LUNCH AT SONRISA

We had a great morning on a Seattle Audubon guided walk around Montlake Fill near the University of Washington.  Afterwards, we had lunch at a University Village restaurant, Sonrisa Mod Mex.  Good food.

A START ON A CELTIC SNAKE

It's time I got started on my Year of the Snake Print for BarenForum's Chinese New Year's Exchange.

First, come up with a drawing and transfer it to some wood blocks.  I'm going with two.  I haven't even figured out how many colors, but I'm only doing two blocks.

Peeling the paper off, and hopefully leaving the drawing.

Mixing a very transparent yellow using Akua inks.

Rolling  the first color directly onto the card.

I'm starting with 60 cards.  

I'm hoping Bentley the cat stays off them while they are drying.

A QUILT FOR A GRAND NEPHEW

My sister's son and his wife are expecting.  I got the invitation to a baby shower early last week and of course decided I wanted to make him a quilt (it's a boy).  I went to the fabric store looking for 'Mario' fabric (that is her theme) to no avail.  I picked up this great little collection though.  What the heck, it's not even close, but I love it!  Hope he (they) do too.

The finished quilt, 32.5" by 40.5"

A close-up

Wrapped up and ready for the shower

Welcome

[of course, I have lots of left over fabric.  I was thinking of making a bag.  It would make a great bag.  But, I'll have to put it on my list, and it's definitely not at the top at this point.]

SKETCHBOOK PROJECT 2013

I joined the Sketchbook Project 2013 since I had such a good time with the last one.

Of course, the due date is tomorrow.  So, I'm just under the wire.

I got my blank sketchbook quite a while ago, and then promptly forgot about it until December.  Not having sufficient time to do much of anything, I thought doing something I don't normally do, like collage, would be fun. 

Just before I put it into the envelope to mail it, I thought I better scan the pages since I'll probably never see the book again.  Bye!

Good luck to you, book.

TANDOORI KONA RESTAURANT

Darrell had to run up to Vancouver, British Columbia to deliver some furniture.  

After a delay of several hours at the border because of 'duty' issues, we finally made it into the country.  We had wanted to get there early to do a little bird watching.  We did manage to see some Snowy Owls, but we felt rushed the whole time.  He dropped the table off at the airport, from where it will continue it's journey to the new owners.  We went to Lee Valley and spent some money.  Always a fun store to visit.

We had lunch at a great Indian restaurant, Tandoori Kona.

MOONDOG, TOO RESTAURANT

Went to visit Dad at the VA, then we had breakfast for lunch at the Moondog, Too Restaurant in Port Orchard.  They were quick, I didn't have time to paint it.

FINISHED IN TIME

I finished the second of the Alphabet Quilts yesterday and even got them both washed and ready to go.

We are having a get together with his family tomorrow, Saturday, and I will give them away.

For Hailey

For Jeffery

[the end of the story on the problem with the label is after I washed it there were stains on the label - not blood stains - it looks more like one of the fabrics bled through from the front, and I'm thinking it was because of the hydrogen peroxide I used trying to get the blood out...geez.  I haven't noticed any fabric-bleeding anywhere else.]



Happy Winter Solstice.

I'm always happy to see this day go...it means the days will start getting longer and before you know it, spring will be here.

LIFE HAPPENS

Everyone makes it seem so homey having a cat hanging around in the studio.

But they don't mention the problems...

Bentley recently got into a scrap with, I assume, another neighborhood cat and came home with some serious wounds, which entailed an expensive trip to the vet, daily dosings of antibiotics and applications of topical ointments, most of which he didn't mind.  His back toe was the worst, and it doesn't seem to be getting better.

So, I recently came out to the studio to find that Bentley had spent the night on the quilt I had folded and set aside to work on later.  A little cat hair I can deal with, but not blood spots.

It looks like his toe was bleeding while he was encamped on the quilt and he left several little stains, one of them on the light yellow fabric of the label.  Arggh!

Before

I was able to clean up the spots on the cheap background fabric, but, of course, it wouldn't come completely off the label.

After cleaning 

What to do, what to do.  

I could remake the label, take the back partially apart and re-piece the new label into it...that would be at least a half a day's work. The quilt was already pinned.   Man, oh man, oh man.

I set it aside for a few days, talked to my Mom about it (Mom's are great problem solvers and listeners), she suggested Oxyclean, she'd heard it was good at removing blood.  Cat blood?  I'd have to go to the store to get some.

A few more days later, Darrell came by as I was sitting there staring at it, thinking about how much work it would be to replace the label.  He said, "Cover it up."  Duh!  Of course!

And then it hit me...the fabric with the animals I used on the front...I could applique an animal over the spot.

Less than a half hour later, the problem was solved.

When I get it all quilted and completed, I'll wash it, maybe even with Oxyclean.  

You and I will be the only ones that know.

CARDINAL PRINT FOR CHRISTMAS CARDS

It's that time of the year again, time to make a Christmas card.

In the past, it's always a problem trying to get a good print on heavy card stock, for several reasons. So, this year I'm making a print separate from the Christmas card, and then I'll attach it to the card in someway that it will be easy to remove.  That way, if people want to keep just the print, maybe even frame it, they can.

Its going to be a bird print, in honor of seeing my first Cardinal while we were in Kentucky this year.  Beautiful birds, and it should be easy to make a distinctive print.

Drawing is done (that was the hardest part) and transferred to lino-block.

Carving of the drawing is done.

Time to print.

I printed a few of the drawing block, cleaned it up a bit, then transferred it to another lino-block and carved out the 'color' block.

This will be the 'color' block.

Then I got out the inks and stuff.  I'm using Akua Intaglio inks.  I decided on the paper and cut out more than enough, I'm using a nice Japanese paper, Kozo.  I need to make enough prints so that after I winnow out the bad ones I still have enough for my cards.

After I got both blocks cut out and the registration more or less good, I started printing the first run, the color block.

I cheated a little by putting the red and the green on the same block, using a little shield over the green part while rolling on the red.  Then carefully putting on the green - it worked great, one less block to deal with (and all the registration issues that go with that).

A stack of about 66 prints,

End of day one, I've got all the first pass done, yesterday.

Got an early start today, but I had to stop after about 20 prints and go get some pain-reliever before I could continue.  My shoulders and neck are really sore from yesterday, and it was giving me a headache.  But, when the Aleve kicked in, I was feeling great.

I started out using the baren, but it was tearing up the back of the paper and when using a sheet to protect the back I had to press too hard (and my neck did not like that).  So I switched to a wooden spoon.  

This is many as I got done before I had to go get some pain-reliever.

A couple of hours later - I had the 66 prints all done. And I got them done in plenty of time to still be able to take a walk before lunch (in the rain).

Here they are - all done!

TWO QUILTS A-QUILTING

I'm making two Alphabet quilts for grandchildren for Christmas.  I spent a good amount of time with them this week and got them both to the point where I can do the quilting on them.  I'm using fabrics that I already had on hand.  You can read more about the Boy's quilt on my previous post.  I ended up having to purchase more fabric (which is against my rules), some for the back of the boy's (I didn't have any big enough pieces and didn't want to piece together a hodgepodge of so-so fabrics).  I also didn't have anything that would work for the girl's sashing, so ended up at West Seattle Fabrics where I found a light greenish/grey that turned out really nice (2 yards at $10.99/yd). [I'm only mentioning the prices for historical reasons]

Boys top 

Boy's back, I bought this fabric at Pacific Fabrics.  I found it on the flat fold table at the discounted price of $6.99/yd.  I bought it all, 2-5/8 yards and used almost all of it.  The rest is pieced from leftovers from the top.  It's a bit busy, but the colors match great!

Boy's label for the back

Pinning the Boy's quilt

Trimming off the excess batting after pinning.

 I have this great stack of "Art Nouveau" fabrics that I had hardly ever used.  I love these fabrics, I probably bought them around 2000,  and thought they would make a great little girl's quilt.  I ended up having to add the dark fabrics so the letters would pop. I think this one turned out great.  I hope she likes it as much as Darrell and I do.

Girl's top

Label for the back of Girl's quilt.

Pinning the Girl's quilt on the floor of my studio.

I had a 1/2 yard of fabric from the collection that I hadn't used on the top, but will work perfectly for the binding.  Here I'm cutting the continuous bias-binding.  See more about how I make binding at:
How to make Binding.

I quilted the sashing and around the edges, trimmed it, made the binding and got it ready to take with me and in my spare time I can work on hand-sewing down the binding to the back, the only part I do by hand.