9 posts tagged “inspiration”

It's been a while since I showed any new flowers here, so here goes... The Echinaceas are in full bloom now, along with a few other pretties.

Out my kitchen window, I noticed this flower opening... I have not had white Echinaceas here for a few years, and was surprised to find this seedling blooming in white with a touch of yellow at the tips of the petals. I am so happy... My yellow one died a few years ago, and so did my white ones. I love seeing what new colors pop up from so many varieties crossing with each other.
A closer shot of this flower... OK, Here is an even closer shot- see the tips of the petals? I think  it may be a seedling from the apricot colored ones called "Harvest Moon".
At first glance these Echinaceas look like regular purple ones.... but check out the leaves... They are spotted with lots of white on them. The variety is named "Sparkler" the flowers are a deeper shade than most of the purple ones.

A few more tiny treasures popped up in my gardens this week. I was kept away from the gardens most of the week by a nasty cold my son shared with me, but I did get a few photos while trying to pull some of the fast growing weeds during a couple short trips outdoors.

This was my most favorite find.... I thought this little lavender colored Anemone had died this past winter, but this little flower greeted me, almost hidden by the leaves of the Winter Aconite plant. It just decided to show itself a bit late, and only has one flower this year, but should be back with more flowers next year. I love the delicate leaves on the fragile stems of this 6" tall plant.
This Brunnera is growing near the little Anemone. The variegated leaves are beautiful in the shade during the summer. The tiny blue flowers are a great sky blue color, but really hard to photograph well. They make a dainty cloud above the clump of foliage.

More tiny treasures in the gardens. These are wild violets in one of my rock gardens. They may find themselves in one of my "On the Rocks" series of art quilts. The feathery foliage in the background is from Queen Ann's Lace plants that are probably not going to be allowed to stay there. They will be great to use for sunprints, so I will probably press them to use later.
  Here is Roxy enjoying the sunshine while I was discovering my little garden treasures. 

Here is a glimpse of a walk I took through my gardens....

The walk began at the edge of my shade garden... Here is a clump of "pink" Daffodils... I didn't really pay much attention to these in past years, and thought they were regular yellow centered ones. They really aren't pink, but have pink tones in the cups- more of a peachy color, with yellow frills. Just goes to show that you can look at something and not really "see" it. These are really pretty in person, but not as pink as catalogs selling them show in their photos.
These little treasures were a real great surprise!! I discovered late last summer that Vinca minor had probably washed from the spot I planted them in to an old tumbled down stone wall. I remembered them, but was pleasantly surprised by the number of plants with flowers poking out of the rocks and woods debris. I got lots of great photos that may very well end up in a few "On  the Rocks" quilts this year. I am finding lots of little treasures growing among the many rocks around here.
Here is a plant that I had always considered a weed! This Lysmachia, or Creeping Jenny in chartreuse are taking over the garden on top of another rock wall. These shoots are creeping out from between the rocks- I am using these very hardy, vigorous plants as a ground cover to plant other flowers through. They are growing well in the very harsh, dry conditions of the wall garden. Sometimes there are places where "weeds" are welcome and do what is needed.
A bit more chartreuse foliage, this clump of "sweet Kate" Tradescantia make a bright spot of color in the front garden nearly hidden by Snow Glory foliage. The flowers on this plant will be a deep, rich purple- a great contrast to the foliage.
  More plants growing amongst rocks.... Sempervivum, Hens and Chicks... these are reddish in color, and doing very well in the harsh conditions in my rock garden that doesn't have many survivors in it. This garden is very hostile due to it being very wet in late winter and early spring, then super dry in summer.

As I try to do something productive in my studio, I again am not accomplishing anything. It has been a long time since I really felt creative. The scrap piecing got my sewing machine humming for a while, and I got a quilt and a bunch of bags finished, but nothing I consider very artistic. Even receiving the book with my quilt on the cover didn't seem to chase away the blaahhhs. Blogging hasn't come easily, either, so I decided tonight to put a few thoughts here and pull up some older pieces that I really love and a few others in the hopes that something may spark an idea.... here goes!!

"Summer Rainbow" left me over a year ago to travel to 3 IQA quilt shows, and at the end of it's travels, went to a new owner! This is  the first piece I made using my fused crazy patch and a large sunprinted panel. Doing larger groupings for sunprints are tricky in that I have to work fast, so that the paint doesn't begin to dry before I finish placing all the items.
This a half yard sized panel (appx.22"x36")that I printed last summer. I wasn't planning ahead with this one, and had to keep spraying it with water while placing the leaves and flowers. This is the largest I have attempted, and have a few that have turned out OK. This one is in much more vibrant shades of my favorite colors than my earlier piece. 

Here are some photos of the ice storm we had here last week. We were lucky that it wasn't any heavier. These photos were taken 2 days after the ice- it stayed longer than usual-- So beautiful!!

I'm getting a bit  better with this blogging, just over a week since last post. Since then, I'm a year older, attended a weekend long family reunion, spent time with grandkids plus one, and attended my quilt guild's annual picnic at Round Top Park- a park between home and the NYS border.

This was the first year I have attended that I was able to get photos of the spectacular views of the surrounding mountains. Each of the past years, the weather didn't cooperate for photos- rain, thick haze, etc. Last year, I couldn't see beyond the trees in the foreground- the valley was completely blanketed in white. The view from here shows the Susquehanna river on the right. This photo was taken about 4PM when I arrived at the park. The Susquehanna river is to the right, and you can see parts of Sayre and Athens,  PA, in the distance you can see New York State.
Here is a similar shot taken just before I left the park at about 7PM. The lighting is different and the mountains in the distance are much hazier looking.
  This photo shows a wider view, the high school that my boys attended is just left of the lower center. I love the way the sky looked when I took these last photos. I have been playing around with my chalk pastels more since my workshop with Elizabeth Busch at QBL. I am working on a series of pieces depicting the mountain views from my deck and fields at home, and where ever I am travelling. I have been working with the pastels on bleached 7 oz duck, then I will add paints over the pastels. A bit backwards from what  we did in class with pastel over wet paint. I need to work on getting the perspective right to show the great distances I can see to show. I will post photos of what I'm doing with that in a later post.

Here are some photos of a few UFO's I dug out. I am hosting a "Playing With Color"  challenge through Sept. on a Yahoo challenge group. Members are being challenged to pull out all those art supplies laying around the house such as paints, crayons, colored pencils, pastels and more, to see what they can do to change the look of fabrics. I am challenging myself to take some old UFO pieces and change or add to them by painting, stamping, drawing, or more to see if they can become something better.

Here are a few pieces of fabric I pulled out to play with one day. I am also playing with printed fabrics instead of just  the white I usually paint. I had just gotten my supplies outside to work when my son arrived with our grandson and his cousin (4&5 years old). As soon as they saw I was going to play with paint and fabric, they wanted to join in, so I set them up with their own pieces and some paints and stamps. They had a great time... I got nothing of my own done. By the time I got the kids started, the wind started blowing and I got tired of chasing things, so packed it all back in the house. I had taped things down for the kids, so they kept on playing while I put things away.

   Here are a couple of old small hangings I used to make and sell. The center designs were free motion quilted with colored threads, and "framed" with other fabrics. These never quite got finished- the top edges didn't get closed after pillow case turning them. My plan for these is to add color to the flowers and butterflies with paint or pastels, and maybe even add to the borders with some stamping or something else. Not sure what will happen.

 
The photo on the left is a smiling 10 wk old, grandbaby Jenna. It's hard to catch the many faces a baby makes with a slow digital camera, but I got a few great ones.

The right photo is from my sister's gardens where we had our family reunion. I keep taking as many photos of flowers with the sky as I can find. We were lucky and got great weather for the reunion- cool for August, but not too cool, and the rain held off for night.

Here is another work in progress that I pulled out again. It has a photo of the old house along our road that is nearly falling down, and surrounded by scrubby bushes and weeds. I used the photo printed onto cotton to start with for this piece. I used the photo as the inspiration for "My Dream House", but turned the house into an English cottage for that one. The link takes you to the post about the process for the piece.

In this piece, I wanted to show what the house would look like surrounded by beautiful blooming gardens instead of weeds. I've often thought of this when passing by, so this is what I have so far. I'm still working on the large tree trunk to make it fit in better, and am adding some embroidered flowers to the bushes at the end of the house.

To see the list of books I have for sale, scroll down, or click here.
Wow, what a morning! The rain began late yesterday, and kept on coming through the night. We woke up to an icy wonderland. Everything was covered in dripping ice! I began my day with my camera and an umbrella outdoors.

This past weekend was my first big art show of the season, in downtown Syracuse, NY. I was set up right beside a beautiful cathedral. Wow! talk about inspiration!! Stone wall quilts are now swimming around in my brain again. The buildings are gourgeous. I took a bunch of photos of buildings just around Columbus Circle.