Thursday, February 02, 2006

Happy New Year!


I've been working through the exercises in Color and Composition for the Creative Quilter(KatiePM and Brett Barker). The latest exercise, cool colors landscape on page 44, had me really frustrated with my fabric stash. I seem to have plenty of dark and mid values but hardly any light values (especially true of the hand dyes.) I tend to get impatient with the paint-by-numbers approach so somewhere in the process of putting the piece together I just started free hand cutting shapes and slapping them in place. As a quick study I am happy with it and as an added bonus it is from a picture I took in Black Butte one summer. Summer... ah, maybe someday it will stop raining. The rain here has been ENDLESS. I wonder if a good groundhog stew would change that. Sorry if I've offended anyone, I'd never really do that to a groundhog... Did I mention the weather? We are all a little grumpy.

Trying to lift my spirits a little, I also worked on two postcards in celebration of the Chinese New Year: 2006 the year of the Fire Dog.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Trust me....the BEST reason for not cooking a groundhog (aka- woodchuck) is that they are very fatty and are totally gross. My grandfather's hired hand cooked one up and offered some to my dad when he was about 9 or 10. My dad said he took one look at the fat scum floating on the top of the liquid in the pot was enough to convince him he preferred his mother's cooking.

teri

jenclair said...

I really love all three of these pieces. The fabric in the trees makes me look twice at everything, and the dogs, well, you've managed to pay homage to dogs, the Chinese New Year, and Valentine's Day. Well done!

Deb Geyer said...

Looks like a good exercise. I'll bet you learned a lot from it.

Sandra said...

I love your red dogs. They really turned out nicely. The postcard size is so great for just feeling a sense of accomplishment in a very short time. A nice lift during a 'grumpy' season.