NEW Artist Fabric Panels & Art Quilt Patterns are now available!

NEW Artist Fabric Panels & Art Quilt Patterns are now available at Quilt Shops or on line through our website at Crow Creek Coolture! https://crowcreekcool.com/
A Be-YOU-tiful display at Quilt Tree ❤ Our new Plushy friends, AK ABC and Raven Panels merch are customer-ready ✂ #makersmovement  https://crowcreekcool.com/
#sewing #patterns #madeinalaska #madebyhand #quilting

We all need a Guardian from time to time

This is an e-mail I received from a customer that made my day. I'm sharing it with their permission...

“Dear Ms Shake,

I just bought one of your pieces at the Sevigny Gallery and I wanted to tell you that it has great meaning to me. It's a piece featuring the Raven, it's surrounded by metalwork twigs...I'm a lawyer who has just moved to Alaska and I can only keep the really great job I got by passing the Alaska Bar exam which is a month from now. (I am already a lawyer but the last Bar exam I took was a very long time ago.)

I am very nervous about it and I don't know if you know it, but the Bar examiners are so tricky. They try to trap you into going with a wrong answer choice. So I knew I needed help, and that's when I saw your piece in the gallery as I walked home from work, and I thought, "This Raven will help me, because he can see through any tricks!"

I actually haven't even put my Raven up on the wall, instead he is on the table with all the materials as I study and I visualize him literally selecting the correct multiple choice bubbles on the sheet with his beak! After I do pass the Bar, Corvus will have a place of honor in my office.

I originally went into the Sevigny Gallery because we bought a house and I am looking for sculpture for the yard, and after I pass the Bar, I am looking forward to that -- I've noted where you sell your pieces.

But I did want to pass on my appreciation for making a really engaging piece that just makes me feel like I have a Guardian!”

A Visit From the Magical Raven

Look who was looking at me! An unusual visitor landed on the deck railing. A big, beautiful, black Raven sat looking at me for a minute or so, (long enough for me to get a picture through the window), cocking its head, bobbing it beak, then flew softly away. We have three, tube-style bird feeders hanging from the Log eve, directly above where the Raven landed. The winter-only feeders frequented by many species of Alaska birds include, Nuthatch, Black Capped Chickadees, Grosbeaks and other smaller song birds. Looking out our huge cabin windows, I love to watch the feeders while working at my laptop. Today, a large nomadic group of Bohemian Waxwings were high in the Spruce, flying, eating and swirling all in concert. It was magical.

Ravens are very popular in Alaska. Many Native Alaska beliefs depict the Raven as the “trickster” spirit and play an important part as spirit beings in Northwest mythology. Many people have a special affection for Ravens including myself. The steel Raven wall sculptures I make are customer favorites at the Galleries. I plasma cut the birds and leaves, hand bend the steel branches, weld the wings and then the birds to the branches. I like to finish the pieces with One Shot sign painters enamel paint. These are pictures of wall sculptures that are drying and I just finished embellishing the beak with red glass beads on copper wire to look like a fresh picked berry.

Here are a couple links to the Bird Treatment and Learning Center and the Alaska Bird Observatory which we support.