A Finish, A Start, A Visit. . . .Off the Wall Friday

The Beauties, 33" by 46"

Ohhh What A Busy Week! Not only is it fair week but I am also finally back to work. Add on top of that finishing the Beauties, starting my fall piece, visiting the studio of a friend and Boy did it all go quick!

So Yes - drum roll please - the Beauties are done. I'm so happy with how the thread work came because I wasn't quite sure how it was going to look in the end. Also, I tried some new ways of finishing the piece. I used the block tutorial by Sylvia Landman that worked wonders to get it nice and flat. Then I used Kathy Loomis' Facing Tutorial to finish the edges. Up till now I kind of made up the way I faced my quilts through trial and error since I never really understood any of the written explanations. But with Kathy's great pictures, I finally got my quilt faced properly and with nice flat, square corners.

Sandy's Self Portrait

I also, managed to squeeze in a visit to the studio of a great fiber artist friend of mine, Sandy Shelenberger. Now Sandy who started out as a traditional quilter has morphed herself into this amazing textile, Encaustics artist. Her work has been shown national - including Quilt National and she's very active on the local scene. I love her work since its so different from mine. Her use of line is so strong and she always chooses nice strong palettes with an excellent use of neutrals.

Lately though Sandy has been entranced by Encaustics which is a whole other ball of wax - sort to speak - grin. After seeing her amazing work, I'm definitely going to have to read up more on the process.

Not only did she share with me her latest encaustics, but also her entries for Quilt National and the Fiberart International. She also showed me this piece entitled Black Swan.