I'm back

My goodness, it's been nearly a year since I last posted to my blog!  I have been busy!  I was especially busy in April of this year - beginning with attending my annual retreat in New Smyrna Beach - Focus on Fiber.  I was happy to meet artist Mary Pal from Canada there.  She shared her beautiful portraits made with cheesecloth, and her techniques for achieving super realistic results with such a simple medium.  This retreat is always such a wonderful reunion with fiber sisters, and an inspiring, relaxing, soul filling experience.  Big thanks to Mary McBride for organizing it every year.

From there, I went to Chicago, where I met my sister Jan and we spent some time together at the International Quilt Festival.  We had a wonderful time and saw some very inspiring work there.  I had the honor of leading a small group around the Dinner @8 exhibit called Patterns.   Took a class with Jamie Wallen, bought (and won) some more fabric, and had lots of giggles with my sister.   Came home with a new little sewing machine!!

While we were there, my sister joined SAQA - Studio Art Quilt Associates!  That's Jan on the left with SAQA president Lisa Ellis and me.  Jan and I had our own private Portraits 101 class in our hotel room.

Came home to unpack and repack, and headed off to the international SAQA conference in Lincoln, Ne. This conference was jam packed with fantastic art and networking experiences.  The SAQA special events committee, led by Deb Cashatt, really outdid themselves keeping us busy seeing, learning, and enjoying our time in Nebraska.  One of my favorite activities was a spontaneous walk to the state capitol building on a Sunday afternoon, in horrible cold, windy, rainy weather.  The experience of seeing this magnificent building and the enormous mosaics, paintings, carvings, and columns was SOOO worth  that difficult walk.

Some of the mosaics on the floor were so beautiful, I felt we shouldn't have been stepping on them!
 
So, now I have arrived home in Florida, and have spent some weeks preparing for a solo exhibit of my portraits at the Dunedin Fine Art Center this summer. 

You can get details about the exhibit, (and three other fiber art shows that will be there at the same time!!) by going to http://www.dfac.org  and look under Current Exhibits.  The reception is on Friday, June 9 from 6 to 9pm.  It will be a wonderful collection of fiber art, including a regional SAQA show called GROWTH!, and an exhibit called New Quilts From an Old Favorite.

So, I'm ready to stay home for awhile, and relive my adventures, and plan some new ones.  For a minute, I was all caught up on my customer quilts, but I'm now back in the thick of that activity.   And the grass has been growing, and the fence needs to be painted, etc. etc.  Life is indeed good.