Pat Durbin

It was a fun day at the fair.

I had some ribbons too

This one was in the fine arts dept.

always nice to see ribbons.

People ask where my ideas come from.  That’s a hard question to answer, because they come from so many sources. 

Many of my ideas have to be filtered through the reality of what I can do with fabric.  Some things lend themselves better to painting than to little pieces of fabric sewn together in some way.

Today I’m sharing an intriguing picture I found that I don’t think will become a quilt, but I can appreciate it’s beauty.  Maybe someday I’ll use it in some way.

As usual my inspiration comes from a nature walk…this ribbons of dried weeds, just appealed to me.

No, I’m not always quilting, though many think that.

In the past I’ve made this vegie relish many times…but it’s hard to find a bunch of green tomatoes when you don’t have a garden.  So it’s been several years, and I’ve tried all of the brands in the grocery and not found one near as good.  So I decided it was time to jump into this major (or it seemed major) project. 

I found the green tomatoes at the Farmers’ Market.  It also contains: onions, green and red bell peppers and cabbage. My wonderful husband decided to help and boy was he a great help!.  Here you see him grinding with my Mom’s old grinder.

It was a two day project but I’m so pleased to see those lovely jars of yummy relish lined up on the counter.

International Quilt Festival in Houston is a ! huge ! quilt show.  I’m honored to have two quilts accepted into the Quilts, a World of Beauty contest in early November. The quilts traveling there will be “Into the Woods” and “Cat Tails”. 

This is a special case because it is 8Tree Quilts which are being shipped to American Q Soc show in Grand Rapids. Fiber Art Friends girls are glad to have their challenge accepted into the Ultimate Guild Challenge.  I’m packing them up and shipping them off for the show.

It is unusual to pack 8 quilts into 1 box–but this is how I’ve decided to do it.  There is a center roll about 3″ in diameter.  I will roll the quilts one at a time with the fronts facing outward. Each quilt followed by another until all 8 are in one large roll. 

I save remant strips for the purpose of tying this type of roll. 

So once they are tied I need to put plastic bags around them. 

I use large clear bags from Costco, but they are not long enough, so I do one from each end and then tie again to “seal” the package somewhat. 

This is to help protect the quilts in case accidently they get the box wet somewhere along the line. (We really hope that does not happen).  Then I tape the paperwork to the plastic bag, load it into a sturdy box, and ship it FedEx. 

Oh, yes, we always hope that they make the trip safely all the way to Grand Rapids and back. 

We also hope they will please the judges and win a bit of a prize!

I’m happy to be featured in the current issue of “Art Quilt Collector”.

It is a magazine resently started by the Studio Art Quilt Assoc. or “SAQA”

Studio Art Quilt Associates, Inc. (SAQA) is a nonprofit organization whose mission is to promote the art quilt   through education, exhibitions, professional development, documentation,   and publications. SAQA defines an art quilt as “a creative visual work that is layered and stitched or that references this form of stitched layered structure.

I’ve been a member of this organization for several years and appreciate the work they do to get the “art quilts” out to the viewers in many ways.

Sometimes I enjoy doing just a small quilt project for “between” moments and painting lets me do that without a big investment of time.

Recently I painted 2 small quilts and I’ll share them here with you. 

The first is called Winter Lake–it’s done from a picture taken at Glacier Nat Park.  I loved the colors of the water and trees. 

The second is a remake of a small quilt called “Bailey”.  This cute little dog quilt keeps making its way to other people’s houses and I decided to make a replacement.

Below you can see the start of the painting process.

As usual it took longer than I thought, but it’s finally finished.

Here is the design stage of the star. I kept re-drawing it to get the angles the way I wanted them.The center section of the star is the same glitzy stuff as the area between the sections.

I will admit that all of the “wonderful” ideas that I have don’t turn out quite the way I would have imagined them.  This one is of that variety.  I do like the finished look, but the dreams were better….:)

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