Rain, snow -- let's roll

 

OK, this wasn't supposed to happen. I leave home to spend a month in the Arizona sunshine and it SNOWS!

I would've expected this at higher elevations, but I thought we'd be safe from snow in Sedona in March. It's supposed to last for two days.

It's pretty, but not what I expected. The house across the street looks like it's dusted with white for Christmas, not for March:

With hiking out of the picture until the storm blows through, the only thing left to do is head to the quilt store for a jelly roll to make a Jelly Roll 1600 quilt, right?

LET'S ROLL!

First stop: Quilter's Store Sedona, where I find a nice selection of jelly rolls. I picked this one because it has those light, bright colors that I love. The quilt store is really nice, and I'll be back on Monday with a blogger friend from Flagstaff.

Back "home" (with a stop to photograph the stormy skies from atop Airport Mesa), I find directions for the Jelly Roll 1600 quilt from Heirloom Creations: 

http://www.heirloomcreations.net/sewing-tips/the-jelly-roll-1600/

Then the sewing begins as the rain outside changes to snow and the heater roars. I'll keep you posted.

Have a colorful day

The answer is ... Sedona!

Magnificent view from the house we're renting.

Ladybug gets the honor for figuring out from my last post where I am -- spectacular Sedona, Arizona! Two others already knew where I was, but they didn't spill the beans.

I just couldn't make it through another grey, rainy winter in western Washington, so we rented a house for March in Arizona. I justified the expense (although very reasonable) because March 1 is our 30th anniversary.

The iron-rich red rocks and trees seem to reach around and hug the town. It's no wonder that artists and writers have flocked here for years. The sun, intense blue skies, vivid sunsets (I don't know about sunrises because I'm never up then) and rich red rocks just feed the soul.

My goal is to hike every day, take a lot of photographs, and let the colors come out in my art. These have always been my favorite colors, but since moving to western Washington about five years ago they were starting to slip away from me. 

Basically, I needed to get back to the sun like a man lost in the desert needs water. I'm not sure if Sedona is technically a desert ... maybe it's considered high desert. There are plenty of pines, oaks and other shrubs and trees, and it does get snow a few times a year. And tomorrow we're supposed to get thunderstorms. I'll research that for a future post.

This painting of the red rocks and my-kind-of-color sky is in the livingroom of our rental. The house is so wonderful that we still can't believe our luck in finding it just a few months before we came down. The views from every window are spectacular and the walls are full of colorful art.

Speaking of art, the central part of town is dotted with these colorful javelinas on parade.

Have a colorful day

Guess where I am?

Washington

It was three days of highways, mountains and sky last week in my quest for color. See if you can guess from the photos where we ended up, and I'll reveal the answer in my next post and bring you more color. One hint: Vortex Power!

Oregon

Mt. Shasta

California

Guess where?

It was worth the drive.

Have a colorful day

Wordless Wednesday

Have a colorful day!

Playing with the mandala

I think I've done enough embroidery and beading on the mandala, but sometimes it's hard to know when to stop. So now I'm playing around with possible border fabrics.
 

It's amazing how many of my commercial prints have exactly the same colors as my hand-painted fabrics that I used for the mandala. My stash is heavy on orange, turquoise, light greens and purples.

This Kaffe Fassett stripe has lots of possibilities, depending on how it's cut and pieced to give different directions to the stripe. I'm also getting distracted by the leftover pieces from the mandala:

This is the book that inspired it all. I didn't plan to duplicate the colors on the cover -- I just picked some favorites from my stash and they turned out to be the same!

Here are my daughter's latest doodles. We live hours away from each other, and without realizing it we were both doing mandalas at the same time. Bunners gave her stamp of approval when we visited last weekend.

Well, I haven't made a decision yet on the borders, and if I don't give myself a deadline this project could go on for years. So I think I'll tell myself (and all of you) that I'll decide tomorrow on borders and sew them on by the weekend. Then I'll do the quilting and then maybe some final embellishing with beads in the borders. 

Have a colorful day

 

p.s. Hop on over to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Friday to see what other quilt artists have been doing this week: http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/2013/02/literally-off-wall-friday-birth-of.html

Color in Bellingham

Another visit to the kid in Bellingham found us cruising downtown, looking for color. NW Handspun Yarns http://www.nwhandspunyarns.com/ always delivers. Here's the tree outside their shop.

Here's another decorated tree, but this one is by Mother Nature in the Sehome Hill Arboretum on the Western Washington University campus:

Make.Shift Art Space is really colorful outside and inside and was having an exhibit on Iceland.

It has exhibits, music, artists' studios and a member library.

 

The staircase leading to the library looked great going down (above) and coming up (below).

Back at the kid's apartment, we did a photo shoot of her coordinating thrift store favorites, a striped wool sweater and crocheted afghan in those 70s colors.

Then we indulged in the highlight of the trip -- Julia's chocolate-coffee pie that was to-die for even though it was vegan. (Actually, I guess it was less to-die for because it didn't have all those unhealthy animal fats.) Note her thrift store plate.

Have a colorful day

Sort of a Valentine heart

Everyone is posting hearts on facebook and on their blogs today, so I thought I'd start another of my yoga mat quilts using heart cutouts. I dutifully pulled out some red fabric, but I'm not really a red person. So I put it back and got what I really wanted: Purple, orange and green.

I fused Wonder Under onto the back of a piece of my hand-painted purple, then folded it in half and started to draw hearts. But I'm not a heart person, either, so I switched to a plantlike form and circles. When I cut it and unfolded the piece, I did have a heart! The top photo is the leftover purple background, showing a purple heart. This next photo is the intended shape:

I fused that down and then added some circles ...

... and some other pieces:

I may add a few more shapes, then I'll begin outlining and embellishing everything with hand embroidery and beading. I like to use hand-dyed pearl cotton embroidery floss from Artfabrik (click here to see the threads) because the colors are so luscious and because I like Laura Wasilowski, the quilter behind Artfabrik.

This is the leftover pile, which I'll use to start a few more yoga mat quilts:

I came up with the name "yoga mat quilts" a few years ago when I was inspired by the design on my yoga mat to make quilts using symmetrical plantlike, unfolding forms. Then I realized that the hand embroidery and beading were very meditative, continuing the theme. One of these days I want to get around to writing an article about them, but first I have to actually finish one. Here's a post about the technique: http://sherriequilt.blogspot.com/2011/08/yoga-quilt-3-and-wisdom-teeth.html

I've linked this post to Nina-Marie's Off the Wall Fridays http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/, where you can see what other fiber artists have been up to this week.

Have a colorful day

Wordless Wednesday

(Photo shared by River's Wish Animal Sanctuary)

Have a colorful day