Why do I blog?

Hi, I'm Sarah, based in the UK and addicted to fabric and thread, hence my blog "A Fabric Addiction".http://sjtreen.blogspot.com/ In 2010 I took part in the Quilters Guild of GB "contemporary Quilt" challenge to produce a small quilt a month for a year. The little quilts were 18 x 25 cm, portrait, and 80 or so members each produced these quilts which we share with each other via a yahoo group. Seeing how well the Yahoo group worked I felt it would be interesting to share the making of these little gems on a blog. This is now my 13th month of blogging.
I know what fun it is to happen upon a blog and find out things you didn't realise before and have therefore tried to explain how I have done things, so pictures of the stages in creating a piece of work have been important to me. It has also been helpful in keeping in touch with others who are interested in similar things.
My theme last year was "Cogs", I was interested in the shapes and the fact that I had always avoided circles before! I managed to sustain 8 months on theme and was disappointed when my inspiration deserted me and left me having to produce 4 pieces on a different theme.
I've included a picture of a group of 3 of these little cog quilts to give you a flavour.
In 2011 I have again joined the Journal quilt challenge, the rules of which have changed so that we are working 10" square, from February to January and have to include a circle, circles in the 1st 4 then lettering in the next 4 and the last 4 must include a button/buttonhole - for me this last group will be the biggest challenge as I am hoping to theme this years gems around the images, colours and memories of a recent visit to Jordan.
I love this blog, so many different interpretations of each prompt and some very talented photogtaphers. I look forward to each new prompt to see what you all come up with!

Featured Blog

I am really enjoying the activity lately! I think inspiration is a lot like Russian dolls. You start investigating and then you discover more and more and more.

Since this month has 31 days, I thought we could do a few Featured Blogs. So, for the rest of the weekend through Monday, if you would like to tell us about your blog, please do so! I am opening up the weekend for Featuring your blog and the type of work you do or the things that fascinate you enough to blog about. If you haven't posted for a while, you are still welcome to tell us about your blog.

For instance, Jackie - BluMoon makes some amazing jewellery. Louisa Lawson is trying to reduce her stash. Julie blogs from her vantage point St. Ives in beautiful Cornwall (UK) and Sarah has been involved with the UK version of Journal quilts.

Well, I could go on and on, but it is your turn! So jump in there and tell us about what you do and why. How do you find your blogging to be helpful?
Show us what you are doing with the inspiration that seizes you!

Just label your post "Featured Blog". (at the bottom right under the area where you compose your posts. If you can do it, it will save me going in and editing the posts. It just helps people to pull up all the posts for each prompt together.)

The next Featured Blog time will be the end of March.

The new 'shape' prompt will be up on the 1st of February....and since February is short, I will probably do the next letter prompt (N) on the 14th February.

Posting to the blog

Hi all,
I am glad to have so many new members posting! We have already had 28 posts for Star! I thought it might be a difficult shape!

If it is possible, I would like to keep the posts and photos directly related to the prompts. It just makes the blog clearer to follow for those who are using it for inspiration. The new prompt will go up on the 15th of January and will be the Letter M.

You can still take part with past prompts - just make it clear what prompt you are posting to. If you look on the bottom right of the box where you compose your messages, you will see a box that says labels. So when you post, you can type in 'star' or 'L' Or whatever the prompt is. You can also click the link next to the Labels box which says 'show all' and choose the correct prompt from that box.

On months where there are 31 days, we often have a Featured Blog Day. So, the 31st of this month - January will be a Featured Blog day. If you would like to take part, tell us about your blog, why you blog and what you try to show through your blog.

I am looking forward to see what other interesting inspirational contributions that come through for 2011!

Thanks for all of your input already in this New Year!
Sandy

Greetings from Yet Another New Member

My name is Karen Musgrave and I'm thrilled to be a new member. I live in the far west suburbs of Chicago in the city of Naperville. I also have a blog
that is called Connections by Karen which deals with my teaching, making art, thoughts, etc.

My cement leaf was a gift from my friend Debi. When I decided to paint it, I channeled two gardeners and artist that I admire--George Little and David Lewis. It truly makes me happy and since it fits with the color theme I'm even happier.

I look forward to being a part of this wonderful community. I'm already blown away by your talent.

Hello from another new member

Hi everyone, I'm Linda McLaughlin, the Linda that Kathy(see yesterdays post) was separated from at birth. I live in a small town in Idaho and love wandering around with my camera, taking pictures of odd things. I have a daily photo blog that Sandy has featured in the past,thank you Sandy. I also have a blog that I created to feature my textile work, life keeps changing and getting in the way so it now has a bit of everything. Kathy obviously got the writing genes when we were separated because she writes long wonderful, thought provoking posts on her blog, mine are not.

I've gone thru some of my photos and picked out a few with turquoise.

Hello from a new participant!

Greetings, everyone!  I'm Kathy Loomis and I live in Kentucky, USA.  I have just been invited to join this group and am looking forward to sharing and learning. I have been a fulltime fiber artist since retiring almost ten years ago from a career in journalism and corporate communication. People used to ask politely whether I planned to do creative writing with all my free time in retirement, and I would say heck no, writing is what you do when they pay you.

But this year I embarked upon a performance art project in which I resolved to take a photograph every day, and it seemed like a good idea to start a blog to post the daily photo.  About that time I discovered Linda's blog of daily photos (I'm so happy that she's in this group too) and have decided that we were obviously separated at birth because we seem to gravitate toward the same kind of places and the same kinds of photos.

Since then, to my own surprise, blogging has become an important aspect of my art life, not just for posting photos, and I invite you to visit me there.

In keeping with the turquoise theme, here are some photos I’ve taken this year as part of my daily art project. 

Featured Blog - Stroll Through Storyland

Hi all! I'm the storybeader. I'm a museum curator in Oklahoma, and have been at the same job now for almost 25 years. I take care of all two-dimensional items: books, paper, and photographs. I write exhibit text and work with researchers. It's a great job, and I love it. My only regret is that I'm not near the ocean, where I was raised. A few years ago, I decided to make some jewelry for myself, and really got a kick out of working with all the beautiful colors.


Here's my first necklace - not the greatest picture, but I was just learning the techniques of photography. About a year ago, I decided to take a bookmaking class. It's always been a dream of mine, to be a bookbinder - this was the closest I could get. Here's one of my artist notebooks, called Water's Edge, and the haiku that I wrote for it:

"Three nymphs came down to
The water's edge, waving strips
Of silk in the air."

Being the smart business lady that I am, I thought having a blog would be a good way of directing traffic to my Etsy shop. That didn't really happen... But what I DID realize is that I love to write. I blog about the neat places I visit, give other artisans and bloggers tips that might help them with their businesses, and write reviews about the books I'm reading. At the end of 2008, I started a weekly "column" where I interview other artisans. If anybody would like to participate in my Friday "Internet Artisan Interview," just leave me a note, and I'll send the questions your way.

Oh yes, here my blog address: http://www.storybeader.com

Featured Blog - Your Turn!

As far as I know, we have never had a real chance to introduce ourselves here.
So, for the 31st of May, I am opening up the day for Featuring your blog and the type of work you do or the things that fascinate you enough to blog about. If you haven't posted for a while, you are still welcome to tell us about your blog. Just tag your post "Featured Blog".

For instance, we get small glimpses here of the planning that goes into Marianne's quilts here on the blog and more of this can be seen on her Flikr site. I know that when I go to Arati's blog, I see glorious photos of flowering trees with evidence of real knowledge about the flowers she photographs. Celia has fascinating samples of translating ideas into stitch and discovering how to take them further. Jasmine's blog is full of the amazing results from her felting. Myfanwy has several blogs, one of which has photos she has taken when she is out and about.

Well, I could go on and on, but it is your turn! Tell us what you are seeing to inspire you. Show us what you are doing with the inspiration that seizes you!

- image from Clip Art
If you haven't got to the computer today and read this later, the offer is open till the 6th June. I will post the new colour tomorrow. If it is possible, click the Post Options at the bottom of the box where you compose posts and set the date to the 31st May so all the posts featuring your blogs stay together. If you can't work out how to do that, I can reset them later.

Edit - Because there wasn't alot of notice for this and it fell on a Bank Holiday, we will do it again on the 31st July and 31st August.

Featuring - Thru Linda's Eyes

As I said in January, I am including a featured blog sort of post every month that has 31 days....... so as to keep the regular posts to the 1st and 15th of the month.

So, today I am featuring a blog with daily photos which are very inspiring. American Quilt Artist, Linda McLaughlin has a blog called Thru Linda's Eyes.

As Linda says,
"This blog was inspired by Jane Dunnewold's blog Daily Visuals, and my goal is to post a picture a day. This blog is also dedicated to my Mom who passed away five years ago today (Nov.30). When I received my first camera about fifty years ago, I was reprimanded because I took a whole roll of film of "nothing" and it cost too much to get it developed. Well I'm still taking pictures of nothing, it doesn't cost anything to develop them now and I'm going to share them with you."

Some of Linda's photos make you wish you lived in her neighbourhood and could see and be inspired by the same things! But on the other hand, it also makes you have a think about having another look at what you do see in your own neighbourhood.

Linda also has a website where you can see some of the textile art she has created. She makes her work and teaches classes in her charmingly named studio.

Studio B

National Doodle Day

The other day I read something about the 5th March, 2010 being National Doodle Day - in the UK. So I had a look. There are celebrities doodling to help people with epilepsy and neurofibromatosis. Since the very first National Doodle Day in 2004 over £185,000 has been raised to help support the work of two charities, Epilepsy Action and the Neurofibromatosis Association. You can vote for your favourite or you can get involved as well.

I thought I would mention it here, since one of the original blogs Helen set up which led to this one was the Doodle Day Blog.

I was going to wait til 5th March to post this, but then I thought you might like a heads up in case you want to look into it. Info about how individuals can participate here.

Or you can use it for a specific day set aside to do a bit of doodling yourself. I used some of the doodles I did for the Doodle Day blog to help me with design work. Here is a doodle which turned into a study for shape and stitching scales on a dragon tail.

Featuring - Monday Artday

I have decided to include a featured blog sort of post now and again. Well, at least every month that has 31 days. Okay that might sound pretty arbitrary! LOL But that will keep our prompts at 2 week intervals and still keep them on the 1st and 14/15th of the month.

From what I can tell the idea of blogs with prompts started with the Illustration Friday blog, which works as a sort of feedblog collecting info from artists who post to the prompt which has been set. For sometime now, I have come across textile artists who have used the blog for practice exercises without actually being signed up to it. Following on from that, there are now many blogs with prompts or where the author posts a series of inspirational photos. A look at these might help to give you ideas for this blog or to help jump start an idea for future work...or even just something else to look at!

So, here is one to investigate for this month.

Monday Artday  - Every Monday a new challenge is posted, which ends two weeks after it begins. So, there is always an overlap. Some people also post other work unrelated to the prompt.

I like Monday Artday better than Illustration Friday because I don't have to go chasing round links to see what has been posted in response to the prompt. (Well, if Illustration Friday has a way to view these, I haven't found it.) Anyway, the contributions on Monday Artday seem to be mostly by Illustrators or Cartoonists. Most of the work is very impressive. It is interesting to see how artists from other disciplines respond to regular inspirational challenges.