What my cat looks like inside his head.

War memorial
Originally uploaded by heatherradish

Just back from a week in southern Bavaria. I'll be uploading pictures slowly.

This is a war memorial in Freising, the hometown of my friend Roland, who was an excellent tour guide and spoiled me silly with food and beer and scenery.


The rest of the first day's walking tour of Freising is on Flickr.

Miller Park.

Chicago IQF

Adventure in FIBland--the Tollway was solid construction, the signage was misleading, potholes, snow, ugh. But here's the picture of my quilt. It will be on display at Long Beach, CA over the summer and then I'll get it back before the Hall of Fame game.

I read all the artist statements on the Journal Quilts (most people don't look at anything on exhibit for longer than 15 seconds, I've noticed) and studied the composition and construction of the JQs and the major juried exhibits. I'm either slightly better or far, far worse than I think I am.

Despite a good 8 hours of sleep last night, my brain is still swirling with colors.

Finished: Sequined coffee mug

I should have taken a picture of the back; I left the knots showing and drew a radish as a signature; Andy saw that side first when he unwrapped it and was surprised to learn it was "reversible." Häh! It's about 9" x 6".

About halfway through, I wondered if this would be cuter as a fabric applique, with a few sequins for accent.

Now I need something new to do.

Work in Progress?

I decided I hated the fake "Carolina Lily" on my paper fabric, and they peeled right off.





Tulips, much better. The Brewers are 5-1 after a week; I really enjoy listening to Bob Uecker call the games while I play with fabric.

I have been too busy, making cakes and going to parties.

I do not know where the stitching will go on the flowers.

In which I feel like a slacker

Captain Kirk, in beads. WOW. I'd do Red Dwarf, of course...

Over the weekend I sorted through over 900 pieces of fabric, not including bits smaller than a fat eighth (which went immediately into the scrap bucket). There's one box left.

I started a new sequined coffee mug with fabrics from stash. I'd like to finish by the first week of April to give to my friend Andy for his birthday, so I won't fill in the background.

Note sleeping assistant on cutting board.

Don't know what I'm paying him for.

These pieces aren't going to sew themselves.

That's odd.

Quilt National sent me an entry form.

Yeah, like I'm going to have anything worthy by August.


Haven't been making much of anything; I've decided two years is too long for the spare bedroom to be unworkable piles of boxes and I'm trying to organize. I've even given away synthetic fabrics and I'm making a pile of 100% cotton to donate and/or sell cheap on eBay (not sure brown 19th century reproductions make the best donations to groups who make quilts for babies or teach inner-city girls to sew, you know?). Bryan was here this past weekend so no progress was made, but I have big hopes for the coming weekend.

Oh, I won $100 in a Scrabble tournament in Indiana in February. Saturday I scrupulously spent every last penny in a local quilt shop having a 29% off Leap Year sale. I know this sounds odd coming after a paragraph about clearing out fabrics I know I will never use--all those 19th century repros, what was I thinking??--but it's mostly thread, backings for unfinished objects, and three yards of black and white fabric patterned with printed circuit boards. I will never grow out of my fascination with PCBs.

Work in Progress?

Yesterday I made some additional pieces of paper fabric (same novel, no paint, looks exactly like this) before deciding what the first unpainted piece needed was a modified Carolina Lily.

It's fused down--the PVA gets smooth when you melt it--and I might be able to peel off the fused pieces if I decide I hate it. I might hate the green triangles, they're too big...

I have no idea how or why I embarked on this--maybe because the crappy novel was about people from South Carolina? I don't like primitives or faux folk art, why did I start making some?


Less perplexing is a new sequined piece featuring coffee. The scale doesn't seem right; there's a lot of empty space. I said I wanted to make things bigger than the things I finished last year...

Finished: "Indiana, October 2004."

One of my goals for 2008 is to finish three objects. The first was painted in Susan Shie's week-long class in Indianapolis in 2004. At the time, I was on vacation from a job programming automatic-steering software for green tractors--the yellow bump on the roof received GPS information from a satellite (shown in the upper right-hand corner) and this information was used to send commands to the hydraulic steering to keep the tractor in a straight line while the operator watches the implement gages (or, let's be real, the TV mounted on the corner post).

I hated the work environment, but I loved being out on the tractors driving around to collect and analyze data.

The piece hangs in my hallway, next to the other pieces I painted that week and finished at home.

Details of my cat, who was a teenager at the time, and myself.

One down, two to go.