Sometimes I have so much fun in my studio it feels like a great adventure. This past week has been one of those periods of time. I don’t have any pictures for you this week. You see, I am working on things I want to share with you later…after they are finished, and maybe even after they have debuted either at a show or in a published book.
I had a wonderfully productive work week last week. Spring seems to be springing and I finished quilting Canterbury Knight. I also managed, after about four tries of putting it on and taking it off over and over to get the three rows of Ricky Tim’s Razzle Dazzle around my central block with nice square corners and mostly straight sides. It looks so good I got excited about it. Now I have to paint the border designs. Yes, that is scary. After working for months and months on this quilt, the last thing I will do before binding, labeling and adding the hanging sleeve to it is the painting, where things can so easily go out of control. So today, I made a small mug rug sized piece that I quilted and all just to practice my painting before I start the real thing. “Practice makes perfect”…well, at least for me it makes “better”. 😀
In addition to all that, I took a webinar tutorial on Corel Painter. That was the best I’ve ever taken. The artist was painter master Aaron Rutton, and I discovered he has a lot of videos out there on this program under “Draw This”. I will be watching many more. I am slowly becoming almost able to really get the best out of that wonderful program, so I really will be watching a bunch more. It’s like using real paint without all the mess, and with additional cool things, like layers, that let me accomplish things I see in my head even if I am not a great painter…like the horse on the Canterbury Knight. I painted that in Corel Painter, minus tail and mane. It was a struggle, though, that took me weeks, so if I can improve my knowledge of this program, just think what I can do with it. I’m sure Mr. Rutton could have done that in a matter of an hour or two. One of things I plan to do with it is to put items for sale and for free like tail-less horses and faces and hands, and Vases for flowers for people to download and print on their own Electric Quilt or other printable fabrics for their own quilts. Let me know if you have suggestions for small, similar things you always wished you could find for your fabric art.
Then finally, I have been making huge progress on my book on using Bernina v7 software. I got a little bogged down on my applique book, because I need to work out samples and take pictures to move forward. But when my daughter-in-law came over for a short lesson on the software–she has never even used an older version–I realized that I already had a book in my head on that, because I have been thinking about this for a long time. So I sat down and sketched out an outline before I lost the idea that just came to me, and got the first two chapters of an eleven chapter book about ten projects that will help you get the most out of Bernina design software written and illustrated. To top it off, I got a response from Bernina that no permission was required for me to publish such a book. Hooray! I think I can finish this one by the end of April, though we will see.
Sew happy everyone! Even though it’s spring, and you want to go outside, still spend some time in your sewing space and then take lots of breaks running outside to see the next flower open.