The Art of Fine Fashion

Today's one of those days when I feel really scattered.  I'm having trouble focusing, I have so much going on lately--some setbacks but mostly good. I'll skip the details to go right to the best news.

I have two things to make me especially happy these days.  First my son finished his active military duty as of yesterday.  He spent four years in the Air Force and much to my relief, the only overseas duty he did was a three week stint participating in war games in Germany.  He will continue to work for the Air Force in a civilian capacity, but he is coming home for a visit first.  I'll be so glad to see him.

Besides that personal happiness, I'm thrilled to share that I've had jackets accepted into another fashion show.  A week from tomorrow I'll have three jackets in The Art of Fine Fashion show that is part of A Quilters' Gathering in Nashua, New Hampshire.  The show will be at 7:30 p.m. Saturday night November 6 at the Radisson Hotel at 11 Tara Blvd., just off Rt. 3 in Nashua.  I'll be there and I'd love to see you there.  I won't spoil the surprise by putting in pictures of the jackets now.  You'll have to wait till it's over.  Stay tuned.

To Facebook or Not to Facebook???

That's the question I've been stewing about for what seems forever.  Earlier this month I finally decided and made the plunge.  I signed up and Sonja and I set up a page for Friends Fabric Art.  We don't have much up on our Friends page yet, but our goal is to highlight new products there, including pictures of how we've used the various products available in our web store.  We hope that it will also be a place to gather comments from our customers on how they've used things and what they've particularly liked (or disliked).  Yesterday I posted pictures of my latest series of small art quilts.

I have always enjoyed handwork and since I started quilting more than 20 years ago I have almost always had some type of handwork project going.  Since I started really concentrating on jackets, I'd gotten away from my small projects.  Over the summer I realized I really missed that and needed to get back into it.  To jump start my enthusiasm I decided to work with a Stef Francis Creative Embroidery kit that had been hanging around here for years.  However I found I just couldn't get my head into the specific project suggested in the kit.  The colors and materials in the kit kept calling my name, so I just decided to ignore the "project" totally and just play with the fabric, threads and beads in the kit.

Here's what I did.  The hand-dyed silk noil, the threads, and the beads came in the kit.  The ribbon was something that I bought from another vendor at a quilt show a while back.  The photos on fabric also had been hanging around here for a while.  The choices were all inspired by the color scheme in the kit.

The color scheme in the kit is so unusual for me, but I liked it so well that I decided to challenge myself to continue working with it for a while.  I want to see if I can do a dozen of these small works (9" x 12") all in that blue & orange theme.  I'm going to see what all unusual things I can incorporate in to them.

This was number one.  I'm currently working on number five.  You can see the entire series in the photo gallery on our Friends Fabric Art Facebook page.

Kerouac Concert Kicks off a Great Weekend

Despite the rainy weather, Friday night's Kerouac festival concert/poetry reading at the Old Court in Lowell made for a great start to our weekend.  We went early to hang our kimono and were very pleased at how it looked against the black wall.  With the spotlights, it stood out well.  

Antje (Duvekot, shown here) and Dave Robinson, Urban Village Arts event organizer, were very complimentary about it and pleased to have it there.  They had seen pictures of it prior to the concert, but had not seen "the real deal."  It was great to be able to share it with them and to have a small part in the festival.

Their response was a good omen for our weekend.  Saturday was the regular "First Saturday" Open Studios here at Western Avenue Studios.  We had many visitors during the afternoon and Sonja sold one of her newest works and had inquiries about another larger work.  I had someone schedule an appointment for later today to discuss creating a custom jacket for her.  By the end of the day we were residing on cloud 9 again.  Not a bad place to be.