I almost forgot to show you our Christmas card this year. I think this is the first year I've used Ryan's art for it. He doesn't really do much art, so it's never come up before, but when I decided to use this plate design on a mini quilt (scroll down) for Ryan, this idea came to me as well. I transferred his design to some easy cut block and spent a rather long time carving. I was so pleased with these and I hope all who received them realize how rare they may be!
This has been a quiet week for me. The kids had several play dates and sleepovers (for Chloe) and I didn't go anywhere at all until this evening when we went out to dinner. It's been so nice! We've also been getting quite a bit of snow lately and that's always a treat. I've had lots of time to work on a project that I started 5 years ago!
One of my goals for these next few weeks will be to work on some of the large projects that have been sitting around for a while (sometimes a rather long while!). However, I had a post-holiday studio cleaning and couldn't help taking a look at a book that's fairly new, Art Quilt Workbook by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston. I've had it for a while, but have just now really read through it. There's so much in this one! I think it's really worth the price. I also just discovered that both artists have blogs. Check them out at will.love.logic and Chary Sprouts.
The book really energized me so I spent a little bit of time today playing around with batiks and I'm planning some fabric postcards for the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show'sWish Upon a Card this summer. They will be collecting postcards to auction and sell for charity. Last year they had 500 postcards donated and raised $6000.00 for a local charity. This year they hope to get over 1000 postcards and will donate the money to Wendy's Wish Appeal, which is a charity in support of St. Charles Cancer Treatment Center. I'll be starting my radiation treatments there in a couple of weeks. If any of you have a chance to make postcards for this very worthy charity it would be great! You can read my little tutorial from last year for some inspiration.
Speaking of the quilt show, if you are interested in entering the quilt block contest this year, the info can be found here. Well, that's it for now. I'll be back soon hopefully with some older finishes and some new inspiration!