If only it were this easy to go places…

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As I was driving home from my morning walk the other morning, I spotted this well-worn VW Bug parked on the street, with a surfboard strapped to its roof! This is not a common sight in land-locked Sherman, TX.

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It looked so out of place that I decided to fix it with Photoshop. First I made the background go away. I sort of like the look of it floating on the white background. It’s easy to imagine it being in a snowstorm, except that the pavement is dry.

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But the bug w/surfboard needs to be by the ocean…

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I tried parking it at more than one beach because, by this time, I was just playing…

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I’m resisting to urge to put it in more locales. Seriously, I need to get some work done :-).

 

Maybe I could paint that!

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Perspective is a technique whereby an artist implies distance on a 2-dimensional surface. This idea did not exist before the Renaissance.

Johannes Vermeer (1632 – 1675) went way beyond getting the perspective right in his paintings. The man was a practically a human camera—painting the image he saw nearly perfectly on canvas as you can see in his painting, The Milkmaid (1658). How on earth did he do that?

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Tim Jennison has figured out how Vermeer could have done it. I think that you will enjoy the 10-15 minutes you will spend reading this story. All I can say is that, no matter what, I’m impressed by both Vermeer and Tim Jennison.

Some artists might use the best technology available to them to help them in their art. And it’s good to be reminded that if they do use that technology (the way great artists in the past may have used the best technology of their day), it’s not cheating. That’s a happy thought in our very tech-heavy world.

Here’s a trailer for the documentary, produced by Penn and Teller, that shows Mr. Jennison’s journey. I’m definitely going to have to watch the film.

 

 

My favorite funnies…

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I love the funnies, so much so that I subscribe to two different comics services so that my favorites are emailed to me daily. Of the comics I subscribe to, Pearls Before Swine tops my list of morning must-reads. Back in the day, Calvin and Hobbes was in that spot.

If you love either, or both, of these comics, click on the link below to learn how these two comic artists, Stephan Pastis and Bill Watterson, came together in 3 special comic strips a few days ago.

Ever Wished That Calvin and Hobbes Creator Bill Watterson Would Return to the Comics Page? Well, He Just Did.

Side note: I cut the comic, below, from the paper, laminated it, and stuck magnets on the back more than 20 years ago… it has been on our refrigerator(s) ever since. Time does indeed fly by.

CandH_ImSignificant

Too many choices…

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I spent much of Sunday piecing and listening to TED talks. This one, given by Barry Schwartz, was particularly interesting to me. I hope you enjoy it, too.

We believe that more choices are always better when, in fact, that is not always the case. To bring that idea home to quilters, here’s a thought: Have you ever felt over-whelmed when you are trying to choose fabric for a quilt? If your stash is over-flowing and you have visited every quilt shop in your area, it’s probably not that you just haven’t found the perfect fabric—it’s that you can’t decide which of the hundreds of great choices is best for you. In this case, it is helpful to limit your choices so that you can begin to make decisions.

 

 

 

 

 

So pretty!

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I recently received an email from Shellie who wrote: “I thought you would like to see pictures of our 2014 Raffle Quilt titled ‘Pinwheel Paradise’. We used your applique designs with the pinwheels. I was inspired by another raffle quilt that was hanging in a show. It was by the Carquinez Strait Stitchers . We copied their over all lay-out but changed things a little.

RaffleQuilt

This is one of the happiest quilts I have ever worked on. It was lots of fun to play with the pieces, applique them and finally finish the quilt.  We have received many many compliments and Ooh and Ahh’s. Thank you for such cute designs and inspiration.”

I think it’s a lovely quilt, and I’ll be you do too! If you’d like to contact Shellie about purchasing raffle tickets, click here to email her :-).

 

Cloth for the table…

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My friend, Amy, has a cotton tablecloth that I love and, since she’s my friend, she took me to the store that sold things from Thailand where she bought her cloth. I bought one without even thinking about opening it up to see what size it was because I liked it so well that it didn’t really matter to me.  When I got it on my table and realized that it was square, I knew I could fix it because I can sew!

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I cut the two long sides off and sewed one to each end…

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I topstitched the seams and then hemmed the long sides. Sew easy!

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The icing on the cake was that there were scraps large enough to make 4 napkins. Sweet.

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Thai textiles have interesting colors and patterns and are not particularly expensive. The cloth is not perfect nor is it tightly woven, but there are many fun ways to use it—pillows, garments, backs of quilts, even fronts of quilts! It’s good to remember that there are many, many different places that we can find fabric. (FYI: wash and dry the fabric in the washer and dryer a couple of times before you sew with it. It will shrink.)

I’m heading to Georgetown, TX, today to lecture and teach a workshop. I probably won’t write a blog post while I’m gone but I do hope to post to instagram. If you don’t follow me there but would like to, you can :-).