Tangled Stitch

Hand Embroidery on Muslin, currently at Katbird Shop, Schenectady NY. Hi all! Hope you are all well. I've been busy stitchin up a storm. Trying to stay on a roll so my posts have been suffering a bit. I've got a great book to suggest to all my artist friends. It's called Creative Time and Space: Making Room for Making Art by Rice Freeman-Zachery. It's been helping with my time management issues and getting my focus on. It's filled with beautiful artwork to inspire. Nicely written and wonderful advice for when you are stuck or just need to feel understood. It's truly wonderful to realize that all those pesky little issues are experienced by such talented people and the idea that matters the most about the book is they conquered them all. I haven't always been the most efficient person when it comes to time management and getting unstuck and this book is filled with valuable lessons. I'm working on a new small framed piece which I'll share ...

Hand embroidery on watercolored fabric. This piece originally was meant to be a cross, but as my friend Cheryl commented a lot of my crosses end up being something other then their original intention. It was originally supposed to hang vertically and now I think I like it more horizontally. I guess it is a true symbol of an intersection. Some times we travel along in a straight line knowing exactly where we are going, some times we travel along and turn where we are supposed to but the most interesting travels we have are when we come to an intersection with no specific direction intended. These intersections happen during travels, in our work life and during our lifetime. I have taken the road to a different outcome many times. Sometimes they are just necessary experiences along my life path and sometimes they are complete detours where I just got lost, but either way they were a learning experience. They taught me something I was supposed to know about myself, whether I wanted ...

Flower Heart Hand Embroidery on Muslin Hi All! This piece is currently residing at New Leaf Gallery located at 30 Beekman Street in Saratoga Springs, NY. It is joined there by a few other pieces which I dropped off the other day while out with my friend Cheryl. I am excited to try something new at New Leaf as I previously only showed the bags and scarves. Please go and see this beautiful new gallery on Beekman. It is chock full of beautiful wares and they have a very interesting artist in the gallery now. It's a wonderful place to have my work. It's been a quite hectic week as my son returned to college this week and we went through schedule hell, but it would take me most of the time I have available to explain it. But as of this moment he has a schedule he likes and he has all of his books so hopefully he will have a wonderful semester. I've been working a lot. Besides going to New Leaf I went to visit Kathy this week and brought her some beautiful framed pieces a...

Busy, busy, busy but wanted let you know that these three hand embroidered pieces are now at the Katbird Shop looking for a new home. The Katbird Shop is located at 425 Liberty Street, Schenectady. It's a couple of doors away from Pinhead Susan's which has wonderful food so stop in for a bite while you are there. I'm going to go read my bloggy friends and then it's computer off and back to work. Hopefully things will calm down a little bit here and I'll be able to post more often soon.

Hand embroidered butterfly on watercolored muslin. Someone Saved My Life Tonight by Elton John When I think of those East End lights, muggy nights The curtains drawn in the little room downstairs Prima Donna lord you really should have been there Sitting like a princess perched in her electric chair And it's one more beer and I don't hear you anymore We've all gone crazy lately My friends out there rolling round the basement floor And someone saved my life tonight sugar bear You almost had your hooks in me didn't you dear You nearly had me roped and tied Altar-bound, hypnotized Sweet freedom whispered in my ear You're a butterfly And butterflies are free to fly Fly away, high away, bye bye I never realised the passing hours of evening showers A slip noose hanging in my darkest dreams I'm strangled by your haunted social scene Just a pawn out-played by a dominating queen It's four o'clock in the morning Damn it listen to me good I'm sleeping with myse...

Hand Embroidery on Watercolored Muslin. I'm still experimenting and in the spaghetti tossing stage. Embroidery brings me peace so I think that's a good place to start. The most important thing is to keep working. Not get so caught up in the weeds. In other words bring peace to myself and others by spending as much time as I can embroidering. I've been listening to Death Cab by Cutie(plans) again. I think my family will be hearing it in their sleep but it is such a peaceful folksy CD. Great background music and relaxing. The weather is frightful outside and now I have to jump back into the real word and go grocery shopping so I think this is where I sign off for now. I'll come and read my bloggy friends later.

Hand Embroidered Heart on Batik. This piece had a life of it's own. I saw this beautiful batik and had to find a project for it. Since Valentine's Day is almost upon us and the world is thinking with their hearts I decided to make a Blue Heart. I then decided to make a spider web pattern in the middle of the heart while I was stitching, I noticed what a nice contrast there was between the blues that I was using and the lovely turquoise that was used to outline so I decided to forgo the filling in and outline the spaces with the lovely turquoise color. I'm very pleased with the results. I have joined a Facebook page for slow cloth working and am inviting my facebook friends who stitch to join. It is a look at the slow stitchery of embroidery and quilting and other needleworking mediums discussing their place in society now. Years ago when our grandmothers were young, needleworking was a discipline that many people learned and appreciated. As society gets faster and f...

This is a hand embroidered Flag Heart on tea stained muslin.

Hi All! This is one of the quiltlets I spoke of in my last post. It's one of those spaghetti things, where I try something different and see if it takes. I loved making this little valentine and then inspired by spirit cloth I tried something just a wee bit larger and have abandoned it. As totally relaxing and wonderful as it is it's just not me. So little pieces maybe, but my total admiration for the amount of work it takes to make an entire quilt is unending. I finished one of my unfinished projects today(beneath the surface) and will be framing it soon and submitting it to a gallery. I am thinking of changing it's name. More information later. I'm now working on a blue heart. I'm making it for the Katbird Shop, just a small diversion from the normal red heart in honor of Valentines Day. I spoke to the wonderful Kathy today and told her that I have a great feeling about the New Year and the new decade. I'm having a wonderful and relaxing time stitchi...

Thanks to everyone for the very thoughtful comments about the blog post regarding my mother. It meant so much to me, you will never know how much. Sometimes when I write a blog post I wonder if I am saying too much. When I started blogging it was mostly an art blog to promote my work, but I know I enjoy reading blog posts where people share their lives so I've started to write about my life too. Some posts are easier then others, Sunday's blog post wasn't very easy. So thanks once again for the overwhelming response. Thanks for the comments about my heart piece also. One post in particular really meant a lot to me and that was my Cousin Sal's post. He was my mother's godchild and she loved him very, very much. He has always been a special presence in my life as he and his sister LuAnn used to spend summers at my house. As I was thinking about his post I remembered how LuAnn(who I adored and looked up to, very cool even at 10)used to make me her partner in ...

Sun Heart is hand embroidery on watercolored muslin using various shades of red. Today is the twenty seventh anniversary of the death of my mother. She was a beautiful, artistic, loving soul who taught me how to be a mother, how to love, and how to survive adversity and tragedy. Her dream was to be an artist and instead I was lucky enough to have her as a mother. I hope in some way I am paying tribute to her through my life both as a mother and an artist.

Happy New Year to one and all! After reading all the wonderful blogs I follow (and now follow on my blog dashboard) the general theme seems to be action(thanks Dale Ann), realization(thanks Patti), and creativity(thanks everyone). To me all these themes mesh together as moving forward, constantly. Resting only to gain enough energy to keep moving forward. I have been realizing lately that I waste too much time thinking or not trying to think. I think in the New Year it is time to take action and to become creative at everything. Making my home reflect more accurately how I feel today rather then how I felt yesterday. To take the creative pieces I'm not quite fond of and either change them or find a way to get rid of them. To appreciate the quality of mind and body when I am feeding the muse. To move my art and my business forward and to take care of the vessel I live in so it will serve me to be with my family as long as possible. A very important part of feeding the muse...