Griffins Antiques and Main Street Market

I may have mentioned that I've decided to join lots of friends in a new adventure. There's an old antique store in Bunkie and a young family has purchased the building to turn into an artists/crafts market. I bought the smallest size available and will attempt to sell some of my work. I'm committed to four months of rent, so that means through Christmas. Hopefully, sales will pay the rent. 

So what will I be selling? Well, I've decided to put out the cotton and magnolia paintings, perhaps a few of the stitched art pieces and some scriptural quotes. The newest pieces are the quotes. (I've been calling them simply "the quotes.") They started out as a fun, fast way to get some painting in. Quite by accident, actually. I went out to meet Rich in the shed, saw some scrap pieces of wood and picked them out. 

A little sanding and a good cleaning, and they made for fast canvas. At the time I had no idea what to do with them, but hey, that's how I roll. After painting sunsets/sunrises on them, I decided to add quotes. (Thus far no costs since everything was left over from other projects. Huge selling point, BTW.) When I ran out of pieces of scrap, I mentioned it and ask my guy to put some pieces aside as they  arrived. I meant arrived naturally, as discards from his projects.

He bought me a sheet of plywood. The good plywood (as opposed to MDF or cheap plywood.) Hmm, that's eating into my no cost budget!

So for a while now, I've been having great fun painting, searching for quotes, and relearning the Silhouette machine. Those are the quote pieces that I mentioned. I'll take pictures of the booth when it's all set up. I probably have about ten quotes and a couple of door hangers/welcome signs. I've also picked out about 10 or so lap/baby quilts that I will drape over a quilt rack. I really hope those sell, but who knows what people are looking for? Wish me luck!

Magnolia II ~~ art quilt finish

When I posted my finish on Tuesday, I knew that I was close to posting about this painting as well. It was complete, but drying seems to take forever. Then there are those photos that intimidate me so. But I'm persistent, if nothing else, and have something to share. 

Several people have asked me how I create these since it's an odd way to paint. So here's the short version. Start with a subject that can be isolated easily, so it almost has to be a physical object. Create a background using fabric (scraps work nicely). I think of it as making a quilt top. 

After loading the quilt sandwich onto the longarm, I plan and prep the painting area with gesso. Because you aren't painting the entire panel, plan carefully. I pencil in and quilt the outline of the subject. 

Now we're ready to move on to painting. I alternate between painting and quilting. I've discovered that one informs the other, and I tend to work improvisationally.  

An example of that improvisational work is this bud in the upper right corner. I decided to include it as I was painting the large magnolia and wanted it to be a secondary element, almost not noticeable. While I was working on it, I realized that the green stem receded into the background, so I repainted it in lighter browns that contrast more with the greens, yellows and browns of the background. 

And just like that, weeks later there's a painting ready for framing. Richard is wonderful about making frames, so as soon as trim and measure the work, he builds a frame--to 1/16 of an inch. (As if I'm going to manage that math!) Once a work is framed, I clean the painting by removing threads and touch up the paint as needed. How's that for a "quick" explanation? 

Magnolia I ~~ art quilt finish

I love combining quilting and painting--remember the cotton paintings? There's another here. It's a time-consuming joy that I don't think I'd have been able to appreciate back when I was working. Oddly, I started painting not long before retirement, so everything just sort of fell into place. Well, I've moved on from cotton to magnolias. 

This is my first attempt. I see so many flaws, but I've decided to let them go. If I move on, I can take the lessons with me to the next painting. 

While they are glaring in real life, they don't look so hideous in a photo. Getting depth was a struggle, but making the petals look cupped and curled...it feels impossible. But I'm determined!

And then there are the leaves to contend with. I need to work on those. But there's something I did that I love and that was to add ghost leaves in the background. I might do things a little differently later, but this idea really works for me.

There's another coming. I like it even more than this first. But I took an informal poll on Facebook and the two are about even in preference, so maybe I should show this one a little more love. What are you thinking of this one? What constructive criticism can you offer? I want to improve and knowing what to work on makes that job a bit easier.

Goodbye "Fun" and Fair

Jarod and Cheryl serving rice dressing and roast beef.

Last weekend was our annual church fair. Richard and I keep busy helping out where necessary on Saturday night. For him that meant working at the Coke booth. For me, it meant collecting money and calling numbers at the Bingo table. 

Mrs. Anna serving rolls and
Richard closing and bagging plates.

On Sunday we helped serve lunch. Nine hundred plates of rice dressing, roast beef, sweet potatoes, cold slaw, and rolls. It takes a small army, but we had a great crew this year. Two plates are served at about the same time. Richard, whose job was to close the plates and move them to another area, stayed especially busy. 

Another way that we pitched in was to head the Silent Auction. That was really my job and I set everything up early Saturday. 

These items were donated for the auction. Add to these the cross that Richard made and the quilt I made, See Such Fun. Every item was made by a local but well-known artisan. Well-known except for Richard and me, of course. 

Though I don't know how much money the fair raised, I can say that I'm happy with the auction. The items would usually sell for much more, but the auction wasn't advertised as it was added only a week or so before the fair. One artist donated her work and suggested the auction, and in only a few days we had items from several people. I'm excited to find out how well the fair fared. 

See Such Fun (62" x 62")

Another Cotton on Green ~~ Finished

On Friday I told you about the most recent cotton painting I created. What I didn't tell you is that I had loaded two canvases and worked on them side-by-side. Sister paintings, if you will. 

They have many similarities, but one is not their sizes. This one is 15 X 18. Another difference is this little blossom on the upper left side of the canvas. It just found its way there with no argument from me. I just sew without thinking when I work on these. Sometimes some interesting things happen. 

Cotton bloom - Google images

I decided that this serendipitous occurrence was something to take advantage of. So the blossom became a cotton blossom out of season. I quilted around it in the same way that I quilted around the cotton bolls, and let it take care of business. It may not be a cotton blossom, but it's not far off. 


There are the right number of petals and it is white. Which, by the way, means it has not been self-pollinated because, once they are, they turn pink becoming a deeper pink as time goes by. 

In the next stage the flower dies and falls off leaving the green boll where the cotton grows. It is enclosed in green bracts which dry up and split open as the boll gets larger. Once the boll is fully mature, it will eventually fall off the stem. The seeds are in the fluffy cotton boll and are supposed to find their way to the ground, but most end up at the gin. But that's another post.

This cotton painting, then, has all the stages of the life-cycle of a cotton plant. Now that's serendipitous! 

Cotton on Green ~~ Finished?

I've worked on this piece and another one for several days. I had built the canvases quite some time ago and set them aside. At the time I had another, more pressing project. Oddly, I can't think of what that was. 

Nevertheless, I discovered the stack of canvas pieces and decided to load them on the long-arm before something else jumped in front of me. I have a few more canvases in the stack, but I want to see what the green background looks like. 

I've been working on this series of cotton paintings and have eight or ten pieces. I haven't really named any of them, but I think I'll just number them. Luckily, I've written about them and can look up the order. 

With this piece I was going for a cleaner, less is more, feeling. I'm not sure it's working. I keep thinking there's something missing. If you realize it, please let me know. I will definitely rework it. Otherwise, my plan is to show it to my artist friend and ask her opinion. She will be absolutely honest with me! And I believe strongly in the power of constructive criticism and learning from others.

Oh, I have to give credit to my sweet husband for building the frames! We've created a pretty good system: I sew the canvas in no particular size--just whatever works for me for the moment--then choose one when I'm ready to paint. Once the painting is complete and dry, I decide on the dimensions and ask for a frame. This one is 16" square. He builds it, I mount the painting, and voila! we have a painted quilt. Isn't he the best?!

Here's another picture so you can help me with a comment. I really want to figure out what I'm missing. Plus, some of the other painted quilts in this series.

You can find the posts for these paintings here: upper left blue, upper right neutral, lower left neutral, lower right blue.

Thanksgiving, school props, and painting (Adam's finish)

Lots going on in the Marcotte lot. Firstly, we celebrated Thanksgiving in grand fashion with two meals on Thursday. One for the parents at noon because Papa can't handle too many people. About three is his limit, so we cooked a second meal for the kids for supper. 

That also gives the boys a chance to visit with their wives' families, and they can drop in on their grandparents a few at a time. No one gets left out this way. It's lots more work, but worth the extra effort since it means making things easier for the aging parents and it helps the kids arrange holidays with their families. Of course, there's nothing left of the food. By now everything has been eaten as leftovers or put in the freezer. 

Saturday and Sunday everyone just tried to rest and do a few things around the house. Adam and Richard had a special project going on. They built props for an upcoming school play. Can you guess which one? If you said A Charlie Brown Christmas, I'd have to agree because these are definitely CB props, but the real truth is that no one has really told me anything except to come see the cuteness. And, well, it is all kinds of cute.

Even better everything is made from left-over wood from a job or previous project. Even the mailbox is recycled. We replaced ours a few weeks ago and it had not found its way to the trashcan for pickup. Apparently we generate more trash in the fall, when we tend to purge the most, thanks to the cooler weather.

Adam retrieved it from somewhere, banged the dents out (it had been run over by a tractor) and mounted it on a freestanding pole. Then he painted it a very bright yellow. The flag was missing, so he even built a wooden flag that moves up and down. 

And now we're on to my current project. I'm working on another cotton painting. It's much like one in neutrals, beige and brown that I wrote about here. I also painted two in blues and wrote about those here.

I didn't like the beige one until it grew on me, then it became my favorite. I planned on painting a few using a green background but that hasn't happened. I supposed green needs to be higher on the list. At any rate this one is still a wip. 

The cotton bolls are still too dark and I need to add to the stalk. Cotton plants, you see, have many sharp limbs that do not bear unless the earliest flowers or seed pods are lost--as in eaten by a cow or destroyed by a storm. Then the plant is poised ready to put out new seed pods as soon as the early ones are lost.

It's interesting how much you can learn about a subject when you begin a "little" research just so your art is more authentic. Anyway, I'll show pics when the painting is complete and the frame is complete, and I pair the two. That may be a week or so, since my husband insists on making frames as though they will be seen from the front of the artwork. They are not but he's a perfectionist. And I am asking for a favor, so I guess we'll wait for a perfect frame.

In case you missed the pictures I took at IQS, all the posts are here:

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 1}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 2}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 3}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 4}

Houston 2018 International Quilt Festival {page 5}

Dropcloth ~~ a modern finish

I decided about a month ago that I wanted to enter a few quilts into QuiltCon. Hopefully, the jury will accept them, but for now I just want to try. I tried last year but missed the mark, so this year I decided to try a different tactic. I'd make a quilt especially for this purpose.

To that end, I read the rules. Several times. Then I pondered and mulled and thought. And I read the rules again. I decided. One quilt would meet the requirements of the two-color challenge, and the second would shoot for the requirements of the small quilt entries.
Small quilts – A modern quilt that measures 36" or smaller per side. The quilt can be any shape as long as it does not exceed the size limit on any side.

Hmm, that seems doable. So I had an idea. I once saw a painting on a sitcom that I liked. I don't even know if the show is still on the air, but I remembered some things about the painting that I really liked.  A couple of circles in lime green and orange-sherbet colors were important. So I started there and planned an asymmetrically pieced, neutral background so the colors would really pop. 

Then there was a problem. The quilt didn't want to be what I had in my mind. It wanted to be a drop cloth. You know, the kind of cloth painters put on the floor to catch drips. That's what the quilt wanted, and who am I to argue? I let it be a darn drop cloth. The circles became the rings that are caused when paint pools at the bottom of the can. A few droplets appeared. The quilt was doing its thing. 

Since paint can look different when it dries in different ways or when the light hits it, I played with colors using fabric and threading painting. But still it just looked like circles and blobs, and the quilt didn't really want that.

So I added a bit of a footprint. As though the painter stepped on the edge of the cloth while working. I just pulled off my own shoe and used it for a pattern. I really liked that. The footprint made the difference. But when two construction workers come in and they don't recognize a drop cloth when they see one, maybe it's not a drop cloth. Yet.

So I pointed out the obvious and they sort of agreed with me. "Except the thing is too clean, and who knew that was a footprint anyway? It doesn't even have a heel," he said.

So I added another footprint. Bigger. A bolder footprint to satisfy a hard-headed son. I used his dad's shoe for size and decided that maybe this guy stepped in or on the blob just for effect. And I was really happy.

Happy enough that I started quilting it and finished before another construction guy could come in and dash my joy. And as soon as I had a good 200 or so stitches in, I had the brilliant idea that maybe this is one of those drop cloths that you can see through. So I removed some of those first stitches and started building blocks with different motifs in each. Kind of a changing tile floor. Or maybe this is a showroom floor. I'm not sure, but it's definitely a floor because a construction worker came in and recognized the drop cloth lying on the back of the sofa. A different son. One who has a better imagination and knows what he's looking at when he sees a drop cloth.

Pin It Weekly #236

How's your Pinterest? I've been struggling to get on the computer at all. I've been busy cleaning the studio (YAY!) and doing some sewing (happy dance!) 

All that translates to I haven't been pinning. 

But other people have. So let's take a look at their work, shall we? Let's start with some artwork from James McNichols' "Paintings" board.

Isn't this little fella cute? He reminds me of my boys when they were about this age. Cowboys in their bones. Then they grew up!

These quilts are on my "Heart, quilts" board and have been pinned to Emily Y's "Quilt On My Friend" board.

And finally Kim Hyatt's "Barns" board. Lots of these have been pinned from my "barn, yard" board.

Thanks to everyone who has been visiting and pinning my boards.