfolio oils and caran d'arches II.  First the fun part... I drew the iris and wet them with a large haiki brush and let the colors run and blend...Try it...lovely drippy runny stuff...

Then I started the thread painting...I do love my new Janome Horizon BUT ...how much thread is enough..

Iris UPCLOSE

Thread painting on the leaves...

Another close up shot of the iris ...

Biggest problem with this is taming the curves into flat submission....i think the thread painting is largely done...

Now for the borders...that may take another two years of cogitating over them!!  Opps got to get a move on...has to go in the guild quilt show in October...or maybe i should enter it in Houston Show?!  We SHaLL SeE!!

Without Malice

In remembrance of 9 11 I am posting my quilt Without Malice which was part of the America from the Heart exhibit at International Quilt Festival in 2001 and in the book of the same name.

The quilt is painted, the words are hand lettered. It went on to win a blue ribbon at the Quilters of South Carolina state show I think in miniatures or small wall quilts. It's about 2' x 30'...thread painted of course:>

As somebody said on NPR yesterday or was it Thursday, 9 11 is one of those handful of seminal events that we will always remember the exact moment...where we were what we were doing....Thank goodness my family came through it unscathed...I can only hope that yours did too!

Happy Labor Day and a close up look at Almost done

So Happy Labor Day...hope you are having as much fun as all the flotillas of people floating by on the rivah today...all manner of boaters and fisherman enjoying this wonderful almost fall weather.in the meantime posting pics of the latest quilt i completed Almost Done done in collaboration with my friend Jeffery Callaham...his artwork is the center which i transferred to fabric and inked with Tsuniko inks.


This is his memory of two of his aunts hanging laundry on a windy spring day in McCormick County, SC.

I actually coordinted the ladies clothes to match some of the dominate colors in an old piece of patchwork that I chopped up to form the borders on this piece. This quilt is not a square or even a parallelogram...all slightly off kilter.


Thread painting was done with whatever color thread that I had that matched the ink colors. Shading done in brown and dark blue and dark green.

I actually had messed up when i was inking the grass area so i cut it off and fused a new grass to it...you cant tell can you?? The grass was quilted with a varigated green thread.

Lemon challenge Part deux

So i redid the lemon challenge because of the silly cup...and in answer to some inquiries about my grandmothers cutting and pasting eyes....she had drawn a lovely lady in pastel but was not happy with one of the eyes and according to family legend she drew another eye and glued it over the one she did not like...in the collection of Joyce and Gary Lytle

and then i remembered that i actually had another lemon that i had done in fabric for International Quilt Festival a few years ago...I made the fruit of the month...one a month for nine months that year...these are paper sized and were to be a set of nine journal quilts...this is the first one in that string and is thread painted...which means that instead of drawing them with pencils I drew them with various colored threads......they were done yearly from 2002 to this year which is the last year of the journal quilt culminating in a book Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project in which i was honored to have more pages than any other of the participants except Gloria Hansen...TOO cool I thought:>

The Making of River Bend Lady

This is how our neighborhood must have looked before the tree cutting began..this is the island across from our neighborhood..unbuildable because it floods...lovely trees everywhere

This is a shot of our neighborhood denuded of its trees...

well finally i can blog her and show her off.....shes part of an invitational exhibit at the Latimer Quilt and Textile Center in Tillamook Oregon curated by Larkin Van Horn. The show is called "Its Good to be Green" and the only requirements where that we could NOT send a frog quilt in and it had to be 18x45" long...

I stewed over this one a long time mostly because of the size of the quilt. I wanted to do something about the fabulous trees in our neighborhood...they are soo awesome and people buy lots here just to live among them and then they CHOP them down when they are in thier way...which just kills me...NO one is allowed to prune ours let alone chop them down...all 58 in the front yard and the sycamores along the river...WHY would you buy a heavily wooded lot covered with old growth trees to chop them down so you can have a lawn? I just dont understand...

ANYWAY this is my interpretation of one of the gorgeous sycamores that line the river bank here....a lovely red headed lady with green velvet skirts....and beads and vines curling around her hair and her waist and nestled in her scarf....she is of course bare footed! and tossing her skirts in the wind...

i dyed the silk velvet the cheese cloth and the trees across the river...and the water...and her hair...i guess it would be easier to say that the only thing i didnt dye was the sky and the fore ground...her face is drawn with gel pens, pigma pens, prismacolor pencils...my usual stuff...the hair is hand dyed bias cut silk ruched and couched down ..same thing with the skirt...

So would you believe its

done ..started as this on Oct 28 and finished by Nov 24...amazing what a wild group of women can do in a month...and have GREAT fun along the way

...quilted by our good friend Judy Lockhart...quilter extrodinaire...she took this pic too while it was still at her house....

BUT Marie and Shelvy have sewn on the binding AND a sleeve over Thanksgiving weekend...AND its all done...now to give it to Betsy on Tuesday...she will be sooo tickled...and we KNOW shes going to cry..our bad right:>

the ice skater is coming along

still have to thread paint her hair and her face BUT most of her is done.. and what to do about the shadowing on her legs? ...they are getting a little stiff from all the fabric behind them...but there may be another set of legs in her future!!!



the blocks are all sewn together...there are still a few more icicles to sew together...next weekend is our deadline for sewing it all together...anyone want to cut the border>>


We all rushed upstairs for a birdseye view of the quilt from the landing...BYTW would someone please finish paintting the stair wall while u are up there? I KNOW you have nothing better to do....

Connie and Kay on the stairs approving the quilt....and Marsha sneaking down...does she have some polka dot fabric under her shirt???

SO what is left to do...oh LACES on the ice skates!!! NEXT SUNDAY Ladies at my house to sew the top together...BE THERE or be in trouble:>

the ladies on the powch

so the quilting is almost done...now for the edge...its going to be pieced...well it is if it cooperates...so far it is NOT cooperating at all...

I uploaded both the original and how it looks now so you could see that the thread painting does change the color of the original picture...

WHY I love my HP 1350 all in one

first of all its still going strong after three years...no its actually FOUR years in the fall...and it replaced my old HP 810 that i had had for 5-6 years...i gave that one to my youngest...where it continued to work till hmm someone stepped on it...it was close to ten years old at that time...

today i am teaching a thread painting class...and i needed the pattern...i looked high and low for the pattern...couldnt find it...the original quilt that we are making is at the shop...my own design... so i couldnt trace the pattern off the quilt...the original digital pic is long lost on an old computer...thanks goodness for webshots! (This is a link to the larger original)

ANYWAY...i printed the webshots pic out...taped four sheets of paper together to draw it off on...drew it with my sharpie...drew a detailed copy of the butterfly we will be thread painting...printed out a couple of my blank emails with my info like email, websites....scanned it to see if all was well with my work...and hit copy...now its merrily printing away FIFTY copies...the pattern is actually FIVE sheets..

so now what to do...

the quandry...how to thread paint this..i know what to do the wonky house, the chairs etc...but the ladies...do i thread paint their faces, legs and arms or do i leave them plain...just cant decide...what do you think...

It will get an wonky pieced edge on it...BUT I just cant decide what to do with the ladies....opinions please!

Play day products -Tommy tulip and a quilt or two

What better cat to put in a post also about quilts than the quilt cat Tom himself...he helped pin quilts together all weekend..he was in quilt cat heaven...then he decided to pose by the tulips...I think this needs a little more work...but not sure what...more white in the eyes...have to find my white gel pen.....and I woke up thinking of a great background color BUT now i can not remember what it was...it will return right?

Okay so why was tommy so fascinated with DEAD tulips...we had driven him crazy all day with quilts...my friend Connie and I sewed together a turning twenty top and pinned it for my brother in law...my dh asked for brown...I had to perk it up a little with the green....I am thinking it looks like camoflauge? anyway everyone loved it....laid out on the kitchen floor to be replaced by Jeffs fabulous art work...no comparison...but you will have to come to the show in Aiken to see the paintings...:> my bad...but you can check his work out at his website...this is another posting of the card for the art show at the aiken center for the arts

He painted...while Connie and Rachel pinned Rach's FIRST grandchilds quilt...and its as cute as can be...I quilted it for her...piece of cake in a few hours...Connie fed us...we all went home exhausted but happy about 9 pm....me sneezing and kept saying I am not sick i am not sick i am NOTTT sick but with those kindergartners coughing and sneezing and flaking out all over the place i feel like grunge today...KERCHOOOOO...see my new bookcases??? dont they look great!!!

THe last two quilts are oldies but goldies...one recently quilted by that dynamo quilter Bonnie Hunter...awesome job...hope you can see it in the pic....this is one of the very first quilts i made when i started quilting again...almost cut my finger off making it with a rotary cutter...all the way across my index finger...but I saw some of my fav scraps of fabric in this ...alot of Hoffman batiks and flower prints...yummmy stufff......its huge king sized and will go to my moms if i ever have time to get binding on it...but HEY mom ...its here!!!!and a thread painting that I did of Santa who comes out just for Christmas...hmm then why is he still out:> Lazy me...havent put up all the decorations...maybe by june...hummmm maybe leave them up all year:>