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Sunday Stash #2
My BFF sent me a huge box of fabric! I haven't even had the time to go through it all yet.
Some of the things she sent are appropriate for the season!
I also needed to order an exact thread for the quilt I'm working on and couldn't help picking a few things up from Fabric.com.
I love these nautical prints, but they are so large! Not sure how to incorporate them in to my work...
While we were in Tennessee we visited the Cheekwood Gardens and estates. I was told Winter was not the best time to visit, but I wasn't the least bit disappointed. There was a fresh sprinkling of snow and ice on the ground and no one was out except us and the animals.
Im not sure what kind of grasses these were, but they were pretty neat. Quilt inspiration?
As well as many themed gardens, Cheekwood has a sculpture path that winds it's way around the outside of the grounds. I didn't catch most of the artist names, but it was fun to "discover" sculpture in the cold Winter woods.
It was startling to come upon this great creature/structure in the middle of the woods.
We saw four deer making their way along the same path we were.
James Turrell was a highlight of the sculpture walk.
It will be very exciting to go back in a different season and see how much the landscape changes. There were tons of squirrels and birds out but I bet there are even more in spring and summer. I most want to visit the Water Garden and Japanese Garden when we return.
We saw quite a few interesting birds but practically no feathers! Shame, I was looking forward to bringing some home.
There's a ridiculous amount of lichen in TN. I wish I could have taken some. I don't think it would survive the plane ride.
Inside the estate, they had a xmas tree display that was fairly uninspired (although, I hear it's been far better past years) and a small museum space. The exhibit was something to do with the early 90s and had a few interesting pieces, including one where a woman answered personal ads (pre-internet) and then requested the men eat birthday cake with her while being filmed. I didn't think too much of it at the time, but I have found the images strangely haunting me this week. We also got to see a Yoko Ono piece that incorporated some of her earlier work to make a new one. I think I need a book of her art.... but I think I missed the xmas deadline!
I have been lucky to stumble upon some of Yoko Ono's work recently. It often appears in unexpected places.
Last week we went to visit family in Tennessee. We spent most of the time catching up with family and friends but we were able to squeeze in some thrifting and eating.
The place I most wanted to visit to eat was The Nashville Biscuit House. We went there directly after landing and it did not disappoint. I tried to get back almost every day after that, but it was not in the cards. We also hit the Barista Parlor in East Nashville. It was almost unbearably pretentious. But I did have a killer cappuccino. For a big family dinner we ate at Cock Of The Walk, where they throw your cornbread in the air! To round out the southern eating we had awesome ribs at Bar B Cutie.
All that food and the only pic I snapped was Waffle House. It was my first time there!
We managed to hit 4 Goodwills, 2 Southern Thrift, Music City Thrift and Thriftsmart.
This cute homemade Easter basket with bunny and eggs could not come home, but was good for inspiration. I was tempted by this old singer, but it was in bad shape and crammed into an ugly modern sewing table.
We bought so much stuff that we had to send a package home. But we were able to bring most of it back in our carry-on, thankfully!
We bought mostly fabric and toys. Of course.
I found a bunch of vintage fabric for my stash, and we got some animal baskets.
I am already thinking of our next trip... We didn't even get to any of the quilt shops on our list!
Cleaning up the sewing room I found some ginghams. I want to make them into one busy quilt some day.
most of these are thrifted and vintage.
I also uncovered some treasures that we picked up in Vermont last Summer.
Vintage bell with a nice chime, New Jersey souvenir spoon, and a crazy gemstone that is much more sparkly in person.
November can be an up and down month but over all this was a good one. It balanced itself out nicely. This november had some of the coldest days we've seen this year. Bitter and biting. But they were tempered by crisp, bright sun.
Our friends from Tennessee came to visit for almost two weeks. It's always great to be shaken out of my routine. Visitors want to see things, do things!! So we did a lot of new things, new restaurants, new galleries, new landmarks. But I also got to show them all our favorite spots, all the things we like to do. So it didn't get overwhelming. It was wonderful that our friend is a craftsman and seamstress. She showed us some fun projects, how to better use the sewing machine, and nerded out about fabric.
Then there's Thanksgiving! This year, it went perfectly!! I got to see both sides of my family with little to no fuss. We also got to spend one night Down The Shore.
Here are some instagram moments from the 11th month.
1) Lovely windowsill at work. Still time for pumpkins! 2) Now that the weather is cold, I can snuggle up under the quilt I'm working on with Tom. 3) The heron at Green-Wood Cemetery is looking a little chilly. 4) First eggnog of the season in my Grandfather's bird mug.
1) Watcher spotting never goes out of season. 2) Buying fabric at Brooklyn General then having a cocktail and reading a novel at Fort Defiance is a pretty perfect day. 3) We stayed at our friend's lovely beach house on the night of Thanksgiving. 4) Flounder has the right idea about Fall.
A few weeks ago I took the long trek into Manhattan (The City). Besides visiting the quilt gallery at The City Quilter, I also got to see some great Richard Serras that are up in Manhattan right now.
This piece was one that you can walk inside of. Sometimes the strange perspectives and energies can be quite intense.
I had only seen one other exhibit of Serra's, earlier this year, at DIA: Beacon. A trip to that museum is well worth the beautiful train ride upstate and highly recommended for lovers of modern art. Richard Serra's work is really amazing and I'm so happy that there is so much of it on view at the moment.
Another gallery had more simple slab work, although the materials are very minimalist, there is still an amazing amount of texture.
These works were all exhibited by the Gogasian Galleries in Chelsea, Manhattan, NY (http://www.gagosian.com/artists/richard-serra/artist-exhibitions).
We ended up walking around and popping into a few more galleries that day. We got to see a lovely light art exhibit where, sadly, I didn't catch the name of the artist or gallery. The exhibit was small and simple, using mirrors and light to make beautiful reoccurring patterns. Very quilterly.
I didn't get any good pictures of the mirror works, unfortunately.
Although going into The City can be a chore, trips like these make it easy to see why I should be doing it more often.
There are new items in the shop! Please click "shop" above and check them out! I plan to add more items over the holiday weekend, so check back often.
I hope to add more product shots to the shop soon, as well. This wintery light is not the best for indoor photos.
As I stated in my previous post, I'm not good at the whole computer thing. Squarespace (http://www.squarespace.com) makes it easy to design a simple and clean website, that's why I chose it. But when it came to making my shop, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. I decided to go with Bigcartel (http://bigcartel.com/). So you will see that when you go to shop, it now redirects you to my Bigcartel site.
I'm still working on the shop, making it how I want it and exploring what the site has to offer. Things like packaging and post, combining purchases, and are still in the experimental stages. If you have any questions, please contact me on either site.
So far I'm very happy with both sites, and can't wait to learn more and become better at working with both. I'm looking forward to more changes in the future, like having my own domain name. I hope to gain more followers to the blog and to sell more items and be able to take commissions.
As always, thanks for visiting Mad Cat Quilts. Your suggestions, comments and insights are always welcome, as well.
I'm most definitely not a tech person.
Ask anyone who knows me. They can tell you.
This website is still very new to me. I'm working out a blog and shop schedule. I was hoping to have a shop update as of Monday but it didn't work out that way. I am trying to get into a routine and hope to have it set by next week. My new plan is to have the shop updated by Tuesday 11/24 around 2pm. Plenty of time to get some quilted creations by xmas.
I've made a bunch of oversized "old lady" pot holders or table protectors to sell. This is part of the Butterfly Series.
Thanks for bearing with me as I stumble along here at Mad Cat Quilts! I would love to hear any feedback on the site so far.
Last week, our good friends were in town from Tennessee. It's always nice to have visitors in bc we get to do things that we often neglect living here. Or things that we have wanted to do, but haven't made the time for.
One of our friends is a fiber artist so I was able to easily persuade her to visit The City Quilter (http://www.cityquilter.com/). I had been wanting to go there for a while, but rarely make it into "the city" (Manhattan). I hadn't realized there was a gallery there and we were lucky to stumble upon a quilt exhibit by Cécile Trentini. Her work was quite varied but I fell in love with her use of unexpected materials, such as daily household items.
A lovely geometric quillt made with coffee filters!
This one is tea bags!
We bought some lovely fabric, too, of course!
Always room for more fat quarters in lovely prints! The maroon on top is actually a oversized yard that I plan to use as a quilt back one day.
I don't usually go in for novelty prints but these were too fun to pass up! The black is already covered with cat hair, of course!
I'm glad I was spurred into seeing this shop by my friends, and I won't wait until I have more visitors to go again!
The more I think about it, the more I realize that I knew a lot of quilters growing up. They were all around me, casually stitching away. It was common place to see someone making a hexie pillow here, or a quilted eyeglass case there, making squares for collaborative sci-fi quilts or some such. Women were hand stitching, or machine stitching or walking around fabric shops pretty much all my life. It's not surprising that I was inspired by them.
I'm trying to figure out how SquareSpace works. Here is a test.
A corner of the first quilt I made. Cat hair: no extra charge.
We will see how this works.