Over the course of my artistic journey I’ve compiled quite an extensive library. I’ve got books on a wide variety of subjects: quilting, bookmaking, surface design, mixed media, art history, business etc etc. You get the idea – I have a lot of books! I thought it might be fun to do a blog post every so often about some of my favorite books in a particular subject. In this post I’ll share my favorites on the subject of inspiration/creativity and business… Continue reading
Monthly Archives: March 2017
7 stages of art
Last week I had the kind of day where you spend most of your time sitting in a waiting room. Fortunately I had the book “Minding the Muse” by Priscilla Long in my bag and so I spent most of my day absorbed in it. It’s a small book, just 112 pages but it’s a … Continue reading
Finding your own style
vase with flowers, 20” x 40” One of the questions I get asked most often, aside from how do I do those black lines, is how did I find my voice or style. I get this question a lot because I’ve managed to develop a pretty recognizable style in my art quilts and they’re easy … Continue reading
why I resist
I’ve been working on writing this post for over a week. Why you ask? Because I’m going to wade into a subject that up until a week or so ago I have been silent on – yup I’m going to talk politics here on my blog. Now I know this is going to come as … Continue reading
A goal without a plan is just a wish
Every December I start thinking about the upcoming new year and what I’d like to focus on. I find that having a short list of goals and a plan for myself helps keep me focussed and that in turn allows me to carefully evaluate any new opportunities that come along with a more discriminating eye … Continue reading
No reverse, work forward applique
If you’ve ever added appliqué letters or numbers to your quilts like I did with the number 20 in the quilt above then you’ve probably used a traditional method of tracing your letters in reverse, cutting them out, realizing you did some of them backwards and then starting over again. Well I have a better … Continue reading
Why did you make that?
For the longest time I’ve had the idea of making a coat embellished with buildings and houses. Sort of a play on a “house coat” although not one to be worn while cleaning the house! So a few weeks ago I was between quilt projects and doing a little studio clean up when I came … Continue reading
artist & fear
Fear of rejection and failure is one of the toughest challenges for an artist to overcome and the bad news is that rejection and failure are part of the artistic process that every artist will have to deal with at some point. The good news is that you can learn a lot from both of … Continue reading
working in a series
I recently did a webinar for SAQA on the subject of working in a series and how it can help you develop your own personal style as well as build a body of work and I wanted to share one of the slides from my lecture with you. It’s the last and I think most … Continue reading
Inside Out
I’ve made some changes to my website and blog. Some you can see and some you can’t. One of the things you can’t see is my change to my webhost. I’ve been using yahoo as my web host for over 10 years and never had an issue but when they spun their hosting services off … Continue reading