Time to Treat Yourself

What if you could be on a deserted island for a week of creative bliss?  

What if I was there to help you or just to run ideas past about your next project? 

   

What if you were surrounded by other creative souls all in the "zone" for a week?   A place where nobody could interrupt you or bug you, you don’t have to cook or go to the grocery store and you could be inspired by your fellow quilt artists.

I have that place.  It’s on a beautiful beach in Central California.  White sandy beaches with misty fog rolling out in the morning.   If you haven’t already guessed,  I'm talking about Empty Spools Seminars in Pacific Grove.   I love that place. I want to invite you to one of the best creative experiences you can have.  If you have never been, start saving your pennies because this is a must for art quilters.   It’s a safe environment to push out your creativity, try something new, or just stay focused.  Magic happens there -  it’s always so amazing.

Top requirements to be successful at a retreat like this:

•     Desire
•   Open to change
•    Patience with yourself  

    ... and maybe a good teacher?

Oh, and don't forget,  lots of fabric.  

I am asked all the time how do I do my own, personal  flower quilt?  Well, if that interests you, this is the venue.  Once you do a detailed flower you will be able to use the same principles to do any subject matter after that.   All skill levels are welcome.

We talk a lot about color and values. How to see color and how to use it to make the biggest impact.  How to use your creative gifts, even if you don't think you're creative.  Believe me, by the end of a week at an Empty Spools event you will be and feel creative.  So check your calendar to join me February 23-28, 2014 or go to Empty Spools Seminars  for more information. 

This is the time for YOU.  Put the dog in the kennel, take the kids to the grandparents and put your husband on the sofa with a 6-pack and a sandwich or 2 and come have fun with me. 

See you there. 

My Mother Iris Was my Inspiration!

 I have been trying to post picture of my students work using my new Iris pattern. But all the pictures i took on my phone are coming upside down or side ways. This is becoming the theme of my life. Upside down and sideways.  So I made a movie instead. hope you enjoy.
Before you push play you may want to turn on your speakers. \Its a cute song.
What I like the best is that after awhile my student stopped following the pattern and did there own thing. Love it.

The retreat was held at Our House in Milford, Texas. This is a retreat center that hosts all kinds of retreats and will host your next creative adventurer.  And the food is to die for. 

An Un-sticky Situation

Who knew that a sticky film of iron-on glue attached to parchment paper could give me so much anxiety?  Well, it is.  For those of you who love Steam-A-Seam 2, and I am one of them, seems like the Warm Company is having an issue with the release paper that the lovely sticky fusible web sits between. I love this stuff. Maybe that is my problem.  I think I might be addicted. Can’t live without it - or can I? 

Ironing Steam A Seam 2

The sweet girl on the phone at the Warn Company made a sad moan when she heard what I wanted - OK, I NEEDED!  My feeling is that my local grocery store has a lot of parchment paper down aisle 4, next to the foil, on the bottom shelf (that's in case they send a man to find it).  What I mean is parchment paper is EASY to find.  I could tell by her voice that I was going to have to find a new product for doing my art, at least for a while.

I have to either buy up the world's lot or find something different. I have a retreat in a week and half outside Dallas then I fly to Paducah for 5 classes at the big AQS show.  Then, 3 weeks after that the Alaskan Cruise.  I feel like I am trying to get to San Francisco but someone took my car and now I have to walk or ride a bike and I don’t do bikes.

 

Now what?  After I bought up all I could on the internet I realized that I can’t let my art and the technique I teach stop my creativity.  I have lectured all over the country about how mistakes and failures are waiting as aha moments in disguise.  Now I have to practice what I preach and it doesn't feel very comfortable. I hear my words coming back to me. 

 Look at this in a different way. How can I fix this?  Where is my seam ripper? What creative opportunity have I been given to solve.  I will make art even if I am on as desert island. I can’t stop.
Now, mind you, I didn't heard these encouraging  words until after I had a good cry, then got mad and moped around for a few days (I don’t want to leave out the good parts).  In my frustration, I decided to cut fabric for my class kits with the rotary cutter and chopped off the side of my favorite pointer finger. Ouch!

How bad can this get?  8 stitches worth and to top this off, this is the second time I have done this stupid move.  I just want to give up... but I can’t.
My whole life I have had to overcome difficult situations. From not reading until I was in the 6th grade to having people tell me I can't paint my house yellow and wanting to sue me to helping a child who had no one that cared to protect her.   All were painful but all ended well.

This is just applique, not rocket science.  I can try other fusible webs. So, I placed my order for Misty Fuse, which will arrive shortly and Wonder Under is working great.   I just like the stickiness of the S-A-S 2. But, I do have a glue stick! We’ll see. Creativity, I've heard, is the mother of invention.

So, if you are in any of these classes in the next month or so it will be fun to see what I show up with.

My Summer Rose pattern.

If it gets really bad I even thought of going back to, dare I say,  hand applique...

just kidding! 

It has a New Home!

I never planned on selling this quilt. I made it just for me and my son, to help me deal with the thought that my only child was going to be a Marine and probably go off to war. That was very difficult for me to handle but as all quilters do when faced with challenges; I went to the studio and put my feeling into cloth. There are tears in that fabric. 

I looked at all kinds of patriotic subject matter before I realized it HAD to be a flag.   

My idea was to visualize this quilt years later on the wall in my son’s office when he is an old man. We both made it through the trial of war and came out the other side.

I started to take the quilt with me on the road when I did trunk shows around the country. I had no idea the emotion it would cause in others as I showed it. It was overwhelming and very special, so this quilt is for all the mothers and fathers and brothers and sisters of soldiers through all the wars who, like me, have given their loved ones for our country to be free.  This quilt is not mine, it’s ours!

I had to write a story for a newspaper about my quilt and this is what I said:

As all parents do, we want a better life for our child.  Joe and I wanted Matt to be able to go to college without the financial burden that we had. He graduated with a degree in mathematics and we were so proud to say that he was the first Bula to graduate with a college degree.  But 2 days later he joined the United States Marines. I was proud and very worried. You see, he is my only child, not that a mother with more than one doesn't have the same feelings.  It just hit me hard.

We stood at the front of the church when he was 1 year old and dedicated him to the Lord and promised that we would raise him up to be the man that God had made him to be. I was thing maybe God wanted a dentist. 

We all went to see him graduate from boot camp that August day in 2010. How proud we were.  That day I saw all the other families that were going through the same feelings as us. I noticed all the flags denoting the various states represented and other countries from which the new Marines had come.  I was amazed how many countries were represented but, of course, that’s what America is — a land of immigrants.

I noticed a young Nigerian man marching at the head of the battalion and carrying the flag for his platoon. My son had told how the other Marines in the Nigerian’s battalion questioned him about life in his West African country. He immigrated here when he was only 14 years old. His days in Africa were spent running from danger and searching for food for his family and there he stood as a Marine holding his battalion flag proudly at the head of the line.

Compared to my own son, whom they’d raised with many advantages, a safe home and plenty of food, I realized that every Marine and every family there told a different story.

I was determined to never forget that day.  As an artist I express my feelings through quilting. I started making the flag quilt immediately when I arrived home from the ceremony, and during the process I cried many tears.  I cried for my only son going off to war and all the other mothers and fathers and sisters and brothers, wife's and husbands, that I knew felt the same way.

I made this quilt for the families whose children didn't come home.

I made it for my uncle who had no choice in the 60s and was drafted into Vietnam, served as a Marine, and when he came home, he was spit upon, and I cried again.  I cried for the young men I heard about who have come home struggling to readjust.

Generations of my family have fought for America to keep it free and safe, but I had forgotten that some of these new patriots came to the United States recently for the same reasons and now wanted to stand by this beautiful flag.  I dedicate this quilt to all military men and women.  Because of them, we can say “…and our flag is still there.”

You can see this quilt at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky.