From North Carolina to Alaska With Love

Look who just arrived on my doorstep! When I first saw this little guy Tracey Broome made I was smitten and left a comment on her post that I wanted to buy him –unfortunately, Tracey said sorry but “he is already off to his new home.” Little did I know that IT WAS MY HOME she was gifting him to!! I even left another post that said “OK, Tracey -I took a poll and the results were that you need to make a whole FLOCK OF THOSE darn cute sheep and sell me the first new one ;o)” I know a few of you are giggling right now at my post because you were in on her generosity plot! I just want to thank Tracey again because I know how hard it was to part with this guy and when I opened the box I was all teary eyed and so touched that I want to carry him in my pocket all day. He’s been moved around throughout the house and studio but for now he’s in a place of honor on our mantel. Tracey also sent me a beautiful white Raku bird ornament as part of the generosity chain –I’ll post more about that later and continue the giving.

As predicted, I was able to snap out of my little lack-o-inspiration-funk and started creating. I finished another art quilt successfully using some transfers and original art.

I made a 21” w x 14” h “Laundry Line” Wall Art Quilt. With the help of my friend Ann C., she taught me how to sew my own mitered edge binding –and make it neat as well as fit! No more hot glue gun, taped or cut and paste fused bindings for me. This week’s mail was also exciting because I ordered Lesley Riley’s TAP sheets (Transfer Artist Paper) and they arrived, so I am excited to come up with some new imagery to try it out. Supposedly used with an ink jet printer “it “transfers with a hot iron to virtually any surface –fabric,

paper, wood, glass, canvas, metal & more.” And I’ve said before how transfer crazy I am. I’m also adding another collection to my Art Quilt Patterns, these will be some of my favorite subjects –dogs & cats. This little guy is called “Here Kitty, Kitty” for now. I'm still in the editing the design and selecting the colors phase. I've always thought Black & white animals are so cool –especially sweep little sheep from North Carolina!

Foggy With a Chance of Ferrets

We’ve went through a whole box of Kleenex, two bags of Ricolas (cherry honey is my favorite) and at least two gallons of OJ this week at my house. My poor head has been in a fog. Nothing like a good head cold with flu-like symptoms to keep a girl from gearing up in full welding attire. I’ve had a wicked head cold with a flu chaser ALL WEEK. Arrrrgh. I finally felt up to working in the studio half day yesterday and worked on some fun fiber art projects using iron-on transfers. I’m smitten with transfers of any kind. Working in clay I loved experimenting with decals and found Keith Phillips decal work to be inspirational and Ang had some fun examples too. I’ve also had success with using Gel Transfer Medium with laser prints onto copper and metal, though it can be a bit tricky. I’ve bought and tried several varieties of iron-on transfers for fiber pieces but have not had any luck finding a product that worked in a laser printer. Most

transfers are made for the low heat of ink jet printers but are unable to retain the hi-resolution I like from my HP laser printer. I did find some Color Copier Transfer Paper by TrasnferMagic that was supposed to be able to run through color copiers. I printed my hi-res images out on my laser printer and took them to the Office Depot to run through one of their color copiers that was listed by TransferMagic as OK to use, but three of three attempts failed and all stuck or jammed on their fuser rollers! The TransferMagic product DID NOT WORK as was claimed and could have caused major damage

in all of the “approved” copiers we tried. The Office Depot store manager was so helpful and found a way to make hi-res ink-jet, iron-on transfer, color copies on an HP Photosmart All-in-One Premium Printer. He opened up a package of Office Depot iron-on ink-jet transfer paper and ran my hi-res laser copies through the display model HP ink-jet color copier and viola! Hi-res images that can be ironed on fabric. I’m going to do some fun appliqué wall art quilts using the printouts and now I can make as many as I want because I was so impressed with the ink-jet/color copier that I bought one!

OK, I wasn’t going to Blog about this but I just can’t help myself -and besides I did take a quick picture. While waiting in one of the customer chairs at the Carrs/Safeway Aurora Village pharmacy this week for a prescription to be filled, a line formed with other customers needing to pick up their medications. A guy standing right in front of me was FEEDING some sort of animal that had JUST CRAWLED OUT of the hood of his jacket! The guy was feeding a Ferret a nicely cubed piece of fresh cantaloupe that I know just had been picked with his grubby fingers from the salad bar. Half of us waiting at the pharmacy were completely grossed out but others were completely OK with this and wanting TO PET THE DAMN THING. Sorry, but what the hell, am I the only one that thinks this is so wrong?!