Marmots, houses and dyeing…oh my!

It has been a busy week on the creative front. I had to paint a marmot (looks like a groundhog) onto fabric for a flag for my BIL. My MIL came up yesterday so we could work on it. We had a great time hanging out and the flag came out great.  When I took the photo last night I got some blue shadowing on the image that should not be there.

I completed my 6 house blocks for a block exchange. I did Halloween houses. These blocks were only 6 inch blocks so part of them had to be paper pieced. Now I have to send them out.
 
I have been taking a silk dyeing class at QU. I have some really beautiful fabrics. I want to incorporate silk into my art quilts. In fact I think I have an idea for the red-orange silk velvet already.

Speaking of fabrics… my fabrics from Spoonflower arrived on Saturday. I think they came out great. I can’t wait to create some more fabrics.

The one with the moon is one that I created in a Create NJ class using citrasolve on National Geographic magazines to alter the pages. I then made a collage with the papers, took a photo of the collage and had it made into fabric. I will be using this fabric for my upcoming 15 by 15 challenge. The reason I took the class was to get images to be used to create fabrics and have them printed at Spoonflower.

The one in front with the tree was created by taking a photo of a fabric that I resist painted. I actually changed the color to blue and then added the layer of the tree photo taken by my daughter.

The orange and blue one was something I designed on my ipad.

The blue-green one was a forest scene I changed drastically in photo shop.

We have been back from our vacation to Paris for about 2 weeks now, but I can’t stop thinking about it. The top 10 highlights of the trip for me were the following:

Visiting the Musée de l'Orangerie and seeing the Monet water lily panels. We went there twice.

Visiting Monet’s gardens at Giverny.

Seeing the stained glass windows at Sainte-Chapelle.

Going into a cheese shop where no one spoke English and trying to buy cheese. We asked for blue cheese which the owner understood. Then he brought out plastic figures of a cow and a sheep to ask us which we wanted. We bought sheep’s milk blue cheese. It was the best blue cheese we ever had.

How friendly the Parisians were. There were quite a few times that we were standing there looking at a map and people asked if we needed help.

The camembert baguette sandwich we had outside of the Louvre for lunch. Best sandwich ever. The baguette was crunchy and chewy. The cheese was soft and gooey. Close second was a salmon burger we had for lunch, but not sure where that was.

Sitting along the Seine at the Paris Plage (sandy beaches created along the river) and drinking beers and eating Coulommiers cheese on a baguette our last night in Paris.

Walking just about anywhere yielded wonderful things to see. Loved seeing the Eiffel Tower from many locations in the city.

The rum raisin ice cream we had at Versailles and the lemon ice cream we had outside Notre Dame. Real rum, real lemon, and real high fat cream.

Getting all the photos that I wanted for quilt inspiration. I loved the roof top shots as well as the photos taken in the town of Vernon. Loved the gargoyles on Notre Dame.

I loved everything about this trip, but these are the things that will stay in my mind forever.
Thanks for reading.
Chris