Melanie Testa's Blog, page 32

The Importants and Niftiness.

No, the title of this post is not spelled improperly.

It is always a good thing when I delve deeply into working my journals. It means that I will have fodder for working in cloth and that I am staying actively engaged in my creative process. Nothing wrong with that.
As I have been posting, I am actively seeking new and improved journaling supplies, Roz Stendahl has helped and encouraged me in this. I went and bought a new set of gouache, cleaned out an old watercolor palette and created a...

We were tired of living in a house.

So we packed our bags and moved into a city apartment.

The title of this post refers to a favorite childhood book by the same name.

Last night I went to the Society of Illustrators Sketch and Jazz event. Event? It is a twice weekly gathering of people who draw figure models for 3 hours. There is a bar and a live jazz group, bass, sax and piano. The Society has been around for 105 years, it's filled with artwork from the Big'uns and is a great setting.

I went alone and had much flutterings and...

Pencils; tamed.

With my focus on journaling and drawing, I decided to make a pencil case for all that I will need to carry back and forth to figure drawing sessions. I had the machine quilting samples for the International Quilt Fest: Quilt Scene article I wrote and went at it.

The bag is modeled after a bag I saw while shopping at this pen store (scroll down). I didn't put the small pocket in as you see in the inspiration, though I wish I had, it would carry a sharpener and eraser quite nicely. A mod in...

The zone.

A famine, then a feast. That seems to be the way of life, I think.

Just before Houston, I decided it was time to make a larger piece, based on the recent painting of a Wester Tanager in my journal and I set out. I printed in a flurry, with no true thought in how to get the thing printed and made rules up as I went. I then needed to put the piece aside in order to prepare for my lecture and forums. When I came back, I made the retreat and then caught cold. But still I worked on the piece...

Anybody home?

...and then I have been quilting up a storm and not only that but, oh wait.

Hi. How you are? Long time no see. Sorry about that. Yeah. I was away for a lil bit there and for no good reason. Or maybe there were many reasons.

I will slow down.

I did get a flu a couple of weeks ago, and it hung on, clawing, scratching and biting. I am still coughing. But it is getting better-thank goodness.

The above is a detail of the piece I am working on right now and it looks totally different now. In that...

So many shoulds, time enough to follow through.

There are many things I should blog about, like the ten yards of fabric that came to my door on winning the Nature's Best contest, THANKS to you! Or the fabulous review of my book in Machine Quilting Unlimited, or the fantastic blog I found this week.

But instead I want to talk about the Recycled Journals I am now in love with. Have I talked about this too much already? I used some original pages from the book, Dreams their Meaning and Significance and layered them into signatures of 140...

I am actively seeking friends!

Sometimes you just have to say it like it is. The statement comes out and then resonates.

I spoke about this a bit in my last post, I told you of Shirley, who approached me at Open Studios and whose name tag indicated that she was from New York City. Without thinking I reiterated where she was from and told her I was actively seeking friends.

So this post is about friends, both old and new.

Last week, I returned home from my new friend Shirley's house with a sense of excitement, vim and...

Gone Fishin'

A few Houston recap items...

Carol came to at least my monoprinting demo and then showed up at Open Studios wearing a name tag purse using my pattern from this years Quilting Arts Gifts magazine. It is such fun seeing my designs in the wild, I had to feature it here.

But then...

Carol is a member of my very first guild. The one who gave me a scholarship to go to the Fashion Institute of Technology a little more than 10 years ago. And it was funny because I kept looking at her sitting and...

Houston 2009

This is a difficult post to create because I forgot my camera in a store in Galveston Texas (it is being returned to me this week). So these photos are thanks to Jamie Fingal, Leslie Tucker Jennison and Sharon Hyll. Thanks gals!

This is a photo of me at my lecture. My first true lecture, where I created a set of slides to project and spoke for 50 minutes straight. It took a good three days to put the Powerpoint presentation together, fuss with the word prompts, read it to the empty apartment a...

The winner is?

I added the two blog comments together, 10 from my Author blog and 27 from my personal blog and used a random number generator to choose a number between 1 and 37.

Drum Roll please!

Debbie L.

I am going to Houston tomorrow at 8:15 a.m. so please excuse me for the next week. I won't have time to go to the P.O. until I return.

It is going to be fun though!

I am doing two forums, one on machine quilting and another for the mixed media miscellany- monoprinting with dyes. I will also do a couple of O...