A New Challenge & Earth, Fire & Fiber at the Anchorage Museum

In my sidebar, you may notice a new icon. It's Fiberactions. I am very excited to be a part of this new challenge, & I hope you all will enjoy our journey as we travel through the next 2 years with our new challenges.

Yesterday my DH

 & I went to the Anchorage Museum to see the "Earth, Fire & Fiber" exhibit. I was able to take a few pictures to share with you. This doll above "Rah Syn God",  was made by Kenai artist  Karen A. Fogarty.

The beaded purse below is "Rooms" by Kate Boyan, from Homer.

This group of shield purses , were made by Monica  Jenicek Lyall of Anchorage.

Karin Franzen, from Fairbanks did these two spectacular quilts,

Pirouette 4 & 6.

Linda Beach, from Chugiak made this tree quilt, named "Tenacity".

Denise Gallup from Girdwood, did this mixed media piece,called "the History".These 2 Shibori scarves were made by Wendy Smith Woods, from Suton.Finally, I loved this small stressed felt piece by Ellen M. Anderson from Juneau. She called it "Minerality".

A Feather Sampler, & a little Halloween

First I want to mention that the Alliance for American Quilts, has it's fundraising quilt auction going on right now on Ebay. The quilt in my header will be part of the auction next week. The 2nd group is on right now, so you should check them out!

I have just finished this Feather Sampler for a class I will be teaching starting in January.  I did a traupunto layer under the feathers to make them stand out more. The second layer of batting is black, to give a little shadow effect to the background. If I were to do it over, I would use a cheaper grade of white fabric, so that the shadow would be more pronounced.

Here are a couple of closer photos. I love doing feathers.

On Halloween we went to a show downtown Anchorage. It was call "Macaberet".

It was an interesting evening of silly strip-tease and some fun music. Our friend Will showed up dressed in his Spartacus outfit.

Our friends Lilly, Pete, John & Mindy, & ourselves just dressed relaxed, & had a good time.

Snow & a Postquard

This is the first day of snow in our yard this season. It was a dark, gray day all day today, & about noon it started snowing. By night time it was just a couple of inches of wet snow on the ground. Tomorrow Anchorage will have to learn how to drive all over again. It's like that every winter. 

Yesterday I made this 4x6 inch postquard. It is made from a layer of hand painted cotton fabric, with pieces of an Angelina sheet cut into circles, & a few bits of Angelina Fibers, then a layer of painted silk organza over the top. This 1st photo with the flash on highlights the sparkles from the Holoshimmer threads, Angelina, & crystal beads.

The second picture taken without the flash is a little closer to the actual colors of the piece. Neither can show the depth of the layering.

Feathers!

Well it seems I am having a hard time aligning m blog since I messed with the template last week. Hmmm.., I can't seem to get my pictures in the order I wasn't anymore. Well this is about feathers, some that I'm doing on my friend Judy's quilt,..

& some on this little fellow who was knocking on my house. At first I thought it was quite cute, until..

I realized he was actually heading into my kitchen, through a hole left by the old electrical box.I chased him away, & blocked over the hole!

Here are a couple more shots of Judy's quilt. It's her "nontraditional" Christmas quilt.

I'll post it again later, in whole when I've finished it.

My Student Natalie Moten

Natalie has taken every class I've ever offered here in Anchorage. She is such a fun student. Very creative. She picked leaves oust side & dipped them in paint then printed over commercial fabrics to make these leaves. Aren't they great?

This is her field of sun flowers.

This one is about the vote in Iraq.

& this last one is her self portrait. I am very proud to have helped her get to where she is now!

A Challenge

This is my neighbor's house right now. Right next door  us, when we pull into our driveway, this is what we see. Me the ARACHNIPHOBIC one! YIKES!

Now this is my challenge. It's a customer quilt.n I would like to do some spectacular quilting on it, but for the most part, I doubt much of it will show, except in the dark squares.The prints & pattern is pretty busy, so the quilting will get lost.

The prints make my eyes jiggle a bit up close.

Any good suggestions or ideas?

Nessie in Alaska ?

We went down to Girdwood tonight to the Double Musky again. Our friend, traveling nurse Bob had never gotten there & wanted to try it before he leaves Alaska, so we took him down there t eat. The food was wonderful as always.

On the way back to Anchorage we spotted Beluga whales in Turnagain Arm. They were like trying to get pictures of Nessie! If only I had video, it would be so much more impressive. Unfortunately my old Rebel- XT doesn't do video.

The sunset was lovely tonight too.