Art-Filled Morning

I met two friends today to see a special exhibit at Baylor's Mayborn Museum.  The exhibit is called "Sacred Texts, Holy Images" and is an extensive collection of works by Georges Roualt and Marc Chagall.  The Roualts are his Miserere series; the Chagall's, his Bible series.  Words are inadequate to describe either one of these collections.  After about 20 minutes, I realized that to do them justice, I needed to come back and spend much more time than my friends and I had allotted.  In fact, I left the Roualts at that point, having seen perhaps only a fourth of them, and moved to the Chagalls.  Having just been steeped in recent Bat Mitzvah services and activities in our family, I found that these etchings and lithographs resonated powerfully with me.  (Not that the others didn't, but the Roualts were so moving and often disturbing that I felt I needed to be alone to take more time to ponder them.)  The links I've provided are excellent; the one for the Chagalls has a slideshow that includes most, if not all, the ones on display at the Mayborn.  Likewise the link for the Roualts has many of the Miserere series, too.

From the Mayborn we went across the street to the Martin Art Gallery.  Patty had seen a notice of two exhibits there that sounded intriguing.  Well!  What a surprise.  I had not heard of either artist, but all three of us were blown away by them.  One of the artists who had works exhibited was Makoto Fujimura.  His huge, abstract, brilliantly colored works were an anecdote for the black and white etchings and ink paintings in the other museum.  The other artist was Dornith Doherty, who currently lives in Dallas and teachers at North Texas University.  Her works are primarily photographs, but photographs unlike any I've ever seen.  Again, words cannot capture what she produces; only going to her website or Googling images of her works will suffice! 

Of course, photography was not allowed at either museum, so I have no pictures taken by me to display here.  I did, however, scan the brochure from the Martin Museum, which I will add below.  But these small images don't do justice to either artist.  Please click on the links to see much better representations of their works!

Our Halloween Baby: TWO Journal Quilts Honoring Her!

Forty-six years ago this week we were impatiently awaiting the birth of our first child.  She was due on something like October 15, so by this point, she was nearly two weeks overdue.  My mother had come on the due date to help out after we brought the baby home from the hospital, and needless to say, she was getting impatient, too!  Finally on Halloween night, our baby girl Kathy was born.  It was fun for all of our family through the years for her to have a Halloween birthday!  Many, many combination Halloween and birthday parties resulted.  I like to say that all three of our children have "special" birthdays.  Our son and youngest daughter share the same birthday, with Susan arriving on Rob's 5th! 

This year I decided to commemorate both Halloween and Kathy's birthday with a journal quilt.  Actually, the third try has proved to be the charm for this little quilt.  The first one I made, I goofed up by using a damp press cloth while fusing down some ink-jet-printed appliques, and of course, the ink ran and ruined the little quilt.  The second one turned out too"busy" and confusing looking, with just too much going on in such a small space.  But today's worked out just fine!  Actually I used ideas from each of the failures:  the printed words from the first one and the cupcake and little girl witch from the second!

The third journal quilt--my favorite!

After writing this, I checked my emails.  Several friends to whom I sent a picture of my journal quilt #2 seemed to like it!  So I am posting a picture of it, too, for comparison.  I told them that the picture looked better to me than the quilt in person!  I did like what one friend wrote:  Halloween is such a busy, fun-filled holiday, and the "busy" background on this quilt seems to capture that spirit!



The 2nd quilt--first rejected, now included!



Halloween Fabric Postcards

I wrote a post a month or so ago about how to make fabric postcards that didn't need any sewing at all.  I decided today to follow my own directions and do an assembly line production of 4 postcards for my 4 grandkids.  I wish I had timed how long it took me to make these four, but I didn't.  But the task seemed to be done in a jiffy.  I varied my technique a bit, because I had much more fusible fleece than I had Steam-a-Seam sheets.  So I put the fusible fleece on the back of one of the two fabrics on each card, and then I put the Steam a Seam on the back of the other.  (This latter product has the fusible web on both sides.)  Other than that, I followed the steps in my former post.  I still prefer sewn cards.  Of course, I could always go back and top-stitch or blanket-stitch around all edges.  But under the pressure of a deadline and for something quick and easy, these worked out well!
Here are the results:



Here, first, are the fronts--messages written but not yet addressed to the children.  The yellow striped fabric is the same for all four,  but I accidentally stamped the wrong side of one of them--no matter!  (The "beary" pun on Lia's
card refers to the fact that she plans to be Winnie the Pooh for Halloween!)



My favorite one is the purple one, perhaps because I fused a larger motif
onto the rather plain background--a motif cut from the
orange fabric that I used for the two postcards at the right.