Texture Tuesday

Another blog post so soon! Can it be that I am procrastinating about the quilt I should be working on with a deadline of April 4th? Yep, that's me. I planned to spend all day at my sewing machine and here I am playing with photoshop. 

The thing is, after posting on my blog yesterday for the first time in weeks, I decided to do a little blog visiting and found 'Texture Tuesday' challenge over at Kim Klassen's website. I took a photoshop workshop with Kim and just love her altered photos. 

I took this photo this morning, even before I saw Kim's Tuesday's Texture challenge and decided that I just had to play with photoshop before heading to my sewing machine.
The photo was layered with her 'warm sun' texture and I used the overlay blending mode at about 50%.
I also added a photo filter and used a violet color. I also used a mask to bring back some of the clarity and color of the hyacinths after adding the texture.
I just love spring flowers! I bought these last week before they opened and now my entire house smells perfumey. Sorry to say that my flowering plants outside are not quite ready. They are just waking up after the long months of being buried under snow. Hopefully daffodils, tulips, crocus and hyacinths will be blooming here by Easter. Until then, I'll have to settle for these store-bought ones.

The reason my camera was out so soon this morning was due to Mrs. Mallard.

She greeted me almost as soon as I got up this morning. She flew up onto my deck railing. I quickly shoved the dog into the garage so he wouldn't see her and start barking and then grabbed my camera with the zoom lens. She stayed for quite a while letting me take her picture. At one point she stared straight at me.
It is mating season here for the ducks & geese. She is no doubt looking for a nice spot to make a nest. The male ducks and geese have been having fighting matches on a pretty regular basis. I really wish I had been able to get a picture of the big brawl last week. Two male Canadian geese were really tearing each other up. Beak to beak combat! And extremely loud with their honking. Wasn't quick enough with my camera though. Oh well, I'm sure there will be more fights before the mating season is over.

Ok, I REALLY have to get to the sewing machine!
I'll let you know how it goes. And if there's anyone out there looking for something to play around with while avoiding the work they need to do...go check out Kim's website and join the fun!
Live your life creatively~
cathy
p.s. just click on the pictures to enlarge them. the flowers look much better enlarged

"What I dream of, is an art of balance." Henri Matisse

Here I go again-- pondering where the time has gone and  completely amazed that it's been over 6 weeks since my last post.  I too dream of an 'art of balance'.  I can't seem to juggle all the little things in life like I used to. I used to be able to do 20 things at once and actually know what the hell I was doing.
Now...I have to really focus on what I'm doing and refuse to fill my schedule up with too many things.  In doing so, I neglect things that need to be done.  My dream is to BALANCE all aspects of my life. Allow myself the time to attend to all the things I need to do as well as all the things I WANT to do.
Ahhhh, it's nice to dream.....

Back to reality. The last post I was working on a project for a possible exhibition and got those items completed just in the nick of time.
I can show small bits of the art quilts but don't want to show the entire piece as yet.
For one of the pieces I decided I wanted to drive around to cemeterys and take photos of angels. Unfortunately the cemetery I chose only had 3 but the photos turned out pretty good. I played around in photoshop to get them just right then printed on fabric to use in the quilt.

Here's the photo of the unaltered cemetery angel.

Below is a section of the quilt with the altered angel printed on fabric.

The next photo is a close-up of another quilt I made of an angel. But with this one, I sketched the face in my sketchbook, scanned it, printed it on fabric then painted it with acrylic paint mixed with textile medium. I also used some pastel pencils in areas.

Her hair is dyed cheesecloth ripped and distorted then laid down in pieces and heavily stitched.
Eventually, I can show you both pieces in their entirety.

Now, I'm working on another piece with a due date of next Monday. Not quite finished but I'm getting there. LOTS of stitching to do. I'll probably be finishing up last minute again.

Here's a small section of the quilt. If you look closely, you'll see the pins still holding the pieces in place in this photo. All the pieces are in the process of being fused down, then the stitching will commence.

This piece will be entered for possible exhibition at Quilts Inc in Houston.  The theme is "Good for You".  So this piece has a meditation theme-since meditation is good for you!

Even though I was whining above about not being able to do a bazillion things at once anymore, I didn't do ANYTHING at all last week as my daughter was home for spring break. We did some shopping and lounging around watching old episodes of Grey's Anatomy but not much else. It was good for both of us to take a break.
Now it's back to work. Hopefully I will finish this in a somewhat timely manner. Meaning, I hope I can finish it by Saturday so I can spend Sunday photographing it and getting the photos ready to submit via email by Monday's deadline!
So, it's back to the sewing machine for me.
Live our life creatively~
cathy
p.s. the fabrics used in all 3 quilts were hand dyed silks, vat dyed and there were some discharged fabrics in the first angel quilt