Thanks, Gerrie!

My donation to the SAQA auction was purchased by Gerrie Congdon. Thanks very much!



The first set of quilts are still up for auction on the SAQA site through tomorrow. The second set to be auctioned begins on November 18 at 2PM EST. Pieces begin at $750 and each day the price drops $100. The auction of the third set of pieces will begin on November 28, the day after Thanksgiving. It's a great opportunity to not only support SAQA but also to purchase a wonderful Christmas gift (for yourself or for someone else!)

I recently purchased Gloria Hansen's new book "Digital Essentials". I wasn't sure I would find this book useful because I'm pretty comfortable with editing digital photographs already. But I was wrong - there are tons of useful tips and tricks and I've already made some changes in the way I work with digital images. I highly recommend this book - there is something in it for everybody.



I noticed it's been a long time since I've posted but I can assure I have been busy. One of the things I've been working on is a journal of our African adventure, with text and pictures. It's nearly 60 pages long. I found a POD (Print on Demand) website called LuLu that allows you to upload your files and then order a printed copy. I did that and it turned out pretty good, but needs a bit of revision here and there. Once I make those revisions, I will make it available for all to read. It comes as a PDF file and is rather large - 30+ megs so it's not for the dial-up group.

Reclamation Project

Do you have old works that you no longer want on display? Or something more recent that just didn't work very well and is never going to get out of the closet? What do you do with them?

I have two pieces that I made last year that I think are so, well, awful, that I've never displayed them. I've pulled them out occasionally to think about what I could do to redeem them but never came up with anything that would improve them. Then I got this book The Painted Quilt by Laura and Linda Kemshall. It has a wealth of ideas about adding or subtracting color to a piece after the quilting has been done. Ah-ha! I have something already quilted that is a perfect candidate for trying out these processes. It's a lot of work to quilt something up just to try out some new techniques, especially when they might take a little practice to perfect. But it doesn't take much time at all to cut up some old work into squares and stitch around the edges. Now I have more than a dozen one foot squares, plus some smaller pieces, to play with these new techniques.


Some of the processes involve removing color with bleach or thiox but my practice pieces are pale yellow and pink (part of the problem) and removing color isn't going to remove very much. But I will still try it, what have I got to lose?

Fabulous new book

I purchased a copy of Martha Sielman's new book Masters: Art Quilts while at the SAQA conference last month. It just arrived and it's a fabulous book. Each of the 40 artists has 10 pages devoted to her or his works, all in full glorious color. I'm thrilled to be able to say that several of my friends are included in this book, so at least I'm associating with the right people. You can purchase it through Amazon or directly from SAQA. It's cheaper through Amazon, but if you purchase it through SAQA, Martha will autograph the book and 55% of the purchase price is dontated to SAQA.