The Mail Came....

Don't you just love it when your mail person delivers something wonderful?  Well we got our copy of Quilting Arts Magazines' 100th issue....and we are in it.  Quite frankly it just doesn't seem possible that this magazine has been around that long, but when I went to my bookshelves I was proven wrong.  Winter 2001, was Number One....okay that doesn't seem possible.

I looked for this magazine all over Atlanta at the time trying to find a copy of it, eventually I put the search on the back burner.  Several month's later a friend and I were driving to Quilt Surface Design Symposium, also known as QSDS, in Columbus, Ohio.  We stopped in Cincinnati to shop at St. Theresa's Textile Trove and lo and behold they had the second issue of the magazine...we each bought a copy, cause we knew we couldn't share it.  Note the photo above of Issue 1, it says Reprint...sometimes you have to do whatever you can and a reprint was what was then available.

After getting my hands on that second issue I always hoped to be in the magazine...well my chance came about for Issue Seven, when Pokey Bolton saw the work in an exhibit called Art Quilts: Encrustations at the Page-Walker Arts and History Center in Cary, North Carolina.  She called and asked for permission for my piece called "Jeremiah's Joy" to be included in the magazine....reflecting back on that day, I wonder if anyone ever told her "no".

I was fortunate to appear in Issue Nine too and I was just as excited then as I was the first time, for Issue Seven.  As part of the mother/daughter duo who co-own Fiber on a Whim we have been delighted each and every time that the staff of Quilting Arts has excepted an article or highlighted our work.  But let me tell you they have out done themselves with this 100th issue; our pages our absolutely beautiful. 

The cover is gorgeous and look how well it coordinates with a peak at one of our pages.  If you are not a subscriber I hope you will seek out this 100th Issue, it is lovely.  We are so happy to be included.   

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you drop by again soon...

Class Registration Now Open for Internation Quilt Festival-Houston

We always seem to get into summer and enjoy our time off. Then emails start rolling in about our fall schedule/events. Somehow each year it takes us by surprise that summer....at least in southern states....is considered almost over. Just 2 more weeks till school starts down here. That means International Quilt Festival Houston is creeping up on us! We will be vending......AND teaching 7 classes!!! Registration for those workshops is now open! Please go to the International Quilt Festival page to see the classes and register online this year. It is a fancy new system where you will know immediately if you are in the class or not and can make your own changes if you decide.

Houston is October 31st-November 3rd, 2019 classes start on the 28th.

Here are the classes we are teaching:

October 30, 2019 9AM-12PM

Wanderings- Mixed Media Collage with Kristin Rodriguez

362. WANDERINGS—MIXED-MEDIA COLLAGE *$70 (includes kit fee)

Small collages are quick creative outlets, filling the gap between larger projects. A variety of textured fabrics, scrapbook paper, and stamps create this unique collage. Finish with hand-stitching, embroidery, embellishments, and mark making.

October 31, 2019 Fly High- Book with Kristin Rodriguez 425. FLY HIGH—FABRIC & PAPER BOOK *$115 (includes kit fee) 9am-5pm Want to step a little outside the box? Learn a variety of mixed-media techniques and craft a book along the way! Rodriguez guides you through the creation of unique fabric and papers that transform into collaged covers, pages, and an accordion pullout for a one-of-a-kind book.

Sticks & Stones with Janelle Girod 443. STICKS & STONES *$70 (includes kit fee) 9am-12pm Do you collect stuff—found objects, little things that hold memories or tell a story? You can give them repurposed life in a quilt! Create a small wall quilt using unconventional fabrics and hand stitching. Complete your design with creative embellishment using unusual items.

Coloring on Fabric with Inktense with Janelle Girod 480. COLORING ON FABRIC WITH INKTENSE *$75 (includes kit fee) 2pm-5pm Inktense gives you a painterly look without using paints or changing the hand of the fabric. Learn a variety of application techniques that will allow you to create bold, vibrant images or softer watercolor effects. Also offered as 548 on Friday morning. Do not enroll for both.

November 1, 2019 Coloring on Fabric with Inktense with Janelle Girod 480. COLORING ON FABRIC WITH INKTENSE *$75 (includes kit fee) 9am-12pm Inktense gives you a painterly look without using paints or changing the hand of the fabric. Learn a variety of application techniques that will allow you to create bold, vibrant images or softer watercolor effects. Also offered as 548 on Friday morning. Do not enroll for both.

Morning Moors with Kristin Rodriguez 555. MORNING MOORS *$70 (includes kit fee) 9am-12pm Mixed-media at its best! Create this abstract landscape using textures, fabrics, hand stitching, and embroidery. Create a stamped focal point and complete your piece with a painted canvas for mounting.

Woolen Vistas with Janelle Girod 586. WOOLEN VISTAS *$80 (includes kit fee) 2pm-5pm Experiment with fiber! Work with a variety of fibers and fabrics. Explore how they each deliver differing results as you paint a dimensional landscape. Wool, wool roving, silk, and more. Learn to choose the right fibers for the results you want!

Quilt Festival Chicago Bound......

It's time for Quilt Festival Chicago and we are ready.....the vehicle is loaded, our feet are up and it's almost time to call it a night.  Tomorrow will be a long drive headed north.  Wednesday will be a long day with setting up our booth....BUT....then the fun begins....catching up with old friends, meeting new ones and just being around all the creativity will be wonderful.  It has been 6 years since we have been to Chicago...wooohooo!  If you are going come on by Booth 1035 and say hi.

Check out our new line of hand-dyed counted cross stitch fabric, absolutely luscious...would also make great backgrounds for applique and mixed media art work as the texture is wonderful. 

Thanks for stopping by.

First Two Events Are Under Our Belts........

Our fist retail show of the year was QuiltCon in Nashville it was so much fun.  We got to catch up with friends, see beautiful, inspiring quilts and booths full of goodies.  Kristin vended at the first QuiltCon in Austin and was so excited about all the younger attendees, well those attendees have aged a bit over the years but it is still an exciting show to attend.

Here are a couple of pics of our booth;

 I am always amazed at how many examples we can hang and how many of our products we can get into a 10 foot by 10 foot booth.  Our goal is to inspire the attendees and hopefully we do that.

We quickly drove home to repack before our next event and look at what we found....

a bit of spring.....

Then we headed back to Nashville for the Needlework Market, open to wholesale buyers only.  We introduced our new line of hand-dyed Aida cross stitch fabric.  Also introduced were our new counted cross stitch designs, 4 photo realistic flowers and a funky bird.  This isn't as much of a stretch as you may think...we specialize in textured fabric...this has texture, just for another use.  Look for them in our booth and eventually online.

The set-up for this show is really cool your booth is the front room of your suite, here is a peak through our window.

Once you walked in, color seems to envelope you, this is our cross stitch fabric, left corner has a bit of our velveteen in it;

Before they can reach the corner they were tempted by our hand-dyed cotton organdy...someone called it eye candy and it really is;

 Now we have a few projects to tackle and a bit of dyeing to do before we head to Chicago for Quilt Festival March 28th thru March 30th.  Please stop by, introduce yourselves and check out all the new goodies we have since we were last in Chicago.

Thanks for stopping by, hopefully you will again.

How Time Flys......

After the 2018 holidays I looked around at my lack of organized supplies and how my work space had no space to actually work....isn't that what you should be doing in your studio is working/creating.  

I decided that a deep clean was needed so I tackled my stash closet first, organizing was needed but first I pulled everything out, dumping it on the guest bed.  To be totally honest I could only do a couple shelves of fabric at a time and I had to be brutal.  

This was a small portion of the mess, we donated about 7 huge trash bags....hopefully someone else can really find pleasure in using all that fabric.  Then we tackled yarn, I actually lost track of how many big Rubbermaid bins left.....the feeling of relief is great.  Now you can actually find things in this room because everything is organized and "put away".

After this I moved to my actual studio space...

This doesn't look too bad, but if you look closely things are piled every which way and there wasn't anymore room to put anything on a shelf....so....every thing got touched.  A few years ago I actually got rid of any books I was no longer interested in,  things I had moved beyond, techniques I had no interest in ever doing.  This time most books stayed, everything else was sorted through, recycled, labeled.   I can actually find things and now I actually have room for new "stuff".

Wow....you can actually see the floor, under the tables are empty and my "table buddy" could lay in the sunshine because there was room for him.  This has changed a bit since the photo because my stereo receiver died and the new one is bigger, bulkier.  It almost killed me to given in to cluttering up the space again, but it was either that or no music....that just wouldn't work, I need music. 

The Thermofax had been taking up space on the work/sewing tables, if I really needed to spread out I had to put it on the cutting table and then back again.  So....Managed to find a cart (that I already had) for the Thermofax machine and roll it under the cutting table with a white Singer featherweight riding along ...perfect spot, can easily access the Thermofax machine and the sewing table now has room to actually work on it without doing gymnastics. 

Reality struck, prepping for the upcoming shows and filling orders had priority.  Cleaning, organizing got put on hold in order to get back to dyeing fabric, first needing to mix those dyes and fortunately the weather cooperated with me....

Problem was getting to my respirator.....so I grabbed a mask and went to work...notice the door is open and the sun is shining....rather unusual around here this past 6 months, more rain than sun it seems.

Our online classes began February 11th, so we needed to take time to make a few videos...I grabbed my phone and took a photo or the camera person...dear daughter didn't know I was taking her photo but I loved it.

To try and act like I wasn't taking her photo I took a couple of the work table, this photo shows the items in the kits the students recieved in one class.

This class is called "Layered Pages", here's a peek at the project;

My studio is clean and ready to create in; however, it is so empty it hurts as my "table buddy" passed away since I took the photo of the work table.  It feels so very weird to sit at my machine and not have his little face looking at me and hearing him bark out the window.  Miss you Rocket Man!

Thanks for stopping by and I hope you will again.

Collaboration and Creativity.........

We are very proud that during our "artist in residency" we have managed for the last few years to create new work that shows various ways to use our products,  enough pieces for our show booth to have a new look.  Speaking from my point of view this has not always been easy, I don't work like this usually, it takes a lot for me to get into the flow.   For me I cannot just call up those "creative juices" that are needed to create these new pieces,  so working collaboratively with my dear daughter has been a blessing....bouncing ideas with one another is a great way to begin our residency. 

Here are some more photos of our new work;

For that last couple of years we have limited the number of colors we were going to use to create new work for the booth, in order to give it a very cohesive look.  This year when all the colors were chosen my response even surprised me...but these colors reminded me of my childhood.

So....then my next line was something about "pinwheels"....I thought it would be cool to create a pinwheel quilt...using a pinwheel block....however; there seems to have been a "slight" bit of miscommunication, because this next quilt is what came about.

Next thing I knew dimensional pinwheels were appearing all over the studio,  then came the problem of traveling with a 3-D quilt.....

after a bit of a discussion the idea of attaching the pinwheels with snaps was floated out there and it has worked beautifully.  Then a friend suggested that we show how the quilt would look if the pinwheels were stitched down so.....

I swear two brains are so much better than one....when we bounce things around it is so much fun to create these new pieces.

When daughter dear began the large pinwheel quilt she had planned her stems and leaves to look a bit different than the end result.  However, after trying the first ones out they just didn't work, so.......  amazingly the next quilt came about because there was no way she was going to let them go to waste.

This quilt was the result of not wasting the leaves and stem....hmmm....I added a bit of wool and our new hand-dyed cotton velveteen.  It felt like this quilt created itself and that is a wonderful feeling when creating new work.

Thanks for stopping by....there are still several other pieces to come.

Overdue Photos' of New Work......

Our newsletter arrived in my Inbox announcing a sale on our hand-dyed burlap and I came to the realization that we hadn't shown any of our new work after our Artist in Residency this past April. Thanks to sweet daughters' efforts I thought I'd use those pics, show off a few new pieces and those of others who posted their work with our burlap on Instagram.

During our April residency for the last few years we concentrate on making all new work for our booth at shows for the coming year.  This year was no different; however our time in Paducah was shorter, we then taught in Peoria, Ill, came home and left soon for Spring Quilt Market, returned home long enough to repack boxes and leave for QSDS in Columbus, Ohio.  Whew!!!!  No wonder I didn't post anything.

We have been trying to show how we use our products in Home Dec, Quilts, Garments, 3-D pieces and Mixed Media.  The first 2 photos are of new pillow designs and the patterns are available on our website.

Flower Basket Pillow;
   This pillow uses burlap and osnaburg in Heather; a new color introduced at market.  The flower basket is wool applique, using Mary Flanagan Woolens.

Tuscan Bird Pillow;

We used Mint Hand-dyed Burlap for this pillow, scraps from our stash of commercial fabrics in shades of "tuscan" and "butternut",  because like many of you...we cannot resist shopping for fabric everywhere we go.  The embroidery was all done using our hand-dyed floss and perle cottons.

Kristin used a free cross stitch pattern by Southern Living to create this burlap zipper pouch.

These last photo's are from Instagram;  I must say I am very impressed with the variety of ways that our products have been used.  Thank you one and all.

Deborah Boschert highlighted a bit of our Kiwi Burlap in one of her art quilt collages. 

 

Olympic Wool Works Highlighted our burlap as background to her punchneedle design.

Mamajay55 (Instagram) used our burlap with cork fabric to create this dynamite purse!

 Right now we are dyeing like crazy, sooooo....hopefully I will have time to post a few more photos of new work.  I am also hoping to have time for a little "specialty" dyeing...maybe a few pics of that too.

Thanks for stopping by.