Abby

I painted and embroidered this picture for my brother's new baby. Ok, she's not so new anymore. It is from a picture on their blog. The style is quite different for me. I hope they like it. Now I just need to frame and mail it to Hawaii.

One more corn field

This is the cornfield that I've done so far (it was the second one) that I don't really like. I think the colors are good, but the lines just don't work for me very well. I may need it someday though--the director of the art gallery at the college in town said that he was interested in doing a show of these pieces in the prairie studies department. In that case, I may need a bunch of them.

Start of a Family Portrait

We started a family project this week. It is a family portrait. The girls drew pictures of everyone on paper and then I drew them onto a piece of black fabric with soap. Then we all painted it with metallic paint. I am in the process of doing machine stitching everywhere to add definition. I obviously am not very far along. Just so you know--this is large for me--about four by three feet. My plan is to hang this in the library where I needed something funky. I may end up only hanging it for Halloween, but maybe we'll like it a lot after its done. We shall see.

Iowa Corn Stubble--May 2008

I haven't posted anything for months. Thats because my camera broke a few months ago and I had no pictures to post. I have made new stuff lately though. And now I have a camera to post it.

This is an image of corn fields (again) that I saw driving back from Des Moines last May after I'd dropped Eric at the airport. I've been working on it off and on ever since then, and here it is. I think this is as good as it is going to get.

Iowa Corn Stubble--2008

I took my kids on a hike at Rock Creek State park in March--just as Winter was ending here. The hills on the way there were covered with corn stubble. This is my image of the road to the park. I was trying to do a picture in cool tones, but as usual, red and yellow just wouldn't stay out of it. I do think it feels a little bit chilly even with my warm colors.

By the way--I painted on linen and then layered with netting and embroidery.

Seashells by the Seashore

One of the last assignments for my Fertile Earth class was to do a picture of shells or rocks--something hard I guess. It seems to me that I most often see pictures of shells hanging on the walls of bathrooms. I did not want a bathroom picture.

I have a box of shells that I picked up on the beach in San Fabian--in the Philippines when I was a missionary there. The beach was covered in large, beautiful shells, and that was just normal there--no one by me was excited. Anyway, I decided to do a picture of these shells in tutti-fruiti colors. I like my colors ok, but the composition is just not working yet. I will have to do something more for this picture. I will post it again someday if I finish it.

Finished Trees. I used lots of layers of netting, tulle, beading, thread fabric, pellon, and embroidery to do it. Oh, and paint. I like it. Eric likes it better than the fungus that I made just for him. Says he'd rather hang this one in his office.

In the Forest

This is the beginning of a piece based on trees from the Fertile Earth class. Check back later to see if it turned out ok.

Molly's Face

One side effect of me spending six hours a day stitching away for Susan Sorrell's Fertile Earth class is that my kids want to join in too. Today while I was working on my trees, Molly made this portrait. She says it is definitely not a self portrait--she does not have purple hair or a bronze mouth.

Fungus

Marian, you asked for fungus--here's your fungus. Eric listened to way too much Dr. Demento as a teenager and likes to sing the song about Roger Boom. One of the lines goes "He planned a trip to Venus when the Fungus was in Bloom." We looked up the song on-line and learned that his song came from the Laurence Welk show. How cool is that? So, I had to add this big, still unfinished border around it. If you look carefully you can see all the layers of stuff on this piece. There are about 8-10 layers of burnt edge tulle in each fungus bloom. Anyway, I am not sure if this is beautiful or professional, but it is definitely original.

I finished the poppy embroidery. Lots of hours went into this. I stitched, unpicked, stitched, unpicked and stitched again. I had to look up diagrams of poppy leaves since the photograph I was working from didn't have great leaves. But, I am happy with it now that it is done. Well, almost happy. I will probably like it better tomorrow. I have been working on it all week and now it is 12:36 am and I am really tired. But, it is done.

Poppies

This is my current Fertile Earth class project. It is poppies. Not mushrooms. It is the size of a Louis Lamour paperback book (I needed a good rectangle) and is being quite time consuming. Especially since I keep being dissatisfied with color choices and redoing it.

Onions In the Sun

The final onion fiber picture--taken against the back window with sun pouring in. I think it looks quite oniony.

My unfinished Onion picture from my Fertile Earth class.

Hawk Outside the Wind--another image inspired by my Mother in Law.

I did a series of twig when we lived in Olean, New York. It was winter and the world was devoid of color and I was trying to recreate the contrast of the dark branches against the dreary sky. I could not stand the finished dreary pieces and eventually added colorful borders. I like it a lot better now.

Old Road/New Road

This is my last project, before starting the Fertile Earth class I am taking right now. It is an small embroidery based on an illustration of a poem (written by my mother in law) I did a number of years ago. It is almost finished, but I am still figuring out what to do in the borders.

I signed up to take an on-line fiber arts class--my first one ever. It seems that most of the other students have blogs where they post progress on their artwork. So, I thought I'd do same.

This first bunch of pictures I am posting only because we are doing a fiber arts project based on fruits and/or vegetables. About seven years ago someone gave me the book by Diedre Scherer. See her website at http://www.dscherer.com/ She does amazing portraits using fabric, thread and her sewing machine. I was enamored of her thread painting technique for a few months before I realized that it really wasn't for me. I did a few large quilts and started on some smaller root vegetable quilts. But, as you can see, my root vegetables were not exactly amazing--and look worse close up-- (although I do kind of like the carrots) and I have never actually stuck them to a background and they've been sitting in my unfinished project drawer ever since.