The Big Goal

I only made one big goal for 2009

!!! MAKE ART !!! 

It seems the past year and a half was spent rushing around meeting one deadline after another. All good things for my career. All things that will support the artmaking but no actual making of the artwork itself.

This week has been bliss. My first week in months and months with no deadline to meet. I actually wake up and get to choose what to do. At least in the two hours a day that I have to myself. Usually I work frantically trying to get something I have to get finished done while everything else falls apart around me. (Especially the house.)

I weeded a favorite garden, unburying a stone path that has been hidden the past year. And then I pulled out a piece that was started several YEARS ago. It's the perfect thing to help me get acquainted with my new HQ16. The poor neglected machine has waited patiently since last fall for me to pay attention. It's going to take a little learning but we're getting there. So here's a sneak peak. The machine quilting is done but I think the work itself is only beginning on this piece.

Here's a sneak peak at the work in progress.

Blue Ridge Quilt Festival

Hello Friends - it's been an amazingly crazy month. June just flew by. I spent a week getting ready for the Blue Ridge Quilt Festival and had an amazing time there. Wonderful classes and students! 

Four fabulous days. Fabulous hosts. Here is the view from driving down from their lovely home.

I kept running down during lunch and after class and playing with the Handi-Quilter 16. The sit down model. I must have spent several hours playing. I quilted through a lot of their sample sandwiches, bought the nastiest, most difficult metallic thread I could find, went a thousand miles an hour, went slow, fell in love.  

Guess what baby is going to show up at my house!?! They could have had it delivered to me in a week but I'm on the road - more on that in a couple of days. It will be delivered a couple of days after I'm back home from our current trip. I would have had it delivered sooner but it will take a couple of days to clear out a spot for it.