Wasting Precious Quilt Time

Well, not really I guess.  But I am waiting for the guy to call me from the Fencing Company to give me a quote for new fences at CAAWS.  I called 5 companies and only 2 have contacted me during the week.  One has met me, quoted the job and answered my questions.  The other has been difficult to pin down and meet with.  The other three I guess don't need business.

I made tea. We go through a lot of sweet tea here in the South. But I sweeten mine with stevia.


Walking was  bust this morning, someone is burning stuff and the  whole area is choked with the smoke and smell.  I react to it and can't breathe for several days, so I walked briefly with Chloe and went back inside.  I am hoping that the wind picks up and clears the air so I can walk this afternoon.
Or I might have to go to Lowe's or Target or something.

While I was convincing Chloe to go back inside, I noticed my (not the crazy one) neighbor's mailbox is amazing.  I had to take some photos of it this morning.  Why is mine not like that?  Oh, well.  I will just have to steal photos of hers.  

I straightened up my desk in the Living Room.  It is always a mess it seems.  Maybe when I redo the living room this fall i can include an area for the computer.




Yesterday we got on the roof and clipped some low hanging branches from the oak tree.  It was 6 feet tall when we  planted it.  Now it hangs over the back yard like a reigning monarch!

 To give you some perspective, here is the branch in relation to the size of a dog.


In a few weeks I will be working with Mary Hettsmansperger.  Do you see the piece 6 down and in the middle?  Encapsulated Pebbles.  Amazing, right?  I love her jewelry techniques that can be used on fiber art pieces.  I have the post from my last work with here here. 


I also have some ideas for some eco-fiber journals that I think will also go into the exhibition.  More later on that.

Now I am just waiting for the fence guy (who may not call).

more photos from the workshop

(I am linking up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays)


This is Mary Hettsmansperger teaching us to make a wire mesh on a spiral.  She had so many pieces that were incredibly interesting to me for future ideas.  I was so very excited to learn this mesh technique.

This piece is quilted with wire!  Oh, my!  And that circle is copper wire that has been spiraled.

Mica!  New ideas!  It can be sewn through!  Oh yes! Windows potential!

Copper turns blue.........and purple!  

My leaves on a piece of bark from my river birch.  Now I need to preserve my bark so it won't crumble........I need another class!

One of my leaves.  So  I need that hammer too, oh no.....more tools!

Fire blacked leaf, hammered and shaped.

this is a piece of copper, shaped to a cone, and wire mesh made over it.

When I came home with two days worth of work and showed everyone, it seemed like such a small amount of work for two days packed full of exciting things.  But it was an incredible learning experience every second.

We watched techniques then had hands on work time.  It was a prefect mix of both.

Definitely seek this lady out for classes.

8 Racks of Ribs and a Metal Working Class

 (I will link this up to Nina Marie's Off the Wall Friday)

My cousin Jason and his wife and their together 5 kids all flew in from Colorado and will convene at 
Carrie's house tomorrow.  I make the most incredible ribs so they wanted my ribs.  Thinking ahead, I gave the recipe to Carrie with instructions NOT to give it out to anyone.  And she was supposed to make my ribs.  She did a practice run two weeks ago and pronounced them not nearly as good as mine.  Hmmmmmmm.

So the job went back to me.  Of course, what would you expect from a person who gets her mother and mother-in-law to make Thanksgiving dinner!  That's OK, I get to keep the title of the Best Ribs Ever!

So now that 4 racks of the magnificent rib slabs are in the oven and the other 4 are ready to pop in in 2 hours I can tell you about my incredible day in the Metal Working workshop.

I took pictures all day, just for you!

Mary Hettsmansperger has been in all the major and minor magazines, she has been juried into SAQA and so many other places we all admire.

Michael and I sat at a table together and he made fun of my tool kit.  He called it Sissy tools, I call them ZEBRA!

This was the array of metals she gave us to manipulate.  Copper of several weights, brass, the hemp is mine and somehow got into the photo.  Some of the metals were thick and some were so thin they draped like fabric.  You can sew through about half of these babies.

We used butane burners with self starters.  Our Mary who set up the
classes, was paranoid the whole time that someone was going to burn the building down!

Here is a copper foil with flux.  It becomes almost iridescent in places. 

 Here are some copper sheets cut, fluxed, burned and beaten with hammers.  The coil is a steel wire beaten to within an inch of its life with a mallet head that had patterns embedded in it.



This is a copper mesh burned.  Half of it is original.

And here we wove a thin copper foil with basket weaving materials.  We WOVE metal!






We burned batting (outside) and we put embossing powder on metals and burned them.

 This is a metal sheet that has been sewn through using a regular sewing machine like we all have in our sewing room! 

These are some of the things I burned, beat and made.

 

 

Do you remember the leaves I skeletonized?   they are just perfect here!  

Mary H discharges dark fabrics, dyes light fabrics and Rusts amazing things easily.

I want to be her!  I do so want to be her!