Quilting progress and the results

It was a busy weekend. Saturday I went to a birthday party then headed to the art museum for the awards ceremony for the Akron Art Prize. As I spent some time mingling and talking to other participants I found out that one person had the church congregation that he belongs to all vote for him. Well, guess who won the $5,000.00 top prize for his painted cane?

It is sad that an event designed to let the public choose the winner based on the art's merit is not what this event has come down to. It has come down to who has the most friends you can get to vote for your piece. This is not sour grapes on my part. I know I am taking a risk because what I do is not readily accepted as art by many in the art world and even by the so called "art quilters". Everyone I met that saw my piece enjoyed it (well, at least to my face they said they did) and I did field a lot of questions on how I made it even as I was wrapping it up to take it home.

I messed about on Sunday doing some repair jobs on tote bags and this and that. I did get all the non-black sections of the current piece I am working on quilted.

Quilt Alliance swag

I have never gone to the Quilters Take Manhattan event run by the Quilt Alliance, but I do buy a home ticket which I have done for the past three years. With a home ticket you get to view the recorded sessions and they mail you a swag bag. First is I have to say the bag itself is very nice! They are very durable, well made, strong and cleanable. So here is the bag.

And what you may ask was is it? Look!

A pack of 6 FQ blue batiks, two charm packs, and mini charm pack, a FQ, spool of Aurfill, zippered bag for scissors, another lightweight tote, a sample of misty fuse, a sample of cherrywood fabric, the event book, and some pamphlets with information.

Have a great weekend!

T-shirts and progress

I received two t-shirts in the mail last evening from sellers on ebay to add to my collection.

I made some nice progress on the green and black piece last evening and got the dishes done!

A bit of machine quilting

I managed to get a little bit of quilting done on the green, blue and black UFO. Gosh, it is so hard to see where I am going on that black fabric! I will be glad to get this piece done and off the list.

Working in a series with Vicki at Field Trips in Fiber

I haven't had much time to dedicated to this series when the t-shirt quilt had taken up so much of my time the last couple of months. I did pull these striped linens that I have. I think I will use them for the next piece in the series.

Busy weekend

It was a busy weekend. Saturday I got up to get in my 5 miles of walking before I needed to get ready to head over to my brother's house. We were meeting up to go to the gig at 2:00 p.m. First I needed to get the labels on the quilts for the kids and I needed to repair this drum case. It is a good quality case that he got at a garage sale, but there was a cut in the fabric.

I stitched it up using a double stand of quilting thread. It's not pretty, but now he doesn't have to worry about the rip getting any bigger.

We got to the venue about 2:45 and unloaded the trailer. That place was so hot. Sweat was just dripping off my forehead. Michael did a great job, but was whipped after his hour of playing due to the heat. After we got everything torn down and packed away we sat and talked or should I say yelled at the people that had come out to see the band. Why do they have to have the music on so loud you have to yell? Too me that makes it too much work to try and socialize. With all the hauling of equipment I ended up with 2 more miles on my fitbit.

There were lots of gift baskets to be raffled off. There was a wheelbarrow will a bunch of booze in it and one of the bottles was in a gift bag made from a shirt sleeve and bow tie. My SIL and I thought it was a cute idea.

Sunday I was just plain tired. I messed around the house a bit, did my grocery shopping, and then made these two little girl skirts for presents. The fabric was in my stash, given to me years ago from the lady who is the wardrobe lady for a band my brother toured with. The lilac skirt needed to be a bit fuller, but I used what I had. I got the bead necklace and bracelets, and the glitter wands at the grocery store. The theme for the party is fairies so I thought maybe this would work for a 5-year old.

I needed to get my big table cleared off and before you know it, it was time to go for a walk and get some stuff cooked for meals this week. I don't feel like I was very productive this weekend, but then I ended up walking 12 miles - 7 on Saturday and 5 on Sunday - so I am a bit tired!

On Sunday I walked by the stone wall I had showed weeks ago that they are restoring. Well, it looks like they are doing the entire wall around the property. It is a work of art.

They need a proper gate for this entrance. The chain link is ugly!

Where they are working now

It will be interesting to see how they fix this next section. The wall seems to sit on top of some retaining stones, nut the retaining stones are in rough shape.

What a day yesterday was! Lots of pictures!

Gosh, where do I start? Ok, the mail. In the mail I received a wonderful group of t-shirts from Glenda of http://quiltswissy.blogspot.com. These shirts will help me so much in my pursuit of making more t-shirt pieces for a hopefully a future exhibit. Thank you so much Glenda. If anyone of my readers like to do the second hand store/Goodwill haunts and finds some rock/metal band t-shirts, Bob Marley, super heroes, Star wars, or something interesting at a great price I will be more than happy to pay for the shirts and postage. I have found a bunch of Tour De France shirts on e-bay but they are $6 a piece and up plus postage. To get a enough shirts to make the kind of piece I would like I could have as much as $100.00 on shirts alone. Right now my budget is tight as I am scrimping every month for the lawyer bill that comes every month due to a family situation. Once that is resolved I will be free, but I won't know until the end of October or early November. But just look at these shirts!

Last night I met up with seven SAQA members to tour the Akron Art Prize venues. What a lovey group of ladies of seven who were so welcoming to me a non-member! Here is some of the art we saw. Of course they were very interested in the fiber arts that were in the show.

This piece was done by one of the SAQA members. Is was the meet and greet for the artists at the 43 Furnace venue so Susie stayed at the venue to greet visitors.

There was another lady in our group who had a piece, which stupid me I forgot to take a picture at the venue so here is a picture I took off the computer. This piece was at least 4' tall and made out of a stiff type of fabric medium. The level of detail in this piece was wonderful. Annette also stayed at the venue to greet visitors so our touring group was down to six people.

At the next venue we saw paintings, sculpture, and a layered paper piece among many other pieces.

How about this table with the design done in ink free handed (yes, free handed!), the carved rhino, a wood burned skateboard, fun sculpture, and this huge dragon which blew smoke out his mouth.

After the ladies went the venue to see my piece, two more people had to leave. I had planned on leaving after seeing my piece, but I just could not leave the three out of town ladies to fend for themselves to find the other venues especially since it had gotten dark outside. So I became the local tour guide and the four of us walked two blocks to the next venue. At the RO3 gallery we saw several fiber pieces - a art quilt, a weaving, and a dress made out of paper napkins. I wish I would have taken a wide shot of this gallery as this is the place the fellow asked me about exhibiting my work. I did drop off a CD with the pictures of my improv work made mostly from my hand dyed fabrics and a sample for the fellow I had talked to a couple of weeks ago.

Another lady had to leave so we were down to three. We walked one block to the next venue then when we were done there we walked two more blocks to the Akron Art Museum. I gave them the tour of the museum since I was a volunteer there I knew the place very well! The ladies enjoyed the exhibits at the museum as we wandered thru all the galleries. I hadn't been to the museum in a while and there were a couple of pieces that I had never seen before. I loved this piece

And there was this piece that caught my eye because of the African Dutch Wax fabric used for the walker's clothing. I have seen this artist's work before and the fabric just give me the chills! We had to get out to the front of the museum before 9 p.m. to catch the trolley to take us back to our cars. The ladies thanked me for being their personal tour guides and said they might not have been able to navigate and see everything if I hadn't been there to help them. I am so glad I could be there for them! I did get home at 9:30 which was a bit late for me, but I will survive!

This weekend my nephew's band is playing at this fundraiser. The mother of a 4 and 2 years old passed away and the grandparent have been left with the task of raising them. How sad. I don't know what happened to the mother.

I plan on putting labels on these two quilts to give to the kids.

Have a great weekend!