Sunny Saturday

I had a wonderfully productive day today -- and the sun even came out. Which made me feel just a wee bit guilty for being inside most of the day!

The little journal above is just 4x4" and I've made a good start on it. I added some cool paper to the cover, along with my first ACEO (boy, was that fun to make!).

The second little journal was a gift from uber weaver Alice Schlein, one of her first handmade books. Alice had used a fudgsicle carton for the covers, and I recently recovered them with sky photos -- which inspired me to focus this little journal exclusively on embellished photos of the sky! If you're another sky fan, check out my weekday sky images here.

The best part of these little collage journals is that they're just for moi. So I'm really exercising my permission muscle, letting myself do whatever comes to mind in the moment without censoring anything. Most pages I like, some I don't, but it doesn't matter. The important part is that I'm trying a lot of different things, letting the books evolve without feeling as though I need to do the entire journal in a particular fashion just because I might have started that way.

The little pillow is another work in progress. I had two digital images of an early quilt, on two different fabrics, sitting in my fabric image box, and I had no other use for them so I sewed them together and made a small pillow. Slowly, I'm embellishing it.

I spent the afternoon assembling the top for the "stretch" challenge quilt. You can see a sneak preview here of the fabric I dyed to use for the foundation and backing.

Another thing I've been working on recently is mounting my best 10x10" weekly quilts from 2009 on stretched canvas, one at a time. Each canvas gets painted specifically to go with the quilt that will be mounted on it. I really like the way they're turning out.

And, I have an idea for another small quilt series and anxious to get started on it soon. I'm liking working small -- lets me try a lot of different things without an enormous commitment to just one idea.