Summer vs Studio

I don't know how many other quilters are gardeners, but I suspect that many are as we all have an affinity for color, and many of us are inspired by nature. It is difficult to balance studio time and time to maintain and enjoy gardens, yard, and the great outdoors. Throw in a six-year old and you've got a real limited amount of time for working on quilts! I have the additional problem of having my sewing room on the northwest corner of the house where it gets a very hot afternoon sun on two sides and becomes rather warm until the sun goes down. All this to say that I have done little or no fiber art creating in the last couple of weeks. Gardens full of weeds forced me to give them attention and now at least the vegie gardens look very tidy---but as you gardeners will know, that won't last long!!

We've been lucky enough to have thunderstorms with rain in recent days (that ought help those weed out!). What a blessing here in Montana where it is usually quite hot and dry in August. I am enjoying the cooler air and not having to water the gardens as frequently. There have been some forest fires in the area and the evening skies with the smoke makes for some very inspiring sunsets. In case you haven't experienced this phenomenon where you live, the skies turn very red near the sun and shades of pink all the away around and to the east. Not sure if the full moon will be visible tonight with the overcast skies, but if it clears a bit, it might be beautiful sight in the red tinted skies of the evening. Can you imagine it……???

What I have done in my studio in recent days is supervise my young son in making a small quilted wall hanging he wants to enter into the Ravalli County Fair this year. He has decided on two rail fence and two log cabin blocks and is working on pressing fabric and cutting the strips out. We should be ready to sew and this year I'm thinking of letting him try to do that by himself instead of sitting on my lap. He has very good coordination if I can just keep him focused and paying close attention to what he is doing. Six year olds tend to be easily distracted!

Still no sign of my 12"x12" SAQA auction donation quilt. It is sad to know that it is gone and not know that at least someone is enjoying it on their wall somewhere. I regret that I didn't send it in earlier so that maybe I would have had time to create another one to donate by the deadline. Next time I will definitely use UPS where I can track my package.

This weekend we picked over 7 quarts of huckleberries in one morning. I made a pie, but froze most of them. My son contributes very little to what actually comes home in the buckets, but he sure enjoys eating them. I hurried home so that I could get to our local bead shop, The Beaded Pony, to see what the bead traders had for sale. They had five tables of strings of various kinds of beads and I bought more than I should have. I got a couple of beautiful strands of stones and some shell beads. They had much more that I would have been happy to take home, but you gotta stop somewhere!

Tomorrow I will be helping to judge the Stevensville Creamery Picnic Kiddie Parade. Not quite sure what that means, but they need some help and I'm sure it will be fun. The Creamery Picnic is a yearly festival and is usually a very fun event. They have a larger parade on Saturday and then lots of activities going on in the park and downtown. I'm hoping to stop at the local library for their book sale where I usually pick up some good stuff for a bargain.

Bank Exhibit Ending/Bitterroot Quilt Show Ahead

This is the final week of my exhibit at the Rocky Mountain Bank here in Stevensville. On Monday morning I will take my pieces down and the Stevensville Art & Sculpture Society (SASS) will hang a show that includes pieces from numerous local artists that belong to SASS. I will be dropping off two small pieces for them to hang which have not been shown previously. I encourage anyone in the area to stop by and take a look at my exhibit, as well as the new exhibit which will hang for the months of June and July. There will be an artist's reception on First Friday, June 5. I don't know the exact times for that yet, but I believe it is rather early in the evening. There will likely be an interesting mix of art mediums for this exhibit.

I have been working on the monochromatic challenge piece I have to get done for the Bitterroot Quilter's Guild show the last weekend in June. The pieces have to be a maximum of 144 square inches so they will be rather small. I was lucky to choose a color that I find motivating and easy to work with, and of course I have a substantial amount of it in my stash to choose from. People tell me that they can spot my quilts now as I seem to have developed a certain style, although I don't know if I or anyone else can quite define it. Hopefully there will be other art quilters/embellishers who do the challenge so that my piece won't stick out too much like a sore thumb! It is always fun to see what other people do when all are given the same parameters to make a quilt. I'm always excited to see the display and amazed at the variety and imagination of quilters.

I'm also hoping to get another quilt done for the show in June. I am quilting it right now and then will likely do some beading on it. Due to the colors and the mood they create, I have named this piece "Twilight". I think it will be a beautiful piece when it is done. Hopefully I can get there...!

I have sent in my entry for the Houston quilt show (International Quilt Festival) which is a juried show. I won't hear for at least a month and the show isn't until this fall. I sent in digital images of two of my quilts. I'm working on entries for three other shows which have deadlines fast approaching. We'll see if I get those done and sent in time! One of them is a Studio Art Quilts Associates (SAQA) sponsored show called "Fibrations" and I really would like to be in one of their shows. They travel around to various venues including galleries and national quilt shows so the pieces are gone for quite some time. It would be really good exposure to get into one of those shows. They seem to sponsor several shows a year so I will start entering them as they come up. Many of them have specific themes which I find a difficult thing to do as my art just seems to evolve and I have a hard time making myself do something that I'm not necessarily inspired to do.

School will be out here in Stevensville on Friday, June 5, so my son will be home and my life will change a bit for the next few months. Hopefully he and I will get along and have a good time, but I know there will be lots of time outs and occasional yelling. He's a good kid but he's in a phase where he thinks he can ignore me when I tell him to do something, or even tell me "no"! That will change. I know he doesn't want to spend the summer sitting in the corner. Our challenge is to try not to watch too much TV every day. When I want/need to quilt, he usually turns on the TV to keep him company which I completely understand. Unfortunately, he will watch too much and sit there all day if I let him. We'll have to come up with a schedule I guess. It will be as hard for me as it is for him!!

We're taking care of my parents Springer Spaniel, Maggie (she's the color of a magpie), and she is doing very well. She is used to having a dog door and all the freedom that goes with it, but she has adapted well to this situation. She just loves having a six year old boy to play with. I think they are about the same mental age so it works out great!