Tied Up in Jury Duty

I"ve been doing my civic duty by serving on a jury. I'm not used to having so little time for myself! Every free moment I've been trying to finish up ornaments to sell at my friend Catherine's holiday boutique THIS SATURDAY! Yikes!

Before reporting to jury duty last week, I mailed off a bunch of fiber art balls and ornaments to Folk Tree in Pasadena, for their Ornaments and Adornments exhibit and sale, which starts this Saturday. Here's a photo of my Mexican fiber art ball.

pepperminty basket revisited

Robyn has asked for more instructions on how to make the "pepperminty" basket out of plastic bags, seen in an earlier post. I didn't follow a pattern for the basket, I just winged it. I chained about 8 stitches, then made single crochets into each chain stitch to the end, then 2-3 stitches to go around the corner and single crochet down the other side. Then 2-3 stitches on the other end to round the corner. Then I went around and around to make a flat oval bottom, adding extra single crochets on the curves to help keep it flat. When I was happy with the size of the bottom, I started building up the sides. The way you do that is to stitch into the top part of each stitch in the outer row, then keep adding rows. I hope that makes sense - obviously, writing crochet instructions is not my area of expertise.

I think I saw someone make a little basket out of jute on "Uncommon Threads," to get the basic construction idea.

Soft Expressions exhibit

My quilts are up and hanging at Soft Expressions, in the upstairs gallery. The address is 1230 North Jefferson St., Suite M, Anaheim, CA 92807. They'll be up until the end of November. And a few of my quilts will continue to hang in the following exhibit, which celebrates the new Embellished Mini Quilts book.

So if you're in the area, come by and take a look!

What I'm up to these days

I made a couple of painted fabric pumpkins, to give away. I saw the idea on Crafters Coast to Coast. It was fun! I get in a crafty mood this time of year. What do you think?

I'm headed to PIQF with Terry Waldron for a few days. It'll be so much fun! My "Garden of Earthly Delights" will be on view..... When I get back I'm hanging up several of my quilts at Soft Expressions, Anaheim, in their upstairs space. They'll be up from mid-October through the end of November, and some of them will continue to hang with Jamie's grouping, in honor of her new book, Embellished Mini Quilts.

I'm making ornaments and fiber art balls to sell at the Folk Tree in Pasadena's "Ornaments and Adornments" special showing, as well as at my friend Catherine's holiday boutique. More details on those events later. Here are some examples:

Come to the book signing!

Book Signing at Soft Expressions on Saturday, December 1st from 10am to 2pm.Author: Jamie Fingal, and Local Contributing Artists: Cindy Cooksey, Stacy Hurt & Terry Waldron 1230 N. Jefferson Street, Suite M, Anaheim, CA 92807714/630-7414The Upstairs Gallery will feature embellished works of art from the book, as well as, other pieces in December & January.

Embellished Mini Quilts

Jamie Fingal's new book, Embellished Mini Quilts, is coming out shortly! Several other artists are also in the book. I have two quilts in it. I saw an advance copy and it is beautiful. The photographs are amazing! Here's the ordering info:

All of the books purchased from Soft Expressions will be autographed. Click on this link for Soft Expressions (Check out their website for beautiful pictures of some of the art quilts inside the book). http://www.softexpressions.com/software/books/EmbMiniQ.php

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http://www.amazon.com/Embellished-Mini-Quilts-Creative-Little-Works/dp/1600591043/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7240191-1669405?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1188951570&sr=1-1is the link for Amazon

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http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/results.asp?WRD=embellished+mini+quilts&z=y&r=1&cds2Pid=9481for Barnes & Noble

Trip to San Francisco

I just got back from a trip to San Francisco with my husband. The first night we actually stayed in Healdsburg, in the wine country. It was my birthday. There's a little shop called Yazuko with clothes made with Japanese fabrics, and they sell little bags of wonderful silk fabric scraps. I bought one of these bags a couple of years ago and used it all up, so I had to buy another little bag, as well as a little pack of kimono fabric-covered buttons. They're beautiful! Anyway, most of the time we were in San Francisco, which was crawling with tourists. We stayed at the Argonaut in the Fisherman's Wharf area. We had a cool view of the bay, the Golden Gate Bridge and the cable cars right outside of our window. So here's a photo of the cable car area, such as it is, taking a photo through window glass.

Highlights were walking through Golden Gate Park, going to SF Moma and the DeYoung art museum. We used to live in San Francisco back in the early 70's, so all sorts of memories come flooding back. Ideas for new art quilts are swirling in my head. Maybe not a good idea to talk about too much here, but a couple of the rough ideas are: layers of time/San Francisco memories; and Is it art yet?