After a day of gray sky and rain, I was stunned to look up from my work area and catch this moment of the sun setting over the rainforest of the Olympic Mountains. I grabbed the camera and went out on the deck to record the moment just minutes before it was again covered with gray layers.
Amy and I send a lot of stuff back and forth through the mail. On its way south is a box with bits and pieces of projects we are working on. One baggie in that big box has these two jelly rolls. If you visit fabric stores, you are familiar with jelly rolls. These are my jelly rolls. The mostly black and white one is a collection of 2" strips I cut from fabrics we are working with, and the orange one is a collection of 30 pieced strips I made which will be joined with Amy's strips to become a beautiful quilted piece.
Amy posted a photo of her space yesterday, and this is mine on the same day. We are working with colors we seemed to be drawn to, and this, my scrap bin, is bulging with bits and pieces from some of our current work which will become future projects.
Yet another bin of project scraps and pieces which KittyBoy thought was his bed. He jumped in and scared both of us when he and the bin went tumbling to the floor.
And a few minutes later, here he was, nestled in his little bed, sleeping on layers of soft Minkee which cover a heating pad. This is where he is most of the time unless he is walking on the keyboard of my computer or rubbing against the corners of my sewing machine, of sitting on my lap while I'm trying to use those machines...KittyBoy.
Opal tells me this photo could be a shot from her own space. We're working in the same colors right now... familiar and comfortable and bright colors for winter days when rain and clouds dominate both here in the Bay and in the Pacific Northwest.
The colors may be the same, but I know our spaces differ in many ways. I see this photo... and I know it looks chaotic. But when I look at it, I see the order of it. I see the pile of things in the back next to the machine that are either ready to sew or have just been sewn and are ready to iron. I see the pile of strips on top of the pen holder, strips I've put aside for a particular project.
I see a small version of A's Triangles being worked on for an art site. I see the pile of pink and orange strips being used in several projects we have going on collaboratively right now.
I see the proof that there is creative work going on and getting done... even on busy days.
A few days ago I visited my friend Judy in her studio. Judy is a whirlwind and swirl of creative activity and movement. Her barn studio is packed, crammed, and layered with quilts, fabric, books, and threads. It is a feast for the eyes. Just to stand there and take in the symphony of colors and line and textures makes my happy. Judy has a longarm quilting machine which takes up one end of her studio. I find it fascinating to see what she is quilting on her machine. On this day she was finishing one of her own quilts, a lone star design with an explosion of bright colors. Behind her longarm are two walls of shelves with hundreds of cones of threads. There are at least fifty oranges to choose from, and maybe twice as many blues. On one end of her machine is a large silver pin holder which is atop a stand....I always look. The pins tell a story about the quilts she has worked on. I see purple and yellow headed pins today. I look at the bin of trimmings, hoping to find bits and pieces that could maybe find their way into my fiber art.
Finally! I bought the boxed bulb in mid November. It was slow to poke through the soil, and then grew by millimeters...slowly..and all at once, it shot straight up. Within two weeks the buds formed..and today, the first bud opened. My Christmas Amaryllis is a late bloomer, but oh so pretty in these bleak days of January.
Isn't this amazing? A Christmas gift that warms just to look and the perfect wrap for cold winter days. The pattern on the back is an intricate box within a box, with frames of different stitches out to the edges. The colors are mine...a range of oranges and greens, deep and rich.
Amy and Opal are two artists living in different states on the west coast who have teamed up to create fiber art together. Their journey and process is captured here.
