Halloween/Entries/PIQF

I recently heard from another juried fiber art gallery show that I attempted to enter, and as has been the norm, I did not get in. I had sent in three pieces to be considered and I guess they were not competitive enough. This particular show received over 250 entries and accepted 50, so I am definitely not alone. And it probably won't be the last time I don't get in to an art show!

I am still waiting to hear from the Art Meets Science exhibition as to whether any of those entries are accepted. I should hear in the next few days. The time waiting is always a bit painful--particularly when it ends in a "decline" notification! This is a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) sponsored show so only SAQA members are allowed to enter, but there are a great many of those!

I am still working on small pieces for an attempt at some holiday sales. I have been showing them wherever I go and because of that I just sold two of them to friends. It is definitely worth showing pieces off to anyone willing to look! That means I need to make some more so I have small ones to hang in two shows in the next two weeks. Here are a couple of "in process" photos of one of the small pieces I hope to sell:

Halloween was fun with my 7-year old this year. He wanted to be a Ninja and I talked him out of that by suggesting one of his favorite movie stars----Groucho Marx! I made a big brown cigar, some felt eyebrows and mustache, and found some wire frame glasses at the thrift shop. I put him in a white shirt, black pants, a large suit jacket, and a skinny tie. He looked really cute and funny, but he was rather disappointed that none of the kids knew who he was! His teacher knew immediately and told him a story about her parents taking her baby sister to a baseball game and being asked by Groucho Marx to let him hold her and she ended up watching the game with him. Michael was impressed. Even most of the parents are too young to know who he was (I'm one of those older moms!). I heard a couple of them agreeing that he must be the guy from the Monopoly game (I think they were referring to the banker). When I took him to a community event on Halloween most of the adults running the games and many of the people with their kids or grandkids knew who he was and loved the costume. He just wanted to take it off----the eyebrows itched! He has to put it on one more time so I can take pictures since I keep forgetting to get out the camera when he has it on!

A friend of my mom's went to the Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) in California where I recently had two quilts exhibited. She sent me some pictures of my pieces hanging there. I was very disappointed to see that they were both hanging at the bottom of the panels they were on, near the floor. It is my experience that when pieces are hung underneath other pieces and near the floor they are virtually invisible to most passersby and get very little attention. They just do not get good light and are below eye level so people don't notice them. It is really too bad as they both have wonderful beading and quilting on them that if they were hung at eye level would catch the light and show well. I did receive a very nice e-mail from a woman I didn't know from Seattle who also went to the show and did manage to notice my pieces and really enjoyed them. She then checked out my website and blog and was very complimentary about my work. I thought it was very nice of her to take the time to share that with me and I really appreciated that she took the time to e-mail me. The judges' comments on both of my pieces were also very complimentary and I was very appreciative of those as well. One of these days they'll be good enough to actually win an award at one of these shows!

I need to get a binding stitched on my latest piece so I can move to the next one!