Goldfinch at My Feeder

It was another lovely spring day in New Jersey - sunny and dry, as it has been for months now. We're way behind in our rain totals, but we're all certainly enjoying the fine weather.

Today the Goldfinch were plentiful at the feeder - at one point, I counted 8 males vying for spots on the feeder! One would occassionally dive-bomb a perch to unseat a competitor.


It was great fun to watch them - and a tad tricky to photograph them. They are rather shy, unlike Chickadees, which allow me to be out on the deck and within a few feet of them before they decide to depart...and come back again. So these pictures are all taken from inside looking out the back door. Enjoy!

Here's a photo taken in March of a Goldfinch molting. During the winter months, the males and females look nearly identical - duller in color so as to be less conspicuous during the winter months.

And here's a photo taken today of a female - she much duller than her partner, making it easier for her to go to and from the nest unseen by preditors.

Trading Art Cards

While cruising the web, particularly the fiber art web-blogs, I happened upon Beate's site in our Artful Quilters Web Ring. Beate has been doing some wonderful FACs - some of which I was wishing I could buy. Then yesterday Beate had this for her Title: A Decision: exchange or sell... I immediately e-mailed her to tell her I would love to trade art cards with her and that I am interested in the one entitled "Wedding." This card is all silver and white done with a Sonji Hunt influence, which I love! I've bought (Red Cross donations) a few larger art cards from Sonji, whose trademarks are her bundles and her use of color. Beate's card incorporates bundles WITHOUT the much color - and I found it enchanting.

Anyway, I'm trading "Lava Flow" for "Wedding" and I'm one happy little camper today!

LAVA FLOW (C)2005 Pat Dolan - now on its way to Beate in Germany!

I'm Back - Finally!

I’ve been off-line for quite a while now due to minor surgery, with it’s subsequent slow recovery, and then to two separate road trips – one to the GREENVILLE ARMS 1889 INN in Greenville, NY for a week-long artists’ workshop under the guidance of Laura Cater-Woods, the other to south-central Vermont to our grandson’s Confirmation. I’m back home again and ready to resume my art, not to mention weeding, housekeeping, laundry, etc….

The Greenville Arms 1889 Inn – home of the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops; check out their blog for photos of our workshop and on-going events - including the four star restaurant meals! Above is a view of the back of the studio and residence building in the late afternoon on a day late in April… The studio is a large, very well lit (with both interior lighting and lots of natural light from two walls of windows), well designed space with plenty of electricity for those of us in the fiber arts.

Magnolias opening in Greenville, NY

A glorious sunburst of Forsythia

Muse #1 – which was later cut into pieces and blended together with Muse #2 to create the image seen in the composite photo below in the top right corner.

Lava Flow (c)2006 Pat Dolan

Here I am on the final day with the fruits of the week-long workshop. Top left: Lava Flow; top right: Musings; bottom left: Global Warming; bottom right: Untitled as of today (all (c)2006 Pat Dolan).

The workshop, entitled “Tempting the Muse: Beyond the Surface” was an amazing experience. Laura is an A#1 Facilitator – one who meets you where you are and invites you to the next level of your work. She is also an art business coach, having trained with Eric Maisel of coaching fame. Thus the participants benefited from Laura’s artists know-how, including all sorts of helpful hints/clues/tips/experiments, and her ability to distill information in personalized packets and point one towards new potentialities in both work and business plans (or lack thereof, as in my case). Laura has challenged me to make a 5-year plan, setting the goals for where I’d like to be with my art/business in 2011 and then breaking that down into yearly goals, and finally into the goals for THIS year, subdivided into quarters or months, and finally, into: What Can I Do TODAY To Further My Long Term Goals?

There were eleven participants ranging in age from thirty-something to 75; and ranging in levels of experience from limited experience with fabric and no sewing machine to college art degrees and years of experience. The artistic styles of each were distinct, and Laura facilitated in such a way as to bring each participant beyond her comfort zone, through the subsequent panic; and into a new level of artistic expression. Each artists work was uniquely her own – and after a week together, we all suspected that we’d recognize one another’s work anytime anywhere!

As mentioned above, if you're interested in more on this workshop, check out their blog for lots of photos of our workshop (blog dates: April 23-29).

One thing for sure, I had more FUN and LAUGHTER in that one week than I have had in the past two years put together. Dinners were not only delicious and totally new to most of us, they were also full of intense dialogs, punctuated by outrageously funny humor and total respect for all opinions. Kim and Mark LaPolla, owners, have already planned a return visit for Laura and this group, set for December of 2007. You can bet that I'll be there if at all possible!

And now for a few photos from our Vermont trip:

Farm near Townshend, VT


Above: Keene, NH town center
Below: the Sawmill Parkway, NY

Ferns + Feathers Revisited

Several months ago I put this quilted piece up on my blog asking for suggestions as to how to proceed. It looked (and still does) like wallpaper to me and I want to create a dramatic focal point. I had placed various objects, mostly more/larger feathers and ferns, on the top but nothing satisfied me or anyone else, for that matter.

Recently I've brought the piece back out of hiding and have simply allowed it to be at the outer edges of my environment as I am healing from surgery. I love the colors and the quilting in the piece, but it needs a strong focal point, a sense of design and composition... With those things in mind, I decided something colorful like parrots, parakeets, etc. might serve my purposes. After exploring the web for awhile, I came across several photos of Australian Rainbow Lorikeets and decided they would potentially be a very dramatic addition to this work.

Here are some of my preliminary sketches:




I like the flying Lorikeet best - and I like the possiblity of the bird flying off the top of the quilt. I can't imagine how the composition will balance out, at the moment, but at least I'm having fun considering options.

Returning to Life at Last

Spring is here and I'm wallowing in her warmth even while wishing for more rain to nourish the thirsty earth. The past few weeks have been a time of reflection and appreciation. One quote that is floating through my mind is the following from the little book LET EVENING COME: REFLECTIONS ON AGING by Mary C. Morrison. She quotes another writer, Olga Lamkert as saying: "We do not live life; life lives us." That's an interesting perspective - and I can readily see where events and circumstances in my life have often formed my life rather than me forming the circumstances and events to my choice or will... She goes on to say, "Childhood lives us; maturity lives us, old age lives us." Indeed. Yet we still have free will and the ability to choose the perspective from which we view life.

Morrison concludes the chapter by writing, "Pay attention to what you do so you can find out who you are; and try to say goodbye to the old self that wants to make the world meet its demands. For those who will do this work, a new way of being, a new 'me,' is accessible, and available - one that becomes at home in the world, and more and more the old, lost me of childhood."

"Pay attention to what you do wo you can find out who you are..." For the artist, this is especially relevant, but it is so for all. When I gaze about the studio, presently rather tidy, I see evidence of who am I and who I have been. Now I'm wondering - what is next? what will I begin to create? who am I becoming? Life is an adventure in self-discovery, is it not? Saying goodbye to the old self that tries to control outcomes and experimenting with the self that explores, wanders, dallies over the wild and the mundane - that seems to me to be an adventure worth pursuing.

Victorian Rose Window Quilt Completion

Victorian Rose Window (c) 2006 Pat Dolan 30"x30"
With shoulder surgery scheduled for tomorrow morning, I've been under somewhat of a deadline to complete the FabriQuilt, Inc. booth quilt ahead of time since I don't know exactly when I'll be able to use my sewing machine again. Therefore, it was vital to complete the quilt by today!
And here are the final steps in its completion:
Step 23: Cording
I decided not to do any traditional quilting on this quilt, but to quilt it by applying a cording of thin, curly, black yarn to delineate the "lead" of the stained glass window. Here is a shot of my sewing machine and yarn set-up. The yarn is in a bowl and threads up and around the back of my Bernina 1030 (which has the best setup for cording!), around to the front and down to the cording foot and needle.

And a close-up of the cording setup.

Step 24: Binding/Edging: Once the cording was done, it was time to determine how to finish off the outside edges. I selected two different weights of yarn and crocheted a long chain which was then stitched to the edges of the quilt for a binding.



Step 25: I always label my quilts and have recently decided to print my labels on the computer, then fuse and sew the labels in place on the back of the quilt.
Close-ups:
Note the photo-transferred images - I went back in yet again and darkened certain areas that didn't seem to blend well enough into the whole. This time I used watercolor paint directly out of the tube applied with a watercolor brush. The effects satisfy me, at last.


Now it's time to mail the quilt off to the Kansas Art Quilters group. From there it will go to the FabriQuilt, Inc. who will then use it in their booth at the Spring Quilt Market in Minneapolis, MN in early May. Alas, it's for shop owners only, so this quilt will never have much of a public viewing. Still, it was a great challenge and I am satisfied with the completed quilt.

Happy St. Patrick's Day and Then Some!

Since Blogger was having so many difficulties, I was unable to post these last Friday. But today Blogger seems to be working fine, at last!


Frank bought me some St. Patty's Day carnations - and I so loved the textural details that appeared on the petals having been tinted green.

And that brought my attention to a dried fern leaf that I've had taped to the inside of my cabinet door since last summer. Similar textural details, as you can see...

Happy Dancing!!!

On Friday, I received a notice from Karey Patterson Bresenhan - Curator, Journal Quilt Project; Director, International Quilt Festival–Houston and Chicago informing me that my February 2006 Journal Quilt has been selected for publication in her upcoming book entitled "Journal Quilt." Since this journal is one that has not yet been exhibited at the Houston Quilt Festival (but will be next November), I am not allowed to post a photo of it. Suffice it to say it's not my normal style and is somewhat unusual. I am thrilled to have one of my little quilts one of the 300 selected from a field of well over one thousand entries. Two hundred and forty some artists works will be featured in the book with a hope-for publication date of November 2006 - in time for the Houston Quilt Festival.

On Thursday, I met with the Art Director of the Monmouth County Library and subsequently signed a contract to have a one-woman fiber-art show there in March of 2007.

Happy dancing indeed!

Rose Window Quilt continued...

Today I experimented with different color schemes for the corners of the quilt.
Step 18: First color scheme - gold...

Step 19: Didn't care much for the gold - too gold, I guess. So I tried pink in the other corner...

Step 20: I liked the pink (egads, what's the world coming to?!), so it was time to cut the pink corner pieces and fuse the whole thing to the batting.

Step 21: After it was fused, I discovered I needed an extra half-inch in the top border and I also realized I needed to tone down some of the white spots in the photos...

Step 22: I applied Derwent watercolor pencil to the top border to blend that extra half inch with the rest (I am limited in my fabric as it was supplied to me by FabriQuilt and what I have on hand is what there is - these are new lines, just coming out). I also used the water color pencils on the photos to darken the white areas where the photo transparency failed to move to the fabric from the transparency film. And yes, I know it would have been easier/smarter to have done that right after the transfer photos were dry... but I didn't. So it was corrected today... prior to beginning the quilting, at least!

Now, of course, it's time to figure out how on earth to quilt this thing... I detest satin stitching, although I suppose that would work very well using black thread over the black fabrics. Boring. Tedious. Nope, not for me. But I do need to tack down all those fused edges somehow or other, won't I? The photos don't really call for quilting, either - quilting might make the figures all jump out of the window, which is something that wouldn't be my choice. So it's time to let it set on the design wall and wait until a solution moves into my consciousness. I'm hoping the ideas will come quickly - I'd like to complete the quilt by Monday, at the latest. I'm scheduled for shoulder surgery on Tuesday... heaven only knows when I'll be able to quilt again, and the quilt is due back in Kansas April 20th.

Meanwhile, here's more crocus!

FabriQuilt Process Continues...

After two more days working on this quilt, here's an update:
Steps 9 + 10: Creating the rose-window template first on paper, then in plastic, then using it on the Wonder Under paper backing...


Step 11: Cutting out the rose-window "leading"

Steps 12 + 13: Planning and trimming the photo-images to fit stained glass slots


Step 14: Fusing the trimmed photo-prints to rose-window-leading (paper backing for Wonder Under is beneath my work so that I can fuse successfully, while leaving Wonder Under unfused where I don't yet need it to be fused.

Step 15: adding yellow triangles

Step 16: adding green leaves

Step 17: present status on design wall

Detail of one quadrant of rose-window

The piece is beginning to come together, although there's quite a bit left to do. Next up, selecting the remaining colors for the rose-window insets. Then, completing the corner motifs

and finally adding an outside black border to encase the window. And, of course, once the top is completed, then comes the quilting!

And since Spring is popping up in my life - the peepers awoke early Saturday morning in the swamp behind the house, a SURE sign of Spring; the robins are back in droves, and my little yellow crocus' are blooming once again - so here's a sample of NJ spring: