So long Sadie

We always know this day will come and now it has come for Miss Sadie.

Back in the fall of 2010, the only dog I had was Rocky (click for the link to my post on Rocky) and he was not doing so well and I worried and fussed over him constantly.  One day, the neighbor said she had found what seemed to be a lost dog and suggested I come over and meet the dog.  So I did.  It was Miss Sadie. 

She was soaking wet having been found wandering along this remote gravel road in the pouring down rain.  But she was beautiful!  A gray faced elderly Golden Retriever.  I opened the sliding door of the van and she hopped right in, jumped up on the seat and settled right down.  So it was decided.  She came home to live with us.

It was perfect timing and she was the perfect dog to fill in as our new companion.  She was sweet and well mannered and Rocky and Sadie got along as though they were old friends.  No guarding the food or jealousy over who got petted first.  She helped me to be more relaxed with my old boy Rocky, took my intense focus off of him and just spread it out a bit.  We all perked up.

They don't look so perky here, you will just have to take my word for it!

All except for Charlie, my big black cat.  But he eventually came around.

Sadie loved to roll around on her back in the grass and the snow.  She loved to chase the tennis ball and play with toys and to go swimming. 
 youtube video showing Sadie at the river

Always such a polite lady, she didn't jump up on people but welcomed their attention and petting.  She had a problem with her breathing and panted heavily when she walked around. 
Sadie Breathless
It got worse and worse as she got older until eventually she would have incidents of her breath stopping entirely.  We thought she had died several times but then she would gasp and come back.  The past few months have been rough to watch her dragging around.  She had bad arthritis and was slightly paralyzed in her back legs.  Maybe because she always liked to lay with her legs behind her.

But she seemed to be one of the happiest of dogs, always greeted me with a smile.

She couldn't go for walks any more but would still play with her tennis ball and follow me all around the house and yard.  

She reached the grand old age of 14 back in January this year.  It has been a blessing to be her caretaker these past nearly 4 years.

Sadie was a lovely, loving, sweetheart of a big red dog and she will be much missed.  You brightened up my life and I thank you for that gift.  We won't forget you, Sadie.  Say "Hi" to Rocky for me, and all the rest of my gang.

 ♥♥♥

Within the Stream

The Seasons--The Rain  2002

 

Look at me!  Blogging twice in one month!  I thought I'd show you something I have been working on over the past year.  A friend had requested a wall quilt from me.  Years ago she had commissioned the one above (sorry for the lousy photo, it is the only one I have, taken before I went digital)  She wanted another one, the same size, but depicting more of a wintery feel.

beginnings

 

 She indicated the colors she wanted with little colorful folded papers and knitted swatches shown above, and described the feeling she hoped I could portray.  She wrote: "The idea of light /darkness continues to be important to me.  With this theme, 'Within the Stream of Providence'.  A feeling of a spiral, with a simplicity of form and color with a sense of movement.  Deeper tonalities for winter."

choices

Armed with her thoughts on theme, and her colored papers for reference, I began pulling fabrics.  I used only my own hand dyed stash, they seemed perfect for my needs.

helper


Charlie supervised the process and generously held down my cut fabric wedges.  I freely cut similarly shaped, varying sized fabric pieces and laid them down, over lapping their raw edges, on top of a layer of batting topped with a layer of fusible interfacing.  It almost fit on top of my tall library table, but I needed my ironing board space also.  This was supposed to end up as a 36"X68" size wall quilt, so of course it had to be made larger, leaving room to cut off and even up the edges.

I spent many hours choosing fabrics and arranging them in a flowing colorway.  The top was the darker area and I tried to meld the colors towards lighter, sun splashed area as I reached the lower zones.

I was imagining an ocean flow, caught during the change from stormy to the return of sun splashed calm, with one rolling wave that was my interpretation of her theme of spiraling.

With the fusible interfacing underneath, I was able to fuse my raw edged fabrics down when I was happy with the flow, and move the piece to my design wall so I could get a different view.   There are bits of other works that can be seen around the edges, try to ignore those.  You can see the ribbon I pinned down to show me the area where I wanted to enhance the spiraling wave flow.

Within the Stream  2012

I worked on this off and on for a year, although there was a lot of off time.  This past week I finally made time to make a label for it, and mailed it off to my friend.

close up showing the dense free motion stitching using variegated thread I used to hold all the raw edge fabrics down.

I used a pillowcase style  backing application using an old sheet that I dyed to match with the front colors.  My friend called me soon after she received it and said, "It is fine!"  She loved it.  I had not shared any photos of work in progress with her so she didn't know what to expect.  She pointed out how different my style was in this one compared to the earlier one.  She thought it had a more collaged look to it, almost like it was made of paper.  Which is funny, seeing as I now work mainly with mixed media, collage and paper.

I'm glad to have that piece out of the studio but now am wondering what I shall do next.  This is normally my most productive studio time, in the winter.  I shall ponder the next big thing.  In the meantime, I am working in my journals and making little books.    I hope you enjoyed this glimpse into my work process.  Till next time, 

Be well.

Summer Dreams

Summer Dreams
Dooleybobber #16
11inches by 9 inches

I started this needle felted piece back when our summer temperatures were in the 50's and low 60's and I was dreaming of summers past.  It has finally warmed up into the 70's and feels a bit more like summer.

I've had a lot of company lately and have been slowly hand stitching on this piece while trying to pay attention to these other people.  The company is gone and this piece is mostly finished. Still needs to be mounted or at least backed.

I used some silk flowers, stitched down with beads and threads.  I just love these colors together!

Sari silk fibers, I think I got this piece in the spiral from Corrine over at Dosfishes.

Small brass charm.  Sweet little flowers.

My most recent company just left this morning.  He is Chainsaw man's friend from college who lives in Japan now.  He has been suffering from severe stress, taking care of his family while living with near daily earth shaking and all the other consequences.  His family in Oregon bought him a ticket so he could come here and decompress for a few days.  He chose to spend much of his time out here on the farm, "the sanctuary" he calls it, listening to the silence.  His 8 year old daughter requested me to make her a little purse, she had very specific instructions.  It was to be white with sparkles, a strap handle and a pink bow attached.  I came up with this little thing, made from some home decorating type fabric that I embellished with white and silver fibers, stitched on some sequins, made a ribbon strap and searched around for a pink bow.  I don't normally do pink, but managed to find one I had salvaged off a package of Easter candy.  That is why we keep all these odd bits, you  never know when we might need them.

Here is our friend.  As you can see, he appears pretty relaxed with a glass of our blackberry cordial.  It was good to see this place through his eyes, he was so grateful to be here and to have solid ground under his feet.

 He brought me these Japanese fabrics as a gift.  Charlie is gazing raptly at them while holding down my next dooleybobber.  Yeah, it's under him there somewhere.

I hope you all are enjoying your summer.  Be well.

Gifts and Give Aways

 I want to let you all know that the creativity group I am in is having a give away on our blog, Fox On the Run Meanderings.  Check it out here http://foxontherunarts.blogspot.com/2011/02/our-first-give-away.html  I hope you will enter, one member of the group is giving away a beautiful altered book as our first gift.  Go!  Sign up!  I will wait for you...............................
are you back now?  Good.

Needle felted heart by Maggi 

Maggi at To Dream to Stitch 
recently sent me this most gorgeous package containing a stunningly beautiful needle felted heart in my favorite colors.  She had heard that I got a needle felting machine and sent me all sorts of beautiful usable items.  The heart was supposed to be a Christmas gift but was lost in the mail for a couple of months.  I'm so glad it finally arrived.

I just love the subtle blending of the elements, and these luscious beads she attached.

This is the back side.  Of course the photos don't do it justice, it is so much more lovely in person.  She has some glittery metallic elements that you can just make out if you click on the picture.  What an inspiration for the possibilities of this machine.

Above are the rest of the things she sent to help me on my new journey with the machine.  There is a great book, Surface Tension by Dale Rollerson that explains many techniques for the machine.  Some orangy organdy, Oliver Twist silk roving, some sari silk ribbons, and some gorgeous Maggi dyed wool locks in beautiful autumn colors.  I have already used a bit of some of these elements and will be using more in the future, real soon.  Thank you Maggi!  You are so generous and thoughtful, I love each and every one of these gifts.

 Lorna at Artymess
As if that wasn't enough for one striving artist to absorb, I also received this stunning heart made by Lorna.  We did a heart trade but she is obviously way better at this than I am because I don't think my fabric hearts stand up in comparison to Lorna's or Maggi's.   But this isn't a contest, just a trade between friends.  I think I'm the winner though;-)  Lorna used lots of sari silk strips and all sorts of embellishments including those cute dangling balls around the edge.

Here is the back side, it is a luscious royal purple velvet.

Plus she included all these extra ribbons and lacy bits.  I need to get busy and make some more fiber hearts, I have lots of wonderful new supplies to work with thanks to these blogging friends. 

 Corrine at dosfishes
Somehow Corrine heard how much I admired her embellished bottles (probably because I gushed about them so much every time she posted about them) and surprised me with one of my own!  Wow, people are so talented and generous and Corrine is no exception.  I love my bottle!

  Look at this marvelous texture!  This is so cool!  I love all the colors and fibers and the waxy drips.

I am rather overwhelmed by the generosity and talent of all the bloggers out there that I have been fortunate enough to become acquainted with.  It never ceases to amaze me.  I could sit and gaze at these lovely gifts for hours but instead I need to get my lazy winter behind in gear and get busy in my studio!  Thank you so much my friends, I will treasure these gifts for ever.

Don't forget to keep watching the Fox on the Run blog where we are having give aways all through the month of March.  March Madness!  Sign up!  I'll be giving away one of my Dooleybobbers there later.

I hope you are all surviving the winter and keeping healthy and warm.

P.S. It is Maggi's birthday today, Feb. 21, stop by her blog and say hello.

Be well.

Cigar box and gifts

A couple of weeks ago my friend Mary gave all of us in our creativity group (we call our group Stitch 'n Bitch, or S&B in polite company) a cigar box and issued a challenge to alter it any way we wanted. We all revealed our creations at our weekly meeting on Tuesday.  You can see the other boxes on our group blog  Fox on the Run Arts

 
I'm going to show you my box here.  I forgot to take pictures of my process, dumb me.  First I collaged colored tissue papers and some music sheets on the box, and painted a glaze over all.  I glued some colored cheesecloth around the sides and brushed a little gold paint on it.  I made all the mosaic pieces out of polymer clay by stamping into it with rubber stamps, then painting the pieces after they were baked.  

I glued the mosaic pieces down with regular gel medium. 

I used painted wooden beads for the feet. I am quite happy with the results and want to do more of this type of construction.  I have more boxes and some cans that would be fun to alter.  Maybe they would be good Christmas gifts.  Hummmm, that is an idea.

This week I received in the mail an ATC from my friend Audrey at http://magicmiraclesjoy.blogspot.com/.  Isn't it beautiful?  She painted it and added little seed beads around and stitched faceted bugle beads for the eyes.  They glimmer rather like real dragonfly eyes might.  Sorry the photo doesn't do justice to this piece, too many shadows.  It is lovely, thanks Audrey!  She also gifted me with a cute framed vintage postcard that shows little sunbonnet type children raking in a hay field.  She said it reminded her of me after she read my Making Hay blog post last summer.  It is very nice, sorry I forgot to take a picture, maybe I will show it later. I feel very special that Audrey thought enough of me to gift me spontaneously with these gifts.  Thank you, Audrey!  I'm so glad we have gotten to know each other.  I believe Audrey was my first follower.

I was very fortunate to win a fabulous giveaway from Cameron at http://cameronsthreads-tammy.blogspot.com/

She gifted me with this stunning nuno felted scarf!  It is large enough to be a shawl on me.  I am in awe of it!  It is a very beautiful and generous gift.  She asked for a picture of me wearing it.  I was so shy to honor that request that I put off blogging about this gift.  I finally realized that was why I wasn't blogging so I bit the bullet and snapped this photo in front of my studio.

Below is a better photo of the scarf.  You can see the reverse side a bit there at the top of the photo.  Look at those gorgeous colors!  Looking at this photo now, I think they are a bit too bright, the actual scarf is more subtly colored.

Here is a close up showing how she added bits of lace and machine stitching.  It is a very special scarf, and warm too.  I am using it more as a shawl, really.  Thank you Cameron!  She lives in Oregon too, perhaps we will meet IRL someday.  Be sure and check out her blog, she makes wonderful unique felted garments.

j

After receiving these generous and lovely gifts, and several other wonderful gifts I have previously blogged about, I am feeling a desire to have another giveaway myself.  Stay tuned for that, it will be for one of my beaded hearts.  Until then, be well.