HOHOHO, just no snow

Each year for the past 20 years i have held a small event on my deck right before Christmas

 and invited some  my local clients/pals and folks that

 like  the fabric stuff  i make with imagination built in.

These three  lovely ladies all appeared about the same time wearing festive necklaces and jolly smiles.

i just had to get a picture of them enjoying the morning  all shiny and brite.

so temporarily i cover my painting table with a table cloth and set out my wears that i wish to share like some of my quilts and pillows and ornaments and Santas and angels...

i bake cookies the night before and set out a pot of hot water for tea and see who shows up.

That is always a pleasant surprise  as some folks i haven't seen i years, some recently met and some know each other from other situations show up. What most folks have in common is that some  my ornaments are hanging on their trees if they haven't given them away! I am also surprised on how long it takes me to put away Santa's elves work shop  things and return my deck to a living space. 

night bloomimg cereus 

looking very Christmasy!!

I finally finished the " mango-hip to be squared" quilt ! With the sun shining through the upper right side 

it is  so  glowing  and  sweet  and  cuddly  to me.

above

A close up of a block using mostly my hand painted fabrics and some batiks.

i hand guided my Bernina 830 record  for my quilting  and using verigated threads for fun.

i posted  part of the process of building this quilt recently on pumpkin colors post and 

now that it is bound and finished, here she is again.

  a variety of gathered leaves and flowers in Christmas colors

arranged and photographed into a holiday card for last year.

I wish you all a very Merry Christmas

 and 

a most Happy Healthy New Year 2018. 

Thankful 2017

Thankful !

for colorful and healthy food

I am thankful for the fresh food from farmers market and the garden. for friends old and new, near and far, and those that visit the blog. i am grateful for paint and cloth and enough ideas to keep going , and for hope. i am thankful for sunsets bold and  sunsets soft. i am thankful for good health and smart hands and for enough.

 All you need is enough.

 and that is enough.

Happy Thanksgiving to all !

pumpkin colors

Well i have been making and painting and sewing and quilting and  taking some photos when i make some progress. The excess humidity has rendered me lazy and lethargic and prone to wishing for naps for sometime. i finally am getting close to the finish of a mango inspired quilt, a little quiltie!

i have had the blocks pinned to a design board for most of the year.

if you have visited this blog before you might recall i am a painter of bland vanilla colored cotton fabric, turning it in to ALL the colors of the rainbow and saving the scraps and bits from previous work.

scrape pile of possibilities....

sewing random pieces and strips into squares is soothing

yummy threads to sew with!

Bernina  830 Record   hums along

 trimmed up 

 waiting for paint to dry......

 i painted  mangoish color on white background fabric 

for binding.in humid times it takes longer.

While waiting for paint to dry, made a few little guys,

i can use for pin cushions or just for fun.

(if you Google fabric pumpkin pin cushions you will find a ton of tuts.)

mine start with a circle of fabric.

Back in 1976

i had the fun of making this little slightly astigmatic pumpkin jack o lantern

from clay.  I am thankful he has survived this long!

Voltive candles from the drugstore are his favorite  food  to burn.

Have a great pumpkin day!

Be well, Sonja

linking up with

Nina Marie at Creations - Quilts, Art, Whatever by Nina-Marie Sayre

Like Thursday

i like flowers a lot. on Thursday and on  all the remaining days of the week.

This lovely orchid  above and below  was a gift from a friend  and is called "child of the air" or "foxtail orchid" and is a member of the Aerides family of orchids. It only blooms once a year and its in August i can take in its sweet fragrance. Ain't Nature grand!! 

This lovely orchid  above was a gift from a friend  and is called "child of the air" or "foxtail orchid" and is a member of the Aerides family of orchids. It only blooms once a year and its in August i can take in its sweet fragrance. Ain't Nature grand!!

Trichoglottis brachiata
Black orchid

 Night Blooming Cereus

This loquat  against the sky caught my eye.

It is very orangey and very bitter!

I like very much to walk about and see these  wonderful plants and flowers and leaves and drink in their fragrances. While i was observing the Night Blooming Cereus  this morning, i saw bees tickling the tiny filaments while gathering pollen!
Ain't Nature Grand!!
I will attempt to join Lee Anna thursday likes post list

Hi Ho Come to the Fair! Hale'iwa Arts Festival 2017

It's that time again for the Hale'iwa Arts Festival!

Where did the year go??

I don't know as i was painting the fabrics for my arts and then it was July, Again!!

 

(Hale'iwa War Memorial at the entrance  landmark)

July 15th and 16th  2017

Haleiwa Arts Festival  #20 

                 Held at Haleiwa Beach Park, Haleiwa 

           on the  North Shore, Oahu  

Saturday 10 to 6pm       Sunday 10 t0 5pm

 I'll be manning my booth # 98 near the front 

near INFO booth and community tent 

Music and  visual arts, ono foods, kids art tent,

Celtic Pipes and Drums early Saturday

Ian O'Sullivan Sunday  am

and so much more! 

Hope to see you there!

                                                               Last Years Booth Shot, 2016

 with the woman behind the work!

                                                         www.HaleiwaArtsFestival.org

for more info

Happy Birthday Frida!

A while back i did some paintings on coffee filters and made bookmarks of them for an artist trade i did in 2008 with two other artists. Although i had Frida on my mind, as i worked i thought the line up of the three of them reminded me of the Supremes...."Stop in the name of art!" i sang as i finished  these tiny treasures. 

The back shows the quilting through the bookmarks as the bottom layer is fabric . i used colored pencils to bring out the design. Leaf charms are also coffee filters painted and quilted

 and beaded on ribbons to complete the bookmarks. 

i usually write on the back of the bookmarks...."go read in the shade!!!"

Today is Frida Kahlo's birthday.

She is one of my favorite artist's. She lived a colorful life and is a part of history.

Today the Writer's Almanac posted:

Today is the birthday of Frida Kahlo, born in Coyoacán, just outside Mexico City (1907). She was born in her parents' home, La Casa Azul - the Blue House.

When Kahlo was 18, the bus she was riding collided with a streetcar. Her collarbone, spine, and pelvis were fractured. She was bedridden for several months, and it was during this time that she first took up painting. Her mother rigged up an easel that would fit over the bed, and, using a mirror, she painted her first of 55 self-portraits. She showed her early efforts to Mexican muralist Diego Rivera, who encouraged her to keep at it.

Kahlo said: "There have been two great accidents in my life. One was the trolley, and the other was Diego. Diego was by far the worst." She first met the painter Diego Rivera in 1923, when she was 15. He had been commissioned to paint a mural at her school, and she would watch him work for hours. In 1929 they were married. Rivera was notoriously unfaithful and even had an affair with Kahlo's sister Cristina. The couple divorced in 1939, but they remarried soon afterward and remained together until Kahlo's death. They led largely separate lives, and both artists had affairs throughout their marriage.

Kahlo's work was championed by surrealist André Breton and painter Marcel Duchamp, who arranged exhibitions of her paintings, which often combine brilliant colors and striking images from Mexican folk art. She said: "[Critics] thought I was a Surrealist, but I wasn't. I never painted dreams. I painted my own reality."

joining up to off the wall friday

thanxs Nina!

http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Summer Solstice 2017

                            The  gardenias are in full blossom , what a divine fragrance  they give forth!!

                                                        delicate  cilantro,  lacey and fragrant

Red Chard and Spinach from the yard.

Cut it and come back for more!

.

Some veggies  fresh off  the  grill, yummo!

       Summer time summer time, my favorite time!

                                                  Happy summer solstice, aloha, sonja
                                                                                     

sunny saturday

I have been in studio preparing for the Haleiwa Art Festival that i do each July. I have juried into for the past 19  plus years so 2017 will be my 20 th show under those white billowing tents. As much as i love blogging, sometimes and for a period of time, i have no words to share,

 other than inner dialogue going on in my head, around and around. 

My hands are talking to my stuff and inner artyself, mostly. 

And just like any painting or quilt or story or piece of work, it simmers and changes and stops/starts and is resolved  in its' own time frame. It is in  this process where i am problem  creating and solving as it flows and if one stimmies me, i shift to another project because perhaps the next step has  just become clear to me by not thinking about it..but in the shift of thought/mind. Interesting. 

Anyone reading this that is a maker might recognize the joy/agony in the making process. Those who are curious about the finished work might gain a bit of  insight knowing that ideas do not come to most of us fully formed but rather in more fits and starts and parts and wrong turns ...
each one informing the next decision/s.

And so it goes; it is a journey for me and the piece is the log, the diary or proof of the documenting processes. It no longer is/it never never was   an idea.... 

the object is more of the sum of many ideas, it is itself, a quilt, a painting ,a story, a cake....a miracle perhaps and at least something that did not exist before.... 

OKAY, here are some of my favorite tools of the trade:

 cloth, paint, brushes, cutters, large work surface, water, small rocks. 

 This is how most of my work beings.

 And with that seed of a inkling of a possible idea kernal...it begins.

i must add each side track is fun like the

 3 brush containers in the front, 

under the wrapped fabric lurks an empty pint jar that once held my paints/inks.

 love quotes that say to me 

Yes! that is just what i was thinking and someone else has already located 

 and arranged those descriptive words, beautifully !!yea!!

If i am dreaming of creating a quilt using some of my fabric painted cotton 

in every color imaginable, 

i reach for scissors, pins, threads and one of two of my favorite sewing machines,

my Featherweight 221 singer

Noodles  the watch cat  

Noodles 

 or my Bernina 830 record, the old square one.

My current cat assistant and studio investigator, Ruby

I like joining  up fabrics on the FW and quilting free motion on Bernie 

 i have both of them set up in opposite ends in my studio so i can get up and move often.

Also, after machining there is always hand stitching involved and ....
i like to take that outside and sit under a shady tree.

So, do you have favorite tools or helpers in your make spot?

Be well, see well, Sonja