Happy New Year 2020!

As we turn the page on a new year, its a good time to refocus, looking back on the accomplishments of the previous year and making plans for the new one ahead of us.

We got our year rolling with a trip to Nashville for Quilt Con.  It was our second Quilt Con, and the first time to Nashville for both of us.  We thoroughly enjoyed Music City and Quilt Con!

In March we participated in the Creative Arts Business Summit to focus on our Thermofax screen business.  We always come away from this event with great ideas and tips from other creatives; unfortunately this was the last time for CABS.

The look back is the most surprising, to see how much was accomplished - more than we thought! Both of us spent a lot of time exploring cyanotype printing (you could say that was our focus for the year), and explored other techniques as well.  Here are some of our projects.

We debuted some new screens in the Etsy shop.  Sue used the Queen Anne's lace print in the center to make the fabric box below.

Elizabeth made this special pillow for her grandson Finn.

Sue took a class on making coiled rope baskets.  Here is the second one she made.  She also made a number of coasters with the same technique.

Summer was the time for cyanotype printing; we followed parallel paths with Elizabeth in New Hampshire and Sue in Virginia.  Elizabeth made numerous prints and combined 9 into this quilt top.

She also printed this scarf (displayed here on Molly the mannequin).

You'll see Sue's cyanotype quilt in the collage below (bottom left) which consists of 9 projects she worked on in 2019.  Top to bottom, left to right, the projects are Tea Bag Revival (12 x 12), Nature's Prints (12 x 12), Opposites Attract (10 x 10), Balloon Flowers (18 x 24), baby quilt (about 40" square), Gloria (16 x 20), cyanotype prints (35 x 42), 100 day prints which is unfinished (about 24 x 30), and the last is a memory quilt that is twin bed size, made from a child's clothes.

Sue also completed a number of charity quilts.  She organized the charity project for her guild's spring retreat, so in addition to completing a full size quilt that members made blocks for, she also used the leftover blocks to make 16 preemie quilts!  It was a great opportunity to  practice ruler quilting.

Last fall, Elizabeth took a class on eco printing in which she printed a silk scarf.  Here is one of the prints from the scarf.

And finally, Sue was proud to be included in 2 publications in 2019.  OurStory: Human Rights Stories in Fabric includes her Women's Voices Matter quilt. Inspired by Endangered Species includes her contribution of the Pink Fairy Armadillo.  Both are beautiful books and include amazing quilts with fabulous workmanship.  It is an honor to be included in both.  Exhibits of these quilts are both touring nationally. 

Wow!  That's a lot of stuff!  Will we be as productive in 2020?  Let's hope we can at least maintain the productivity. And what will be our focus this year?  You can expect to see more cyantopye printing, and probably some eco printing as well.  Of course, there will also be Thermofax printing.  Are you sensing a theme here?  It's safe to say we like printing of all types!  Follow us on Facebook and Instagram for pictures of our work throughout the year (search pgfiber2art).  What's on YOUR creative agenda for 2020?  Whatever it is, we hope you have a creative and fulfilling year!

A Few Last Reflections

Here are a few final reflections for the start of 2016.

 "Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it.  Begin it now."     Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

"Have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.  They somehow already know what you truly want to become.  Everything else is secondary."     Steve Jobs

"Beauty is the sense of life and the awe one has in its presence."     Willa Cather

"We have a tendency to obscure the forest of simple joys with the trees of problems."    Christine Collange

Whatever your creative pursuits, we wish you the fun of learning something new and the joy of creating in 2016!

Quotes and Reflection

The look back and and forward continues with these quotes and works from 2015.

"Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working."     Pablo Picasso

"Let a joy keep you.  Reach out your hands and take it when it runs by."     Carl Sandburg

"We are cups, constantly and quietly being filled.  The trick is knowing how to tip ourselves over and let the beautiful stuff out."     Ray Bradbury

"And so the hand of time will take the fragments of our lives and make out of life's remnants, as they fall, a thing of beauty after all."     Douglas Malloch

What creative endeavors do you have in store for 2016?

Welcome 2016!

A New Year is always time for reflection on the year just ended and the one about to begin.  Time for resolutions, trying new things, and continuing to work on "old" things.  With that in mind, over the next few days we're sharing some quotes from Lesley Riley's book "Inspirational Quotes Illustrated" along with some photos of our work from 2015 - an attempt at looking back at what we've accomplished along with some inspirational words to keep moving and creating in 2016.

"It may be hard for an egg to turn into a bird: It would be a jolly sight harder for it to learn to fly while remaining an egg.  We are like eggs at present.  And you cannot go on indefinitely being just an ordinary, decent egg.  We must be hatched or go bad."    C. S. Lewis

"Look not too far afield...Answers lie within.  What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny matters compared to what lies within us."     Henry Stanley Haskins

"It takes a lot of courage to show your dreams to someone else."     Erma Bombeck

"So you see, imagination needs moodling - long, inefficient, happy idling, dawdling and puttering."     Brenda Ueland

Happpy New Year!

It's that time again - the end of one year and the beginning of the new - 2015.  I have been reflecting as most of us do on the year just ending and goals for the next.  One goal we have as PG Fiber2Art is to clarify our business expectations and work to build on the successes of 2014.  To that end we will be participating in the Creative Arts Business Summit this spring, as well as a "business boot camp" for the first 3 months of 2015.  Hopefully that will help us clarify where we want to go with PG Fiber2Art and fabric surface design!

Another thing I have determined to do in the new year is to get some UFO's off the "to do" list.  Vicki Welsh of Field Trips in Fiber is hosting a UFO Bust on her blog for 2015, where you can link up to join her in this pursuit.  The extra accountability is always a motivator for me, so I will likely be doing this, as well as nagging my partner Elizabeth to join up and finish a piece called Forest Floor.  For me I have actually gotten a start on this by pulling out a project that's been waiting to be finished.  I call it Winter Oaks, and would like to submit it for a show, so that's another motivator there - nothing like a deadline to get things moving.   I'm thinking that a realistic goal would be to promise myself that I have to finish one project for every new one I start.  We'll see how that goes!

Here are a couple of shots of quilting progress on Winter Oaks.