I have a few things to catch you up on.

First …….. they finally moved that FEMA trailer that overlooked my back yard and into half my windows in the kitchen and den.











Now the Crazy Lady can't stand out on her back deck thing and wave at the guests in my backyard.

 Or spy on Frank and I enjoying a glass of wine or water on the back patio.  Or watch us and laugh her fool head off like some, well, Crazy Lady.

I have my YARD and my PRIVACY back!  Yay!



 This is what my immediate back yard looks like now!  We are so happy that the neighbors came over with champagne and wine and pizza and we all sat around and partied till dawn!  Well, it was more like 8 pm when they all went home, but you know.

One of my older neighbors used to have about 4 Jack Russell Terriers. Now all her babies are gone and she waits for us to pass by every morning on our walks with the Basset Boyz.  They love to see her.

She brings them dog bones sometimes.

And she brought me this adorable kitchen towel the other day.

One of my Fiber Art ladies let me use her metal door mat to do some rusting.  I can't get that darned mat to rust on to a piece of cloth to save my life.  I am thinking there is that red oxide paint and it just looks like rust.

Tomorrow I will try some other fabrics and see if I can get it to rust something more than just a few spots.











I worked on Frank and the Lighthouse and fused all the pieces down, but have not moved further with it.



 Oh, and I did put the borders on my Concordia quilt center.  I will quilt it with straight lines.  Yep, straight lines.

For Christmas

Frank got me a Gallery Hanging System for the two walls in the front room

.  I want to be able to change out my Fiber Art pieces or my Quilts without making holes in the wall all the time.  It went up easily enough.




There is, however, a learning curve as to how to hang things.  I have to spend some minutes figuring out how to situate the back of the quilt or Fiber piece so it will hang on the hooks.

Anyone have any experience with hanging like this?










And last but not least, I had some solar dyes just hanging around from the last time I went to the Art Store on Government Street with my Fiber Art peeps.  So I tore up 4 pieces of what I thought might be PFD fabric and went to town.  The reason I don't know what is PFD any more is because when the flood happened, the people who came in and took my fabrics off to be washed and stored didn't know what was what and it all came back in one heap.

Hey, I know beggars certainly can't be choosers.  I LOVE my friends for doing that.  And I am more than willing to guess at what might be PFD or not!

All these are fat quarter size.

I want to work on some of them for the North Louisiana Lecture in November.

They are (in order of appearance)
Green  - a branch from someone's Christmas tree by the side of the road
Red - a branch from my Nandina bush and a few leaves from Nancy's nettle weed in her front yard
Swirly Purple - purple drizzled with some green and I swirled the fabric into a rose looking twirl and left it in the sun.
Leaf Purple - a place mat I bought at Bed Bath and Beyond for 99 cents after Christmas.  I wish I had bought 15 of them!

What happened?

I had am uplifting and inspiring post ready to go and when I pushed PUBLISH the computer and internet ate it.

So here is a less than inspiring post with some great pictures.

I was personally inspired to rust some fabric by (click here)Carol of Quilted Fabric Art......I always want to say Quilted Fiber Art because I think of her as a great fiber artist.

So I pulled the first one out of the vinegar package last night.

Here is the second one I did.  You can see the sawblade I used for the overall color and I poked nails through the fabric.  I think the sawblade sort of overwhelmed the whole piece, but I am not complaining AT ALL!!!!!
 

The rust always thins a bit with the stopping process then the wash with Dawn process.  And then it lightens as it dries.  So you can begin to really see the nail marks on the wet piece I have hung out to dry.  

Suzette of Swooze's Quilts And Tall Tales (yes, she is actually one of the few women taller than me!)  inspired, or rather GUILTED me into finishing some of the 20 quilts I had in the To Be Quilted pile before I strated any new ones.  So here is the tribute I am paying to her, a quilting finish.  

This is from oh, 10 years at least.  The doilies are from Frank's mother, she was a prolific doily maker.  And this quilt will go to our Nephew Shannon's daughter.  His father Gene was Frank's brother who died when he was 49.  

She needs a bit of her Great Grandmother's stuff.  This will be exciting for her to have.

Art Haul at Habitat ReStore

NOTE:  I am linking up with  Free motion by the River

 We have two Habitat ReStore locations here in Baton Rouge.  I love them both.  We bought a lot of stuff from there when we were flipping the houses.

They have an Art Auction every spring.  Jennifer issues $25 gift certificates to anyone who wants to participate.  You shop in the stores and create art with some things you buy.

The art then gets donated to the Art Auction and sold to build houses.

So I went shopping.  I had $25 burning  hole in my pocket.

Frank was the one who saw this fabulous frame.  It looks oriental, right?  Perfect for my Japanese Tea Bag piece.  I will decide whether it will go into the auction or I will keep it, later.  I want it, but it is perfect for the auction.

It was $3




Now, this is what I wanted to do last year, but was involved with the flood aftermath.  This year the perfect chair presented itself.  For $5 no less!

No, this is not hashish.  It is a bag of rusty nails!

Only I would want rusty nails, right?  Buck fifty for the three pounds of nails.  Got big plans for these guys.

 This is a copper thing.  No idea what they used them for, but I can see the copper becoming a mordant with rusty stuff and creating great circle stains on fabric.  Yes!

Now I have so many ideas!





And I found a Reindeer bib for Sawyer, or someone who dribbles.

I also got 3 packages of paint brushes, two nice paintbrushes and a pack of foam brushes.  Can you guess what the total for all this was?

I got 15% off for being over 55 and the whole bill was $16.58!

I could have gotten the chandelier I was lusting after!

Here is the rusting I did yesterday.  I used some smaller pieces and actually rusted it twice because the first one was not heavily marked.  This is not great but it is better.

I did see that I can do a leaf printing in the center and maybe double the impact for both rusting and leaf printing!

I am excited to get started on some ideas for the  Art Auction pieces.  I wonder how much they raise each year.  Let me see if I can find out.