Today's Guest Blogger: Chris Daly: "Finding My Creative Place"

Greetings from Southwestern Wisconsin! I love to learn and explore new media.   I try to challenge myself and learn new techniques whenever I can.   Working outside of my comfort zone helps me to grow as an artist.

  

 I found my way back to art and creativity through a set of stained glass classes that I took with my husband in the 1990’s. I had put myself aside to be a wife and then a mother.  It was this class that made me realize how much of me was missing from my life.  Once that door was opened, it led the way to so many more opportunities.  I just follow where I am led…

My husband and I have always had a strong connection with nature.  After 5 years of searching for a new place to call home we landed on a small farm in rural Wisconsin.  Waking up here every day is like a dream come true.  I see inspiration everywhere I look.  Most of my original designs are abstracted from nature.

Our move introduced me to a huge community of quilters.  These women and men have enriched my life like I never would have believed possible.  We teach each other and share our ideas.  Small sparks become big ideas when we bring our creative energy together.

I love bold, bright colors.  I dye many of the fabrics I use.  Dyeing fabric allows me to work with color pallets not available at the local quilt shop.  I still work in stained glass, but fiber arts have really taken center stage.  These two loves were combined when I started making my miniature quilt block jewelry.  Each piece of jewelry includes a machine pieced quilt block made from my hand dyed fabrics.  I sell my jewelry and hand dyed fabrics on the internet and at local quilt shows.  I also belong to two internet art quilt challenge groups.  I like the idea of working from a theme or keyword and then letting your imagination interpret the design.  I usually start with a concrete idea in mind and end up with something completely different by the time I finish.   I just follow my intuition to see where it leads.

 You can read more about my rural life at: www.shadygrovestudios.blogspot.com
I maintain a second blog that is related to fabric dyeing with tips and tutorials and show and tell: www.dyecandy.blogspot.com  
Warm regards from Southwestern Wisconsin.  I am home and this is my creative place.
Carmen, thank you for sharing yours with me.

Today's Guest Blogger: Barbara Lardon! (YAAAAAAY!)

First I want to thank Carmen for asking me to be a guest on her blog. Let me introduce myself. I am an art quilter. I live in Plymouth Wisconsin which is a small town of 7000 about 60 miles north of Milwaukee.

I have been quilting for about 30 years now and mainly do raw edged fused appliqué. You can see my work on my blog at bslartquilts.blogspot.com.

Today I would like to share with you my experience recently when I decided to look into a basket I keep in my studio of unfinished projects. I had totally forgotten about some of them. While going through them I became amazed at how they are almost a recording of my “evolution” in the last 10 years.

In this one you can see I am still in my traditional primitive country phase. It is a queen sized piece with lots of stars in the border and oh I was so in love with stars in those days (still am).

Then I needed more. So I moved into paper piecing and much more elaborate and complicated patterns. Here is my Japanese Fan quilt. However, as you can see, I am beginning to do some raw edged fusing on the backing where I placed my own design of a Japanese woman in traditional garb. This is also in queen size.

And finally I transitioned all the way to doing raw edged fused appliqué. Here is an example of one of my more recent pieces.

 It is amazing to me how we travel through stages in our creative world, trying new styles and evolving into the artist we are today.  It is an adventure to me and I hope for you too.

Thank you Barbara Lardon for guest posting!  It is a treat to see how your work has developed over time! 
Thanks so much,
Happy creating,
-Carmen Rose