This button summarizes our collective dream.

Arlene (Ritzy), Carol (CMoellers), JoJo (LadyQuilter) and I collaborated online to create a submission for the Dream Rocket project. We have never met in person but it was easy collaborate through photos, drawings, email and kindred spirits.

Each quarter of the quilt has photographs that represent our individual communities. Unifying it all is a group of women and children. Notice how the women hand-in-hand form a star? Together we are better, stronger and wiser.

The back of the quilt contains some of our individual thoughts on the project.

A huge Thank you to Arlene, Carol and JoJo for collaborating with me on this project!  You all are awesome!

 

Here are previous blogs on this project:

What's your dream? (Dream Rocket part 1)

Virtual Quilt Bee (Dream Rocket part 2)

Dream Rocket Project (part 3)

We are cut from the same cloth (Dream Rocket part 4)

Watercolor: Sepia Study.

I've done a little dabbling with paint now and then.  I like straying from the familiar occasionally to give the possibility of new dimnsion to my work. 

Here is a painting that I did in Julie Prichard's Layer Love class.  Julie uses lots of transparant layers in her work that give a great depth.  I think some of the concepts that I learned in Layer Love will flow into my Deep Summer Shade quilt.

My two paintings are very different in style aren't they!

My next class is Spill It! with Carmen Torbus.  It is online; LOVE online
classes because they fit my schedule! I view the videos when I have time to
focus and do the exercises when the house is quiet.   I'm anxious to see
what wonderful new things I will learn and how they will impact my art quilts. 
Check out Carmen's class at http://www.carmentorbus.com/spillit/. 
Cannot wait for the class to start!

I am very focused working to get my Kool Kaleidoscope quilt done by August 15th. But I had a visitor on the studio window and just had to stop and take a few pictures. This is the underside of a green tree frog. It is about 1 1/4" long and bright green on the top. For some reason they like to hang out in the upper corners of the windows and sliding glass doors. I wonder if has something to do with the air conditioning?

This small art quilt contains a few snapshots from the life of an artist. Her paint brush will be used to hang the quilt.

I have quilted and am ready to finish off the blue quilt. I stitched around each circle a couple of times using a regular stitch then did free motion circles to fill the rest of the space. They look like little pebbles or dragon skin to me.

Recently each quilt gets finished in a different manner. It seems like either they call for an elaborate border or no visible border whatsoever. Any frame or binding would detract from the simple, clean design that I am striving for on this one.

On a different topic, I have problems consistently photographing my quilts. I cannot get good detail, the colors are off, too bright, etc. I used to have a little Fuji 5 megapixel that I just pointed in the general direction and it took great pictures; zoom, close up, it did not matter. It finally wore out and I have had two higher priced 12 megapixel cameras since that don't take as good pictures. Inside, outside, no flash, flash nothing seems to resolve my problems. I'm thinking about getting a bottom of the line Canon SLR. Does anyone have a Canon or any other recommendations or advice for me?