painting, quilting, appliqué and stuff on sale

Hello!

I hope it’s been a good week in your neck of the woods. I feel like I’m working on a million things at once over here, so I’ll start at the top with these recent paintings.

Me and Rosie admiring the flowers before our walk.

I planted foxgloves in the fall and they’ve been glorious this spring. They’ve been blooming for a good 4-5 weeks and are just finishing up. I got in a few paintings that I think turned out nice.

Foxglove Gate 1, acrylic on panel, 9x12, $125

Foxglove Gate 2, acrylic on panel, 9x12, $125

Our neighbors have a humongous tulip poplar that borders our back fence. It took me a while to figure out how to start a painting of it because trees are tricky! I started looking towards outsider artists and how they approach simple but complex forms. A follower pointed me to Maude Lewis, a Canadian outsider artist who also loved her landscape, and looking at her work I found I loved her bright blue skies and limited color palette. I find inspiration by looking at other artists who love to paint the landscape around them.

In real life, this tree is so glorious it kinda drives me crazy. I’m pretty happy with how this one turned out.

Tulip Poplar, acrylic on panel, 8x10, $125

The bottlebrush buckeye we planted as a wee babe finally sent up spikes and it was a sight to see. I say spikes, but they’re more like little yellow flowers on a stem. It was a rainy day when I painted this one, but I’m finding that painting outside in natural light is the best way to see all the colors, rain or not.

Buckeye, acrylic on panel, 8x10, $125

These paintings and more are showing at Community in downtown Athens and if you’re local, I hope you can visit the store. I’m happy to help with sales if you see one you like!

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In quilty news, I made a dent in this Cog and Wheel Quilt by Denyse Schmidt. I’m making the twin size and following her sample to the letter. It’s a great pattern and it’s been fun to work out how to sew curves. If anyone knows of a long-arm quilter in town, please give me a shout in the comments below!

Cog and Wheel in progress in a very messy studio

Denyse Schmidt twin size sample: photo credit http://dsquilts.com/

p.s. I bought all my fabrics from Stash Fabrics in Alpharetta, GA - highly recommend!

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And finally, I can’t wait to share what I’m most recently up to.

I guess you would call these appliqué/embroidery/narratives?

This first one is sort of a memento of our homestead here. I used some very old screenprints from college and other fabric scraps. Still a work in progress, but I couldn’t wait to share it. I think I’ll end up mounting or framing it for the house.

A drawing in my sketchbook inspires this next one.

I like working fast on these and not thinking too hard about decisions. I’m not much of a skilled hand-sewer. I never liked appliqué with its tricky corners and hidden stitches. But for these, I like seeing my bulky stitches and I also like not correcting anything! The threads always lay a bit differently than you expect, so there’s an element of surprise. Especially with the faces, which is the part I love the most.

I’m hoping to have in the shop in the next few weeks if you’re interested.

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And lastly, I want to let you know that just about everything in the shop is on sale right now. So head over to grab up some of my last fabric inventory!

That’s all for now, thank you for reading! I appreciate you all following along with me even though I’m not printing yardage!!

See you soon!

Sara