Aren't these fabulous murals? The pair are hanging in a delightful restaurant in Minneapolis, near the Textile Center on University Ave. Café Biaggios was a wonderful respite during the busy day yesterday.

There was artwork hanging everywhere and the owner was on hand to make sure the experience was exceptional for every guest.



This is another view of the length of the restaurant with lots of artwork. The pieces were all paintings, but personally I could see some Threadography hanging on the walls! LOL!

(left to right) Nancy Hoerner (watch for her new art-doll book from CPI soon), Beth, and Ann Butler (fabulous designer in mixed media). This was taken before we were caught in the rain and my hair doubled in volume!

DH and I were on the road yesterday, traveling to Minneapolis for the annual meeting of the International Association of Jazz Record Collectors. He is president again this year and wanted me by his side. Fortunately, my schedule is flexible enough right now that I could do that.

I love taking photos of rusty signs, old buildings and dilapidated bridges. Not sure what will happen to them, but for now it's fun to watch for them and stop occasionally in my quest for the perfect tree.


The sky was blue and almost cloudless when we left, but we encountered a rain storm in Wisconsin. We were fortunate; the Minneapolis area was hit with six tornadoes and severe storms. One touched down, damaging the convention center downtown. I don't think anyone was injured, but we were thankful to arrive at the hotel in the suburbs where the IAJRC meeting is being held and to see friends and associates had arrived safely.

One of the treasures from the Fiber Festival last Saturday was something called FireStar. The label says it is hand-dyed nylon! I thought nylon could only be dyed while it was a liquid and before it is extruded (or however they make nylon threads).

However it's made, FireStar has luminous sparkles in it, almost like Angelina but very soft. There was no un-dyed FireStar, so I just HAD to settle for these luscious colors.

These are the wool "nebs" referred to in the previous post. Don't they have an interesting texture? I can see them felted as is into a landscape for snow or dyed and felted for sand, grass, or fields.


These are the un-dyed silk hankies. They are harvested from the silk worm's cocoon and add a very different texture than silk roving or yarn. They accept dyes beautifully and I can't wait to dye hankies to coordinate with the hand-dyed silk/rayon velvet.

Yesterday (Saturday) was the Michigan Fiber Festival in Allegan, Michigan. The weather was beautiful and four of us from the local art-party group drove 2 1/2 hours to the Festival. It was good to get away and see what others are doing with threads and fibers.

The festival was held at the Allegan County Fair Grounds, a lovely setting with trees, a charming restored village, and plenty of space for the animals, classes, vendors, and pariticpants.

This is one of the most fun booths in the entire show! The artist is Lynn Shuck, who obviously has a sense of humor—and does some of the most beautiful nuno felting I've ever seen. The way she combined sheer woven silk and roving created beautiful contrast between textures and colors.


There were more than 75 vendors with an incredible array of yarn, roving, books, and other goodies I'd never seen before.



Rug hooking was represented well by this treasure trove of woven wools, original patterns, tools and other supplies for hooking.


There were alpaca, such as this fellow with the sweet face, angora rabbits, sheep, sheep dogs, and llamas. The was much to learn about the fur and fleece from these creatures.

We brought great bags of roving in every imaginable fiber (including mulberry, silk, tensel, soy, various types of wool, alpaca, and more), silk tops, silk hankies, wool nebs (I'd never heard of them; they look like snarls from the sheep's fleece), ribbons, and some sparkly stuff called FireStar. More on those tomorrow.



After many happy hours at the festival, we drove to Pawpaw to visit a winery. It was in the old waterworks building that had been repurposed with restaurants, wine caves, a small covered bridge over the bubbling stream, and a shaded patio with lots of tables.

(left to right above) Christine, Beth, and Rosie enjoy the cool shade of the covered bridge. Below, Lori bypasses the smaller bottles in favor of the over-size magnum she WISHES was filled with chilled chardonnay.


Aah! A perfect ending to a delightful day: Home-baked pizza and peach wine coolers shared with fellow adventurers. We missed the rest of the art-party group. Hope you can join us next time!

Some say I'm a woman of few words—until it comes to sharing art techniques and ideas! This is the cover of my new book!! Yahoo!

It is available on Amazon, although it won't be available until some time in October.

Isn't the color on the cover awesome? C&T Publications did an outstanding job on the cover art as well as the chapter openers and illustrations inside!

Keep watching this blog. I'll be announcing a give-away in the next few weeks, hopefully before it's available on Amazon!

There is a CD inside the back cover of this book, as there was in the first Altered Photo Artistry. This time, in addition to the trial version of Photoshop Elements, there are displacement maps, textures, and brushes Lori and I developed in our own studio! Very cool—no one else has them!

In my opinion displacement maps are a fabulous tool for altering that very few quilt artists know about. See if you agree with me!

This is the cover of my new book, which will be released in October. I'm so excited! The cover shows the before photo and the after piece printed on fabric and stitched with free-motion stitching.

The cover piece is mounted on a canvas and the design extends to the edges (and around the edges) with paint. I'm not a painter. I'm not kidding myself, but this is really a cool way to enhance the look of the stitched piece and make it larger without adding a lot of complex finishing.

I'll be giving a few copies away in September and October, so stay tuned!

It WORKS! I'm so excited!

The black faded a little, but that was expected because the Colorant was in a shaving cream carrier. The shaving cream has to come out, but I actually like it with a little more subtlety in the black.

The Tackifier layer with the mica powder looks great. I turned the T-shirt inside out and washed it in cold water. It held beautifully.

I need to repeat the washings to see how long the Tackifier continues to hold the metallic powder...

More tomorrow! :-)