Fibermania

Running Ahead

I have a lecture tonight and two days of workshops for the weekend and I am running ahead! Me, who is always complaining of running behind. What gives?

I updated my lecture two days ago, adding the new work and eliminating many slides that bored even me. My patterns are packaged along with three varieties of kits...yesterday!

I suppose I owe this to having cleaned up my studio for the party and that made everything easier to find and organize. Still I can't help thinking that I have forgotten something important.

After lunch yesterday I talked Dave into a bicycle ride to our library across town. It was a brilliant day, 85 degrees and I was done preparing, so why not? It was downhill to the main highway and uphill after that. I knew the library would have air conditioning and a water fountain, so that was our oasis. When I got there I found the other Anne Lamott book I needed, Traveling Mercies and checked it out.

When we got home it was only 1 o'clock so I got out some silk to make a Stack. I have a box of fused silks and some of them are really old, from the days when I was playing around with painting with Setacolor.

This detail shows the kind of look you can get with paint vs the look you can get with dye. The upper left hand dark area is the dyed piece, and the main piece with the green, yellow and pink is Setacolor. It leaves the fabric kinda dull compared to the shine of the dyed silks. And the Setacolor leaves surf lines or scum lines which are neat, sometimes. The bad part about using painted silk, is that it doesn't stay fused like the dyed silk. The paint acts like a barrier for the fusible. So I had a bit of trouble keeping this composition together, until it was finally fused to the batting.

I will have to quilt it quite a bit more than the other Stacks just to make sure everything stays in its place.

After the top was complete, we had dinner and I decided to have a skate. Rollerblading has taken a backseat to bike riding around here, because Dave and I can ride together, while skating is a solitary sport. Two bouts of exercise left my knees wondering what they had done to deserve such abuse.

August has been glorious, unexpectedly, and one assumes it will all end soon. In past summers it has been hot and dry and by now leaves would be burnt and curling and the grass would be tan, and not in a good way. This year is ABUNDANCE personified.

I came home from skating after an hour, sweating and flushed and still it was early. No wine makes the difference. Who knew?

There was the whole evening ahead of us, so we popped in a dvd and watched A History of Violence, which was sexy and really violent. Ed Harris plays a bad guy but the really great bad guy was William Hurt. I am so glad he is getting work.

And here's the amazing part...after the movie I climbed into bed with my library book and read 90 pages before I fell asleep. What a fabu day.

Then today arrived and besides trying to figure out what to wear tonight, I decided to finish that silk quilt. Here it is, making its debut. I will fit it into my slides and bring it along to my lecture.

Stack #14

19.5"x17"

hand dyed and painted silk charmeuse, fused and machine quilted

details