Day 232. Binded to Binding

Day 231.

In homage to Yoko Ono, I'm presenting you an artistic performance.
My instructions are as follows:

1. Disregard all the rules you have outlined for yourself today.
2. Be free.

Spring, 2011

Day 230.

This is me if I was a ghost, haunting my favorite place

Day 229.

I don't know what came over me...I was having a great time watching Dirty Dancing with my hubby (who had NEVER seen it)  I was overzealous with enthusiasm remembering the little girl I used to be who lived to dance and ran out of the theater striking pirouettes and glided over to the jeep wagoner on cloud nine.  The little girl who listened to the soundtrack on repeat until she had memorized every word to every song.  How much fun is that?  I was elated, on cloud nine once again.  Then I shimmy over to my computer and sit down ready to make some kind of artwork to express the fullness of my heart-my cup spilling over.  I turn on one of my ALL time favorite bands, Dr. Dog and get into a groove.  Then I don't know why, but this stuff pops out.  So weird, I am So Weird!

If you stare at this photo, does it make your eyes hurt as if you were staring at the sun?  Is faux sun as damaging as the real sun

Still working on this still life.  I kind of like the one on the left, but then again maybe I can make the one on the right work out a little better? Hmmm....

Day 228. A Real Lazy Lump

Earlier today I was a motivated, energized human being capable of all kind of increadible feats.  I made a list a mile wide of the things I was going to do when I got home from work.  Laundry, bills, dinner, art projects, quilting, taking a walk, ecetera.  And then I don't know what happened.  Somewhere along the day my energy was squeezed out until I was lacking most of the energy I had cultivated.  I was in it's raw-ist form, a quintessential, undeniable, very large and unmovable lazy lump.  In fact, it was a downright miracle that I managed to get in a walk at all, but as soon as I got home from my short walk, my butt hit the couch and it was all she wrote, my future cried out loudly, lazy lump.  I also did manage to get up and make dinner, but that's not saying much since without food I would have surely died of hunger and well let's be honest, when have you ever seen a lazy lump wither and die of hunger? Nope doesn't happen.  Instead they nibble and inhale and snack on whatever food is within grasp and grow and grow into LARGE lazy lumps.  They sometimes get so big, they refer to themselves as "Beached Wales" so of course I had enough energy to make dinner. Duh!
Anyway, here's a picture of myself as a lazy lump.

Day 227. The unraveling knot

Tonight I finished tying a quilt for charity.  Turns out though when I cut the string ends down in size the knots came out..BOO! So guess I'll have to start from scratch on that one.  Maybe I'll do some internet research for a better way to tie the knots...

Day 226. Finished mini-vacation and mini-video

Day 225. More with the video

Due to some internet issues, I was unable to upload this yesterday, but I'm back home now, so upload complete!

Day 224. Addition to video photo album

I've been having some uploading issues with the internet here in Michigan.  I've started a video yesterday and added to it today.  But I'm having troubles uploading the video to show you.  Tomorrow I'm going to try some extreme Internet measures and try to rectify the situation.  If those measures work and you're seeing these posts from the last days with video, then you know it worked...If not...well, I can always upload the daily exports when I get home.

Day 223. Trip to Michigan = Travel Art Project

Tonight we left after work on a train to Michigan.  I love train travel, there's no driving to do, it's comfortable, relatively cheap, and lots to see out the window.  I had fun with our new flip video camera. It's the first time in a long time that I really picked up a video camera.  Then I was poking around on imovie and saw these cheesy intro projects and thought it looked like a photo album.  I was reminded of how people used to take photos of their vacations and put the pictures in photo albums and then pull them out for friends to see.  It made me think that I could make one too.  I'm not going to take video of all the touristy sites, but of what I love about tripping to Michigan.  Since my eyes are usually drifting over to nature and the abstract, my photo album might not be so typical, but it may be pretty, like this lolling image of watching the tracks go past.

Day 222.

Today I began finishing one of the charity blankets that was started at the Quilting Bee.  The person who started this quilt (not me) made a beautifully bright top piece with bold colors.  Tonight I looked around for a back fabric that was all one piece but couldn't find anything that would quite fit.  So instead I found a large yellow piece that seemed to match the top piece and a strip that also matched and sewed them together.  Then I cut the batting to size, pinned them together and am about to start tying them together with colorful embroidery thread. Here are some pictures of the back and top piece.

Day 221. Finished 2nd Quilt for Charity

Yesterday I started the binding, tonight I finished it.  I'm going to cut those tying strings a little bit shorter and then will call it done!

Day 220.

Today I hand stitched 1/2 the binding of a quilt for charity.  Too tired to take a picture though.

Day 219. Took a break from quilting to work on this

What a nice relaxing Sunday. Got a letter writen, made breakfast AND lunch, worked on some art, read some of my awesome book Art and Soul, and found time to veg out in front of the old boob tube!  There's still the night ahead of me - time to do some much needed chores.
I'm making some process on this still life but it's slow going, haven't hit my big breakthrough yet..

Day 218. Quilting Bee for Charity

Lindsay's Batman and Dinosaur Quilt

Pam, Lindsay and Cheryl

Rebecca

Stacey and Elizabeth

Sarah and Henry

Cheryl

Andrea

Well the Quilting Bee for Charity went off without a hitch! It was a great success, we have 11 quilts in process, most of which are close to being finished and 1 completed.  There was a bunch of fabric and batting donated for future quilts.  Thanks to all the ladies who came by and helped those beginners out and thanks to all who made quilts. It doesn't seem like a lot of people were there by my photos but in the most attended moments, there were about 30 people all working together.  Thanks also to The OpShop who graciously housed our little bee.  Tomorrow I'll post pics of my completed quilt and the other one which is almost finished.

Day 217. Almost done, Almost done...

Today, as promised, I cut the binding to size- sewed it into one long strip and then sewed it on to the blanket.  I then flipped it over, ironed a clean edge into it and pinned it down. Tomorrow morning, I will hand stitch the other side down and then I'll be done.  In case you're curious, the hand stitch is a button hole stitch which is invisible to see and moves pretty quickly, its only the corners that are somewhat tricky.

Tomorrow is our quilting for charity workshop, where we're going to try to quilt as many blankets for hospital patients as we can.  Come if you want, no experience necessary.
The Op Shop
1001 E. 53rd Street, Chicago IL 60615
Saturday April 16th 1-4pm

Day 216.

Tonight I machine quilted the stripe and orange blanket.  Tomorrow I will cut and put the binding on - the final step.  And then I will have one completed quilt for charity under my belt.  I was going to take a picture, but I''m beat. time for relaxing for a few hours.  More mañana.

Day 215. Still Quilting for Charity

Cut the batting and back piece fabric to size, only two steps left

I was taking pictures to show my process, but then I saw how beautiful and bold these photos were. Love these last two

Day 214.

Day 213. Worked on the tulip still life

Day 212. Made a dress in only 3 hours!

Thanks JoAnn Fabrics for making this material that comes with the tube top elastic already installed. Thanks to that I made this dress in only 3 hours.  I fit it to my size, raised the hem line about 6 inches to make it a knee length and added straps.  I'm considering adding front pockets but will have to leave that for another day.  P.S. I was wearing this dress in the picture, but I was so tired looking, I thought it best to photoshop myself out!

Day 211. Effused today by a dream

Do you ever have those dreams that seem so real and so vivid that they effect your emotions, sentimentality and sense of timing?  Sometimes I wake from a dream and feel like part of me was left in the chemical makeup of that dream, some of my molecules got left behind.

So I was standing at the stairs to my house (not my real house, but man would I have loved to live there) I was looking out at a vast field of tall grass. At the edge of the grass was the ocean and it was lolling about, lapping the shore of the grass in a very rhythmic, rolling motion.  It seemed as if the tide was coming in, the waves were slowly getting closer and closer, until the field of grass had disappeared and the water was at my feet, then the water took me and I became one with it, lolling and lapping about. 

It was this feeling that got trapped in my aura today.  It influenced me to splurge on buying beautiful purple tulips and then inspired me to make a still life drawing of them.  I really think I captured this feeling in the drawing, what do you think?

Day 210. Big Oops

I'm not sure what happened...but I forgot.  One minute I was eating dinner and thinking of what I was going to work on and then the next minute, it had completely left my head.  It wasn't until I woke up this morning that I remembered...Makes me think, what happens to all those forgotten moments, do they get stored up somewhere and years later I will have banked an entire day of moments or knowing me, an entire week of forgotten moments?  Will I get to make up these moments in the land that time forgot?  Is there an alternate universe (like in Sliders) where I'm doing all those forgotten moments- a place where I'm always on time and every homework from grade school exists in completion, my plants bloom twice as beautiful because I always remember to water them?  I walk down this alternate universe street and can remember everyone's name on every person I've ever forgotten?

Day 209. Designed flyer with Cheryl for Charity Quilting Workshop

Day 208. Map of Statistics

So tonight I started looking around on the blogger and I found this great thing.  They are tracking how many people visit my blog and where they are in the world when looking at it.  I found it fascinating.
Here's where people are looking at my very own blog.  I decided to celebrate them by putting them on my map, each country is "pinned" with an artwork I've made during for the blog.
The countries are:
United States, Canada, Colombia, Brazil, United Kingdom, Denmark, Germany, Croatia, Slovenia, Spain, India and Singapore.

There's still a huge world left yet unseen.

Day 207. Los Colores de la montaña

Tonight I traveled far across the city, by two buses and a good 1/2 mile trek on foot in speed-walking mode to see a movie at the 25th Annual Chicago Latino Film Festival.  For months now I had been hearing about this movie from my husband.  He had played the trailer for me twice.  I was captivated too.  You can never really tell much about a movie from a trailer or maybe you can tell everything from a trailer.  In any case I was really looking forward to this movie.
From my small experience with watching Colombian movies they fall into three or maybe four categories (now be forewarned, this is a gross oversimplification).  1)Violence 2)Drugs and violence 3)Beautiful dramas of landscape and people 4)Comedy/Soccer [Futbol].  I enjoy the later two categories and dread watching the first two.  Violence is not something I can really stomach watching and it deeply effects my psyche for days afterward, in addition I fall into a debate in my mind: Do I ignore the terrible tragedies of the world and live in happiness or do I witness them and hope my witness will become action that will make change while I feel my heart sink in sadness?
Interestingly, Los Colores de la montaña [the colors of the mountain] was a movie in a category born of both violence and beauty.  I relished the sweeping landscapes of the mountains that were many shades of green with a continued mist that I remember so vividly during my own trip to Colombia- a trip that won my heart, Colombia is SO beautiful.  It tells a beautiful story of some people, children dedicated to futbol, school and the love of their land.  But it also tells a tragic story of the guerillas and paramilitary who stole this land from the people and killed thousands for trying to keep it. (That last sentence was a litle loaded with my own sentiment as the movie does a good job of trying to hide the political influence and only show the results on the people.)  Later as my husband and I were discussing the movie on our way home, he told me how it is most likely that the land was stolen in a coup by the very government that postulated that they were trying to stop the paramilitary.  That the people left to save their lives and when they returned after the paramiltary was gone, that the land then belonged to big corporations to grow palm trees and such to make ethanol.
It is a good movie to make you think and feel so much, I congratulate them for the wonderfulness of their movie but most importantly for not turning away from the tragedy, but instead for confronting it-for telling it's story, maybe if more people see the movie and learn of the conflicts that are still ongoing, then eventually we can stand up together as brothers to end the violence.
With that I will leave you with a photo I took during a peace rally in Bogota to end the occupation of the guerrilla group, Las Farc. It doesn't look like that many people, but this is just one section of a line that reached for many blocks accross the city-millions of people turned out to march on that day.

Day 206. Edited some more photos from trip into nature

Day 205. 2nd top piece for Quilting for Charity

Joined fabrics using Miter Seams into strips

Made a lot of strips

Placed them into a design and sewed them together

Finished piece, 30" x 39"

I had cut some stips the other day but they weren't long enough, so I had the idea to coordinate the varying fabrics into mitered-seamed strips.  All the piecing today took me roughly 3 hours to complete with an hour of cutting the other day.  Not bad, 4 hours for a top piece-baby/kid blanket sized.  Now we have 2 blankets 1/2 finished for charity!

Day 204. Eel Space Gallery opening

"Eye see with" Parts 1 & 2

I am a part of a group show at Eel Space Gallery,

Remember, Hallow, Places, Animals

Here are my works which are in the show.

Day 203. 1st top piece for Quilting for Charity

I cut and sewed these 8" sq blocks all in about 3 hours. It's 30" x 36".  Still needs some finishing, but got a lot acomplished for 3 hrs!