Embedded Video from YouTube. 08-21-09

Thanks to Terry Grant of Oregon I have learned to embed a video on my blogs! Hope you enjoy this one. It is another middle of the night find.




Perhaps you have already seen this fascinating video. I REALLY like it. It reminds me of doing "choral speaking" when I was in high school (oh, those long 50 plus years ago!) I was active in the drama department, but I have always been a lousy actress, so my focus was more on directing, stage craft and makeup. When the department chair, Mr. Shaffer, decided to do John Brown's Body as a "choral speaking" presentation I was 'over the moon'. I would not have to act - merely speak the words. But, alas, I was just part of the chorus. I can, however, still recite some of the passages which I do for entertainment whilst traveling alone.

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Quilty license plates. Corky at Camp Del 08-10-09

Just for the fun of it, Ami Sims is "challenging" blog readers to send her pictures of quilty license plates, but only their own. More info on her blog http://amisimms.wordpress.com/

Corky is here while his parents are in Arizona - he may be able to enjoy "Camp Del" until Saturday or Sunday. Today he went to see the physical therapist with me and also my Dr. Debin. He was very, very good. He sat in his stroller until he had checked out everyone in sight, then he turned around three or four times and flopped down for a nap. Later when Dr. D came into the examining room she said, "Sh-h-h-h, I'll try to be quiet." He opened one eye, blinked and went back to sleep - after all what had he done all day so far but sleep? He does it sooo well. Last night he was asleep in the family room in his oldest shabbiest bed, using one of my shirts as a pillow, when he gave me the one eyed 'check up' and then went back to sleep. What a guy!

The physical therapy was agony, but I know it will be less painful as time goes on. Twice a week for four weeks and I will be a Spring Chicken again - rather than just a chicken limping around trying not to hurt. Blessings on the person who invented Tylenol.

Blogging 08-19-09

I enjoy writing a blog, although sometimes it just reminds me how BORING my life is. I have found, however, that to others it is not boring at all - just as their lives are not boring to me! The comments I receive are little letters from somewhere usually more exciting than suburban Placentia, California. I subscribe to two different blog statistical services - one has a better map and the other has simpler statistics that are easily understood by someone who is mathematically challenged! What interests me the most are the far flung places where someone has checked in. Other than all over the United States, I have regular readers in Belgium, Germany, Australia, UK and Canada; periodic readers in Hawaii (far flung, but a lovely part of the USofA), New Zealand, Israel, Mexico and the Netherlands. Occasionally someone will check in from India, Poland, Egypt, Greenland, Brazil, Venezuela, SAfrica and (twice) Iceland (Bolungarvík, Vestur-isafjardarsysla, Iceland ). There are an average of visits 60 a day, but normally the daily count is less than that. Although the statistical services give only locations and how many times a visitor has visited (depends entirely on 'cookies') the majority of my readers are quilt makers and they check in on Sunday night or Monday for the TCQC quilt.

This is not a 'public' blog, so it is not listed on any of the blog search lists or the regular blog rings. I am always astounded when I come across a blog that has dozens of 'followers' or that receives hundreds of comments on a regular basis. All I can think is that some people must spend entire days online perusing blogs - which is SOOOO easy to do. Since April when I started working on the Surfside QGuild newsletter I read fewer blogs and seldom find time to send individual replies to comments, but it is a sort of addiction and in the wee hours of the morning, when I can't get back to sleep, I sometimes do a little blog surfing. I used to look at art quilt websites, but since I currently have no money in the TCQC budget it is much too painful to see quilts that are beyond my pocketbook. I just go back to sleep only to dream of those fabulous quilts that "got away". Blogs are much more restful and sometimes they offer things out there in cyberspace that I long to share with everyone - beautiful, inspired or inspiring, awesome - or that tickle my funny bone.Here is one I especially enjoy.. SAND DANCER

Turn on your sound, tune your ear to British English and enjoy a very original artist expressing his art. http://bellasinclair.blogspot.com/2009/05/whoa.html

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More on "Hat on a Blue Chair" 08-18-09

I had some interesting and useful responses to yesterday's post about Hat on a Blue Chair, so I am going to use today's post to share them. Some were sent as comments and some as direct e-mails. Since sometimes people don't comment because they don't want their name on the blog, I will not ID anyone. The responses are below. Further comments are welcome - this is a chance for me to learn how others view things. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
#1 Well, it's just my opinion but the aqua chair "out shines" the beautiful green hat because it's so intense! Similar value but grabs the attention. Maybe it's because I am not a fan of aqua....Love the hat, love the chair but not the color of the chair....well, you asked for comments, so that's mine...
----------------------------------------------------------------#2 Maybe some shadow so that the hat looks as though it is actually sitting on the chair instead of floating there?
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#3 I was looking at your chair and hat quilt. I don't think it looks like it is floating at all. My impression is that the hat is fancy...I love the hat!!... That the chair is so plain..perhaps that is the culprit? Does the chair need to be fancier? I don't know...
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#4 I really like the hat on the chair. It reminds me of a hat my mother wore. It was woven straw with orange, pink, and red flowers. She wore hats well. How large is the quilt?

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#5 I was intrigued by your quilt that you don't feel "works". I thought it might be a fun challenge to open it in PhotoShop and play with it in answer to your "how would you improve it?" question. Attached are two possibilities, though these changes could not be made to the quilt at this point. So it is just for fun.What a travesty to mess with someone else's work--I feel a little guilty! But it was a fun

1. I thought the colors used for the background, chair and hat were too close in value and could be livened up, so I changed those colors, giving them more contrast. I also thought the composition would be stronger if the sides, with background color were cropped off.

2. After making the first changes, I thought the flowers you used were so starkly different in mood and tone that they didn't work very well with the simple, flat background, so I would have found a fabric with flatter, more stylized flowers to add to the hat.

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Del says... Of course, one of the limitations in making this type of quilt is that one is limited by the requirement to use only the fabrics from a certain manufacturer. I often find that sample quilts made to show the possibilities of a fabric line don't work very well. I don't remember what other fabrics were available in the 2004 line. I know that the large pink/red flowers were the only possibility for broiderie perse, so I limited myself with that first selection. I like the aqua fabric, and after making the chair I liked the white/aqua combination. However, the hat kills the chair and the chair kills the hat!! For me the "virtual" yellow/orange/red/pink flowers are MUCH more effective - those hot Mexican colors have always appealed to me and I use them frequently in my quilts. I don't care for the dark blue background, but I'm not sure what color might work better in my eyes. As I recall I had a polka dot fabric that I tried, but it distracted too much from the flowers on the hat.

I think that I will have to learn Adobe PhotoShop once I have Microsoft Publisher down pat - what fun to take a quilt that doesn't work and try to improve it as a "virtual image".

Some quilts don't work! 08-17-09

For several years the Kansas Art Quilters, of which I am a member, created small quilts for the Fabri-Quilt booth at Quilt Market. The requirement, of course is that one must use just Fabri-Quilt fabric. It was an interesting thing to do, but some quilts were less successful than others. I never quite figured out if it was the limited fabric, the concept or a lousy quilt artist! This is one that I was very enthused about, but it doesn't work. My concept was to have a very plain , flat, sort of primitive chair as a background for a fancy hat covered with flowers. And I do have both of those elements.

I have always liked pieced backgrounds, but I didn't want a lot of color, so I just pieced, cut and re-pieced the fine black and white squiggly fabric to give a little more texture.

"Hat on a Blue Chair" Del Thomas 2004 31"W x 28"L(Thanks to Christine for the reminder that I had left this line off. Del 08-17-09)

The brim of the hat is attached to the crown, but is wired on the edge and loose all around so that it can be adjusted. I tried quite a few ribbons to dangle off the edge, but this was the best I could find without distracting from the flowers.

The flowers are fused and machine appliqued in a modern version of broiderie perse. I think they work great. It is just the combo of chair and hat that bothers me.

What do you think? How would you improve it? I doubt that I will do more work on it after all these years, but one never knows when a brainstorm will lead me to revisit a quilt.

Bonnie Jean Thornton quilt from TCQC 08-16-09

I don't know why I had such a hard time cropping these images. What I think is perfect doesn't come out the same when I 'file' the image. So, I am showing an un-cropped and a cropped image of this quilt.

[NOTE: Yachats, a charming beach village, is pronounced "YAH - HOTS"]

"Tall Trees" Bonnie Jean Thornton - Yachats, OR 1995 21"W x 72"L

[NOTE: Yachats, a chrming beach village, is pronounced "YAH - HOTS"]

"Tall Trees" Bonnie Jean Thornton - Yachats, OR 1995 21"W x 72"L

In the summer of 1996 I drove down Hwy 1 from Seaside, OR, to Mendocino, CA. Before this drive my uncle and aunt had driven me down I-5 at night to see the "Electric Horses". These temporary neon sculptures were located on private land (in the style of Christos fabric works) and lit only at night. It was enchanting and now one of my favorite memories of these loving relatives. A few days later as I drove south I had just a glance of a horse by the same artist outside the (now defunct) Triad Gallery in Seal Rock, OR., and I quickly found a place to turn around so I could more closely see the horse. It happened that the gallery was having their annual textile show - did they know I would be coming? This depiction of tall trees along the Oregon Coast is described by its maker,

"A found piece of fabric printed with forest giants, coupled with cottons and cyanotype prints compose this piece. It is hand and machine quilted and has an embellishment of hand couched yarn. Being a child of the [Pacific] Northwest, I have always been awe struck by the majesty of the huge old trees. This quilt honors them."

I also am an Oregonian and I could not resist this interesting quilt. The first thing is that she used one of what I always thought of as the ugliest prints ever made that came out sometime in the 60s. There were a number of different images and I suppose the trees were the least offensive. Several friends had these fabrics on stretcher bars over their sofas - I always sat on the sofa!

Bonnie Jean combined an assortment of fabrics including some of her own cynotypes, hand-dyes and shibori, along with the Nancy Crow fern print. I like the subtle additions of texture and color with the couched rusty hued yarns.

And her hand stitches to depict the rain. Hand stitching of this type was not so common in 1995.

The khaki and white shibori fabric creates additional trees and shadows - very cleverly used.

An integrated border of muted color seems to show the cratered bark of the Douglas fir trees that are native to the Oregon coast.

I have not seen any work by Bonnie Jean since about 2005, I don't know if she is still making quilts. Prior to her 1980 venture into fabric she was a watercolor artist and sold her work in galleries along the coast. One of her quilts was in Quilt National -1987.

Looking back - Seattle Public Library '04 08-15-09

Five years ago on this date I was in Seattle and had a few days to wander after the Association of Pacific Northwest Quilters big Quilt Show at the Seattle Center. I had just read an article in a magazine about the new library and had to take a look. I didn't go inside because I couldn't find a place to park! Later, after hours, I went back and walked around - looking up and down and around and taking pictures. It is an amazing building and I think about it often.

How delicate these tiny wispy grasses and flowers against the glass and steel of the building.

I don't know if this is the main entrance, but it has this lovely fountain that makes me think of ship anchors. The man on the right is dropping books in the after hours drop-box.

Looking up made me a little dizzy, so I stopped doing that!

And the building is massive like an aircraft carrier or a huge cruise ship.

One side has this 'arcade' of diamond cutouts - looks like a chapel.

I waited around for these kids to go away, but they weren't going to go. They wanted to know what I was doing taking pictures of their library and I told them how beautiful it was. They didn't seem to have the concept of a "beautiful" building. They do add a sense of size, eh?

They wanted me to take their picture, who knows why? So, I did and it is a charming image. I look at them and think, "They are five years older today." I hope they are still having a good time, wherever they might be.