As one door closes another one opens....

Last Saturday on my birthday I had the opportunity to spend the day with Katie Pasquini Masopust taking her From Watercolour to Quilt 2 day workshop.

 Katie is just full of ideas and direction and you get a lot accomplished in the first of the two days.

 I decided to chose a limited palate of colours and soon realized that the red was not going to be included.    We used both rubber cement and masque pen as resists.  We blew bubbles across our pieces and had lots of fun seeing what evolved.

 Bubble wrap and plastic wrap were applied to add visual texture to your piece.

 This simple exercise of painting the rims of different sized cups made the above technique.  On Sunday we switched it up and did a one day Fractured Landscapes class, here are the fabrics I brought along and sorted into the seven steps Katie likes to use.  The flash went off in the second picture so the colours are a bit washed out.

You might notice they are the same colours in my watercolour class...I had a plan.  The photo I'll use for the landscape will not be in these colours, but I will use them in my practise piece.

This is the piece that I will fracture and make into a quilt.  You might notice the sun peeking out from a very foggy low cloud day.

Monday we were back to the painting workshop.  We had cropped and traced onto acetate our images we wanted to enlarge.  My original tracing was about 1" x 4" and it was enlarged to 9" x 37".

 Katie shared with us some of her images both painted and photographed so we could see how she turns the edges and then machine appliques them onto the background.

 Occasionally she might use some Ultrasuede but almost all the images you see here have turned edges.

 I had some fun choosing fabrics for my piece and by the end of the second day I had some great progress made.  I'm going to choose all my fabrics before stitching any down.  Mine was made from a resist piece and it will have some strong white images.  The black is from the 0.01 Pigma pen being enlarged and will not be part of the quilt.

 At guild on Tuesday Katie did a great PowerPoint program and then shared some of her quilts with us.

 The blue/green fern leaf one is one of my favourites.

 Friday was a glorious day with sunshine and crocuses in full bloom.

One of my favourites, the orange witch hazel is all of its glory.

 

 Yellow witch hazel being visited by a bee.

 Fresh snow on the mountains.

 Snowdrops in Rita's Garden.

 A double drop.

 Low tide on the river as the sun is getting low on the horizon.

The door that closed was on my job, Friday was my last day of vacation and I have decided to open the door to retirement, excuse me while I check what is on the other side...

Frosty morning and a forest of trees.

January 3rd the morning started out foggy, but a short time later the sun came out and armed with my camera I set out for a walk.

The remaining roses looked like they had been painted with a frosty edge.

The sun highlighted the details of the petals of the flowers.

Walking along to the River Market the fog started to move away.

One of the Palm trees looked like it was made of glass.

An hour later I walked back towards home and took this picture.

Then I turned around and the fog was still present.

The walkway was frosty and slippery but with the sun shining made some interesting designs.

This skeleton of a leaf looked lovely with the frost.

A week later the witch hazel is starting to put forth splashes of colour.

My hoochy mama block forest of polka dot and striped tree trunks are in Santa Monica, I wonder what will come home to me?

Blogger is making it difficult to post photos, I hope this works out.

2013 New Beginnings; a new word CREATIVITY.

One last look last night at the sky showed some lovely pink highlights; what a lovely way to end the year.

This year is full of promise of creativity if the sky is any inspiration.  Creativity in living, planning, photographs, quilting and anything else you choose.

Creativity is my word for 2013, what is yours?

Last look at 2012.

I like the look of this photo of the paper lanterns hanging in the tree with the Christmas lights, the clouds parted and you could just see a bit of the sun on Christmas eve.

 Yesterday my mom and I wandered around Granville Island and I saw these very whimsical bird houses.  I wonder how the birds living there would feel?

 I think Oscar Wilde said it right.

A look across False Creek towards the Burrard Street Bridge, you can see the West End and Stanley Park beyond, unfortunately you couldn't see the fresh snow on our local mountains because of the clouds.

 Looking across into the downtown area.  The little ferry in the picture above takes you around False Creek and over to the downtown area.

 Today we had a mix of rain and snow and then the sun came out for a brief visit, it's last for 2012.

 Two crow friends checking out all the people strolling along the boardwalk.

 The roses are still blooming despite the date being December 31st!

 Looking out from my deck across the Fraser River and the Alex Fraser Bridge.

My word for this year will be creativity, I hope you enjoy the coming New Year.

Merry Christmas

Hope you have a very Merry Christmas with family and friends.

                                                    All the best for the coming new year.

December Snow and roses

Tuesday morning the snow was falling but by the time I got to work there was none to be seen.  Wednesday morning we had a heavier wetter snow fall and this is what it looked like at about 0830 in the morning.  I'm standing under the awning at the front door looking up the drive.

 Looking in the opposite direction.

 Some red berries being covered in snow.  Look how big the snowflakes look when caught by the camera flash!

 Just after ten i went for a bit of a slippery walk around the parking lot and looked back at the main entrance to the hospital.

 Those red berries in the wet heavy snow.

 Some pink winter flowering forsythia.

 Appropriately one of our clerks Judy, brought us some lovely snow decorated cookies to enjoy.

 Yesterday I came across these lovely painted windows.

 What a lovely job this painter does.

 Red rose still trying to bloom on December 22nd!

 Some pink ones keeping him company.

 Someone decided to make the pampas grass look festive for the season.

The snow is still around at higher elevations, but at river's side is it pretty much gone.