Too busy for glass

Alas, the press of real life once again has caught up wit me and I have not made anythign fkor a few weeks. However, I jsut applied for a November show so I suppose I better get to work!

Inspirations

Anyone whose ever quilted has noticed that there are a lot of cross and star patterns. These are the most popular, I think, because it's easy to divide an area into 1/2's 1/4's and 1/8's. It got me thinking while at Quilt Odyssey, that maybe I ought to design some crosses and stars.

I know of several area congregations holding services in rented quarters. The congregants are inspired, but the surroundings are not.

Stained glass is so associated with religious buildings that I got to thinking that I could design medium sized devotional panels that could move when the church finds a permanent home. If I build it correctly, these could even be incorporated into larger windows should the church wish to later.

It's proved surprisingly hard to design something that is brilliant at the right scale. The panels have to be light enough to hang from a variety of window types, but be large enough to be a major element in the sacred space.

I'm still playing with scale for the first piece, a stylized cross in a circle in a square. It comes in at 16" square, which is fine for a home, but a bit small for a meeting area. I'm leery of going larger than 20" though, since the piece starts to get heavy. I do have a color palette, with brilliant reds in the center ,a steel blue cross, a textured yellow gold as the nimbus and a peachy color for the background. I'm surrounding the piece with a paler blue glass and bright red in the corners.

Preliminary designs and pictures to follow later this week.

Here are the newest pieces we made for Quilt Odyssey, last week's show in Hershey PA. Since we did not know we were going until the last minute, all we had time to make for this quilter's extravaganza were ornaments. We joke that as we quilt in glass, here's what we use: glass Berninas and glass thread.

These spools were a big hit; we had to take orders since we just could not solder another piece by Saturday night.

Our larger pieces were appreciated too- we sold a couple of the 18" panels for sunrooms, some smaller panels featuring a Star of David, a Dutchman's puzzle that was new for the show and our usual complement of appliqued hearts, small panels and ornaments.

The nicest part of the show was that people recognized us from Love Apple quilt show, from The Flying Geese show and even from Savage MD where I live. It's so nice to be remembered!

For the next week we are just going to offer these to a few of our local quilt shops in PA. We hope to put some up on ETSY later this month as well as a few of our smaller panels. Watch this side space for a sampling of our works.

Quilt Odyssey

We got into this fantastic quilt show in Hershey PA. Originally denied for space, we were recently invited as an exhibitor dropped out! So now it's back to the drawing board to refine our brochures, check out the framework for the tent and otherwise make a few new pieces -just to say we did!
The show is 3 weeks away. We've both been working hard to get everything ready.
Phew

A Poem About Our Work

So imagine my surprise when going to Artomatic on Saturday to find that one of my works is immortalized in verse. Brash left me the following bit:

ASTRAL BED

If you need o clear your head

Lie here in this astral bed,

Your dreams will rise up from the quilt

Freeing you from all your guilt,

Unless you've lived life double-fisted,

In which case your bed sheets may be twisted.

Wow. I am rendered speechless!

Celtic Heart by Night

Here is the newest design, a 17" piece with a multicolored green Celtic heart. It's a bit hard to see, since this is what the piece looks like by night, but there are 6 different colors of glass in the entwined ribbons, surrounded by a pearlized white border. It's a great piece( I didn't design it, Di did)

This is one of the pieces we have at Artomatic in DC. Show runs to mid June. Come see us there

More Artomatic Photos

I volunteered last night, so here are the new photos of the event. Rained most of the day today here in DC , so I spent the day reading and goofing off.

More pictures of Artomatic

On the left is a picture of the Mariner's Compass. On the right is a picture of our neighbors' art. Wow

Our stuff at Artomatic.

Wow, there is a wonderful collection of artists at this show! I spent last night , along with hundreds of others, finishing my booth display. It was a pleasant mad house. A madhouse since the electric still was not installed, but wonderful since all the fellow artists were so kind and helpful.

This is just a few of the pieces I have up on the 8th floor corner space. I have light and a great view to the National Cathedral in the far right. The show is in a new unfinished office tower at M and 1st street NE right near Gaudallet College and a block off the metro stop.

For this show we only brought our bigger pieces, since this is a show, not a sale. We can sell our pieces, but we have to leave them up until June 16. http://www.artomatic.org/

Arttomatic in DC Show

Whoa we got in! We will be participating in the Artomatic show next month. We'll be joining over 600 artists in a great temporary gallery set up in an unfinished office building just north of Capitol hill. It's a great venue and we got a terrific location with lots of windows!I am so psyched!

More details later as we get geared up but here's the site and the link http://www.artomatic.org/ It ought to be grand!

April in DC

Took the day off to go see the cherry trees- It's just like in the pictures!

Shameless Bragging

Here it is , the landscape I did for my Mom years ago to give her a better view out her kitchen window.

Mom lives by the shore, but her kitchen window looked straight into the side of the neighbor's garage. So I gave her a view of the a flower box in the foreground and the shoreline in the distance. This is a composed design; I used parts of a commercially produced pattern for the bird and some of the flowers but I drew up the pansies, the landscape and the tree bits. I'm rather proud of the entire effect. The design holds up even after all these years.

I can see foreshadowings of my later works in there. I used irridized glass for the water and the magnolias so the window would look lively in room light at night.

Savage Snowdrop Art and Craft Fair

So I was so annoyed about the poor attendance at some of our shows that I swore I could do a better job myself. Be careful what you say out loud- the Imp of the Perverse is always listening.

By a roundabout way too complex to mention, I wound up running a craft show next February. Now I'm not the most organized of folks, and I have never done anything like this before, but I have every confidence this will be a great show. And why am I so confident? Because I delegated!

I have found 2 dozen gifted crafters who have all volunteered to help out, to manage press releases, to make posters, to notify the local media and to send me pictures of what they have.

We have a blog, http://savagesnowdrop.blogspot.com/ dozens of goodies for a raffle/door prize, a beautiful venue in Savage MD, posters and flyers. I could not be happier.

The show is in Savage MD on Saturday, February 16 at 9035 Baltimore street. We have jewelers, knitters, glass crafters and paper makers , as well as handmade journals and a fancy tea.

It should be great!

First Check from new Gallery

We got our first check from VIX Gallery today . VIX sold out of our smaller hearts and also sold a small panel. What a nice way to begin the new year. So of course, it's back to hearts for me since Valentine's is rapidly approaching.
All this, and a re design of the website going on. Wow, I thought I'd get a brief break after the holidays!
I convinced Di to handle the redesign of the website, and she agreed. So now I get late night calls asking me to look at the newest tweak. So far, it looks great: a nice background, a gallery page, a salesroom, details about us and a page for other really nifty sites we've each found over the years.