MQS... honorably!

Yay me!  Last week, while at MQS, Wonderlust got some new bling... an Honorable Mention ribbon!  I was tickled, actually still am!  My husband laughs at me and tells me that an Honorable Mention is really "first official loser" -- NOT!  It means I did well, that my quilt was recognized.  Seriously, I am nuts -- my award could be for "Ugliest Quilt Evahhh", and I'd still be tickled pink winning a ribbon!

So here is Wonderlust wearing her new bling!  Thanks Claudia Pfeil for the photo!

I don't want to multiple-post the same thing, but I must share this one, which is now an absolute favorite, provided by Lisa Sipes...

Yes, that is Lisa (better known as McLisa on Facebook) crazy-quilty-girl-loving all over my quilt!  And if you haven't seen any of Lisa's work check out her blog -- although I would find that hard to believe.

In the meantime I'm crazy-seriously working on a new small wholecloth, not "Mama's Got the Blues", a totally different one.  I'll let you know more as I know more... scary huh?

Oh and also trying to "rush" my Journeys Thru Art projects.  So that we might possibly show them in November... stress "trying to rush" but in a good way, not a crazy-must-finish-way.

Have a happy day quilties!

10 things you might not know about me...

Okay, here goes:

This is going to be fun!  Hopefully I won't scare anyone away with my freaky oddities.  Some of you may know some of these things, but I don't think anyone will know all ten!

I have extreme ADD.  Really!  Okay, that one was free and doesn't count toward the ten!  I refuse to medicate as it removes (kills) any and all creativity that is bouncing around in my head.

1 - I am ambidextrous.
I write with my left hand, but I am right-hand dominant.  I can cut with both, actually I can write with both but prefer my left.  I draw and paint with both, but prefer to eat with my left.

2 - I hate lightning.
Seriously!  Scares the sh*t outta me.  Not to freak you all out, but I can "feel" lightning in the air.  Guess that's part of my sensitive-ness.  I am getting better with it, but it has taken all of my life to get to the point that I can tolerate it.  While my husband stands in the garage watching it, my skin is tingling and twitching all over and must go into the house to deal with my freaked-ness

3 - I sleep with my eyes open.
Okay, let me rephrase.  I fall asleep with my eyes closed and then while I'm sleeping I open them, about halfway.  Freaky right?  It took me a while to figure this oddity out -- people kept talking to me and waking me up while I was sleeping and then acting all confused when I said I was sleeping.

4 - I curse/swear, a lot.
Sometimes to the point that drunken sailors tell me to keep it down!  Okay, that was one that almost everyone knows... but not quite, so not a freebie!

5 - I can out blink the air puff.
Yep, the eye doctor hates me!  It usually takes 4-5 tries and my total concentration to not blink.  I have a red sticker on my file... it's not nice, the second eye is actually worse.

6 - Favorite movie of all time... "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".
I love him, his silly voice, stupid behavior, he fits right in with the cartoon characters in my head.  I will pretty much stop everything to sit down and watch when it is on.  Now, I don't actually go out of my way to look for it on TV, but if flipping through the channels and its on, I'm done.

7 - Obsessed with butter cream icing.
Yep, and since this diet it is pretty much ALL I can think about!  I love it, could put it on anything, cakes, cookies, spoons!  I have been good and only had it once since my diet.  The hubby had a cupcake and I got the icing, it was heaven!

8 - Serious fear of fire.
Beyond normal... okay, just like everything else!  But I can't even cook on a grill.  Apparently, in a past life I was a witch and burned at the stake during the witch trials.  Really... too many things that we won't even go there!

9 - I am 5'6" tall.
Most people who haven't met me think I am tall, people have have met me think I am taller than I am.  I guess I just have a stature that appears tall.  With the national average at 5'5" - I am so very close to average, well, except for my weirdness.

10 - My love was the result of a blind date.
Joe and I met on a blind date, set up by his father and my friends mom.  Long story short, we met, had our date, and he came back at 5am to take me to breakfast.  We've been together ever since!

Okay, so now you know a little more about me, not all of it is weirdness... hope you aren't scared away!

JTA 2012 Challenge - Cubism

Well, when you leave something until the last minute it usually bites you in the ass.  And, it did!  I did not start working on my cubism block until a few days before it was due.  Not smart, not smart at all!  I rushed it, skipped some things that I probably shouldn't have, but in the end I think it turned out okay.


Let's start with some research of CUBISM...


According to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Cubism was on the the most influential visual art styles of the early twentieth century.  It was creative by Pable Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973) and Georges Braque (French, 1882-1963) in Patris between 1907 and 1914.  The French art critic Lous Vauxcelles coined the term Cusbism after seeing the landscapes Braque had painted in 1908 at L'Estaque in emulation of Cezanne.  Vauxcelles called the geometric forms in the highly abstracted works "cubes".  Other influcense on early Cubism have been linked to Primitivism and non-Western sources.  The stylications and distortion of Picasso's ground-breaking Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (Museum of Modern Art, New York), painted in 1907, came from African art.  Picasso had first seen African art when, in May or June 1907, he visited the ethnographic museum in the Palais du Trocadero in Paris.  The Cubist painters rejected the inherited concept that art should copy nature, or that they should adopt the traditional techniques of perspective, modeling, and foreshortening.  They wanted instead to emphasize the two-dimensionality of the canvas.  So they reduced and fractured objects into geomtric forms, and then realigned these within a shallow, relief-like space.  They also used multiple or contrasting vantage points.


And the official definition from Dictionary.com

cub·ism

 

[kyoo-biz-uhm]
noun ( sometimes initial capital letter ) Fine Arts .

a style of painting and sculpture developed in the early 20thcentury, characterized chiefly by an emphasis on formal structure,the reduction of natural forms to their geometrical equivalents,and the organization of the planes of a represented object  independently of representational requirements.

And then, my favorite, artyfactory.com, which explains the two different styles of cubism, Analytical and Synthetic.

Cubism had two distinct phases.  The early phase which lasted until about 1912 was called Analytical Cubism.  Here the artist analysed the subject from many different viewpoints and reconstructed it within a geometric framework, the overall effect of which was to create an image that evoked a sense of the subject.  These fragmented images were unified by the use of a subdued and limited palette of colours.  

Influences by the introduction of bold and simple collage shapes, Synthetic Cubism moved away from the unified monochrome surfaces of Analytic Cubism to a more direct, colourful and decorative style.  Although synthetic cubist images appear more abstract in their use of simplified forms, the other elements of their composition are applied quiet traditionally.  Interchanging lines, colours, patterns and textures, that switch from geometric to freehand, dark to light, positive to negative and plain to patterned, advance and recede in rhythms across the picture plain.

Needless to say, I marched to the beat of my own drummer and did my own thing.  I probably came close to the synthetic cubism style, but I don't think I nailed cubism quite as closely as I wanted to.  Although, I came pretty close in my rushed time... at least I think so!

Here is my mini-quilt for cubism, it still needs to be tweaked and quilted, which will definitely add more interest:

And here are the others in the group, well except for Pam's as she was away on reveal day.

Kathy's

Pat's

Natalie's

Judie's

Eyvonne's

I can't wait to see what Pam created.  I think they all turned out fabulous!  Our next block/mini-quilt is "Expressionism" -- can't wait for that one either.  It's not due until July but hopefully we'll all get ahead of schedule with the challenges and possibly have them done for the Mancuso Show in West Palm in November... hopefully!

Check out the previous JTA challenge block "Fauvism".

Down 1/3

I've done it!  I have hit my first milestone... 20 pounds, gone!  Yes, I feel fantastic, but only 1/3 fantastic -- I've still got a long way to go, but in the meantime I am most definitely doing the ohhh I am 20 pounds lighter happy dance!

Here is the 20 pounds gone pic, and yes, I'm still missing my head!

My favorite shirts (I have like 5 of them) are getting bigger and baggier, and this is NOT a problem.  It is a reminder that I am smaller than I was.  I am down a pants size, and it is nice.  I truly think I'm down more than one size but I was soooo stuffed into my last size that I was probably two sizes larger and unwilling to admit it.

Here is the face so that you can see the weight loss there too:

This was from yesterday's photo-a-day challenge -- it was YOU, well really me... you know!

On to the follow up on the thyroid nodule.  The nuclear scan showed several "cold" areas.  A cold area is where the iodine/radioactive juices didn't take... a non-functioning part of my thyroid and/or nodule.  I don't know which, the scan was of both.  I was told that about 20% of "cold" areas actually turn out to be cancer.  So, the next step is a biopsy.  They are going to take samples of multiple areas.  I meet with the surgeon tomorrow so that's about all I can catch you up on.  I will, as always, share away once I know more.  If you are new to my blog and want to follow the thyroid/weight loss from the beginning, check out these previous posts:
4/18/2012 http://karenmarchetti.blogspot.com/2012/04/pounds-tests-ribbons.html
4/10/2012 http://karenmarchetti.blogspot.com/2012/04/weight-loss-week-1.html
4/04/2012 http://karenmarchetti.blogspot.com/2012/04/weight-lumps-and-hormones.html

On the quilty-artsy side, I have been working.  Doing some customer stuff, and attempting to work on my JTA project which is due on Wednesday.  This block is cubism, don't worry I'll have a blog post about it - and no, I'm no where near done!  You can check out the last block (fauvism) here.

I've also been designing, erasing, redesigning, erasing, sweeping up the mess of eraser dust, and once again redesigning my next quilt.  It is already named but no where near creation yet.  It's called "Mama's Got the Blues", and will be an innovative wholecloth using the robins-egg blue tencel I purchased at Houston last year, here's a pic of the fabric:

I hope that the color comes through across the computer.  I think is is absolutely delicious and can't wait to get the design finalized to get it on there!  I've got tons of threads planned, yep, you guessed it, blues!  I might even do some couching with beautiful silk fibers.  I'm not sure yet, don't know how that will affect the "wholecloth" status - if anyone has suggestions on that one, please feel free to let me know.  Is it still a wholecloth if I couch silk ribbon/fibers down.  Either way, I can't wait!  Hopefully it will be as awesome as I have it pictured in my head. 

And, I did take out, put on my design wall, and look at my kaleidoscope quilt -- a soon to be beauty created with all of Natalie's beautiful hand-dyed fabrics.  But looking is about as far as I got.

Oh, I almost forgot.  How could I possibly forget?  My most beautiful MQX-East Faculty Award Ribbon!  Thank you again, Teri Lucas!  Read all about it here (under the QR part).

Well, that's about it, at least until after Wednesday big reveal at JTA.  Happy day quilties!

#PHOTOADAYAPRIL

Yet another NQR post... no worries I am still a quilter and I am still creating amazing wonderful things.  This is still an artistic and FUN post and that is all that matters.  Last month I jumped on the Fat Mum Slim band wagon and started her #PHOTOADAY challenge.  What a fun time this was.  Some days I had my photo within minutes, other days it was a little more challenging.  Each day I'd share my pictures on facebook, but then I realized, all my blogger peeps wouldn't be able to see them.  I didn't want to compose a post for each and every photo, so I decided to wait until the end of the month to share them.  Some are stupid, some are creative, and some are just what they are... it doesn't matter, it was fun and getting out to take pictures each day was the main objective.

It starts with Fat Mum Slims blog, where at the beginning of each month she posts the challenge topics along with descriptions and rules. Here is April's challenge topics:

And here are my photos for April:

Day 1 - your reflection

Day 2 - color

Day 3 - mail

Day 4 - someone who makes you happy

Day 5 - tiny

Day 6 - lunch

Day 7 - shadow

Day 8 - inside your wallet

Day 9 - younger you

Day 10 - cold

Day 11 - where you ate breakfast

Day 12 - stairs

Day 13 - something you found

Day 14 - how you feel today

Day 15 - sunset

Day 16 - flower

Day 17 - something you don't like

Day 18 - hair

Day 19 - orange

Day 20 - something you drew

Day 21 - bottle

Day 22 - the last thing you bought

Day 23 - vegetable

Day 24 - something you're grateful for

Day 25 - looking down

Day 26 - black and white

Day 27 - somewhere you went

Day 28 - 1 pm

Day 29  - circle

Day 30 - something that makes you sad

So there you have it... all of my #PHOTOADAYAPRIL challenges.  Don't worry, there will be more to come, I've already started my May challenge.

Hope you enjoy!