Woe to Woes!

I just realized I had two posts about woes. I want to post a positive blog to counter the negative ones. I will be at the Michigan Quilt Network next week in Lansing, Michigan. It should be a very fun time with my two classes. My mom is going with me since she also enjoys these quilt shows. So much shopping, so little time! I will be teaching a class using the 2" squares again and hopefully soon to be the last. The other class is the fusing/fabric painting using my patterns. Then it's off to France to visit my friends in Yvoire outside of Geneva, Switzerland. This is a wallhanging I did a couple of years ago of Yvoire on Lake Geneva or Lac Leman. When I get back, it's on to Toronto to teach a couple more classes at the Creativ Festival. So it's going to be a busy time. Good to be busy! I will take more pictures in France for more artwork. I really love fusing/fabric painting and create my art for its beauty and not for the hidden meaning. I will work on my little mini-blends while I'm there since that technique is very portable and very fun too!

Sewing Machine Woes!

Have any of you out there had sewing machine troubles? I guess if you sew at all, then you have! I have had a Bernina Artista 180 for at least 10 years. I was then in Houston last year teaching and of course visited the Bernina booth where I talked to one of the reps there. I also took the mini training on the 830 they were having. Of course I fell in love with it! What an expensive machine though. So I decided I would buy the 820 when it came out because it was less expensive and didn't have the embroidery unit which I never use anyway. I also already had a high end Pfaff which was not very cooperative on the free-motion using different threads. So I sold that on Ebay for what I wanted and decided to go through with the sale of the 820. S0oooooooo now I have that at my house. I decided to give my 180 to my daughter and just keep the 820 since it should do everything I could ever want a machine to do! Well, unfortunately I am not having that good of luck with it. It breaks the thread while free-motion sewing. I always use mono-filament in the bobbin to do free-motion sewing in my 180 and it works beautifully and always has! So now the 820 is in the shop to see if they can make it cooperate with mono-filament in the bobbin. So far, no luck. I am happy I still have my 180 to go back to. This is the piece I tried and tried to get my 820 to work on free-motion. The back looks pretty bad. The top doesn't look very good either. I used white thread in the bobbin and it pulled toward the top where I changed directions. I consider myself an expert free-motion sewer. I have improved dramatically and have won the Best Wall Quilt prize from American Quilters' Society Nashville Show in 2007 for a piece with tons of free-motion sewing. So anyway we'll see what Bernina does about this machine. I love the 820 because it has a huge space under the head like a commercial machine. I don't want to go to a free-arm because I don't have the space for it. So let me know if you have any suggestions or comments on this topic!

Creating Mini-Blends

My new thing is what I call mini-blends. I learned about this technique from Ann Loveless who calls them confettis. Hers are beautiful and mine are a little different than hers. She teaches and I teach. This is a picture of my studio while I'm making these little pieces. Such a big mess for such small projects! I have been using a lot of my 2" squares I have from doing fabric blending with them for many years giving me lots of variety. They are fun, and it doesn't take too long to create one. I have had lots of experience blending fabrics over the years. I cut up one of the 2" squares into at least 16 small pieces - mini-squares. Then fuse them to a fabric backing and add the fabric painted birch trees. Each piece is 5" X 7". Once they are designed I glue them to an 8" X 10" mat board and put some in frames and others in sleeves to sell. Something fun to do with all those scraps!

This is my Provence Country design without any birch trees. It's fun to do some without them too. Check out more of them at my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/. I have added this as a class but haven't had any of them yet. A few of them could be created in one class!

Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I always think that I can't have much of interest to say. I have been busy and went to Paris in the spring for nearly two weeks. Only five days in Paris, but also went to northern France and to Giverny, the home of Monet! How beautiful his garden was. But I did a really stupid thing. I forgot to take my charged spare battery for my camera, and so of course the one in it died. No back up battery at Monet's garden. Inexcusable! I bought two disposable cameras. The pictures were tolerable, not great. They will have to do until I can go back there and take more pictures! Here is a picture of the garden. I did figure out how to trick my camera to think it still had a little battery juice left. If you take it out, and then put it back into the camer, it will take one or two pictures. I think I got about eight decent pictures this way. The home page of my website has a piece I created on it from one of my photos. More to come thought.

Computer Woes and New Art

This has been a difficult two weeks for me. My computer hard drive croaked so badly that I can't get anything off of it. Starting over is very difficult after so many years. I had backed up my files about 11 months ago. So unfortunately everything I have done in the past since then was lost! I had a lot of photos for work I was going to do. Pieces I finished and sold are gone. Business contacts and personal contact information is lost. It's a very hard lesson to learn. Then last weekend my website went down along with my email. So whatever I had gained back in email and contacts is rendered useless for now. Sometimes life gets frustrating! Amazing how dependent are on computers these days. And I have become addicted to my email. So I started a new personal email through google. I'm hoping they will be around for a while. It's lenorehcrawford@gmail.com for anyone who is interested. So enough of the old news. On to the new.

The photo of my piece, Tuscan Country, was created a couple of weeks ago for the Cleary University in Ann Arbor for their fund raiser. It was a fun piece to do after having so many computer problems. I needed to relax and create. I am also excited to mention that one of my patterns, Hybrid Lily, is in the current Keepsake Quilting catalog. They are also going to offer my patter, Red Poppies.
I just want to remind people to back-up your work often! It's a tragedy when you don't. Of course there are greater tragedies in life, we all know. But why add more to them if you can avoid it? Please pass my email address to anyone who might be interested. I will keep working on the people to get my website going! Happy Fusing!

Workshops/Lectures

Last night I talked to a great group of ladies in Interlochen, Michigan. Nothing like a group of 77 women just wanting to hear you spout about your own work! Every time I talk to a new group I learn something from them. It's very refreshing, and now I don't even get nervous when I have to do it. Okay, maybe a little. I will be giving a three hour mini-workshop this weekend, Sunday afternoon, in Ann Arbor at the Viking Store which is a wonderful fabric shop. I'm sort of like a kid in a candy shop. Hope you can come if you are in the area. Just call (734) 761-3094 and sign up. I will also be giving a lecture in Saginaw on February 18 at 7:00 pm at the Piecemakers Quilt Guild. If you are interested in that one, call Lori Kruska at 989-792-3685. My year is very full for which I am very grateful with workshops and lectures. Next year is starting to fill up too. For more information on my workshops and schedule go to my website at http://www.lenorecrawford.com/. Here is a picture of my newest pattern. To order it you can go to my website and pay through Paypal which I managed to set up for purchasing patterns. That's another whole Blog subject. Thanks for your interest in my work.

Dyeing Fabrics with Quilt University

The last two weeks I have been dyeing fabrics with an online class at Quilt University. What fun! I love the way the orange turned out! Of course I love orange! I'm hoping to make lots of fabrics I can use in my art quilts. The right textural prints are difficult to find. These are like batiks. I bought some Kona PFD (prepared for dyeing) cottons from Dharma Trading Co. and MX reactive dye powders from Pro Chemical. The rest was easy. It's very simple to do if you have the right formulas. The class is taught by Marjie Walker. She is a great teacher, and the class discussion is very helpful. I would highly recommend it. These fabrics will definitely end up in my pieces. I'm also currently working on a new pattern which will be finished in the next couple of days after which I will post a picture of it for everyone to see. I'm very excited about it too. More to come...

Exciting News!

I'm very excited and thankful to the judges to announce that I have won First Place Art, Pictorial at Road to California for my piece called On Winter's Coming. It was created from a very old photo of my father's farm he took about 40 years ago. He wrote a poem even longer ago than that called On Winter's Coming. So I put the two together and created this art quilt. This piece is completely fused. After I finished the piece I realized it would have been easier to design if I have put all the diamonds in the background. Instead I pieced in all the pieces of the diamonds around the the trees. I also decided to use Sliver for the free-motion top-stitching to make it look like sparkling snow as it is in the winter on very cold days which we are having right now! It's always great to win prizes for our pieces. I am planning to give it to my son who's great grandfather actually built this farm many years ago. He doesn't know about it yet though so no one tell him!