Summer is Coming!

Spring has been beautiful in the pacific northwest. Getting used to the rain after 25 years in the desert!! But that is why it is so green here and what my beloved Redwoods love the most. I have just designed a line for Free Spirit fabrics and I am so excited about it. Spring Market went well and it will be shipped to the stores in November. I will have a spot for ordering it on my web site once I get the yardage!!! can’t wait I love my new line and I am currently working on the second line for Free Spirit which will show at next years Spring Market. I love painting and they are translating my paintings to fabric. They made me promise not to show until one month out from shipping so we will all just have to wait. In the meantime I am working on several quilts. One, a map quilt, for the cover of my brothers second book it in the Steve Walsh mysteries, that takes the place of a map that shows where the hidden treasure is. Another a fractured landscape that I started at Asilomar in my Fractured Landscape class that I taught there the first of the year. Another is for my big show at the Texas Quilt Museum In October based on the Artful log cabin inspired from a teal and orange old door. So busy busy. Trying to get all of the odds and ends finished up so that I can start a new still life piece. Over memorial day my cousin, sister and myself got together and finished 14 quilt tops that we donate to the Veterans center at College of the Redwoods for Christal Morris to give to our local vets to thank them for there service. We love making these for those guys and gals and love them for what they have done for our country. Here are the tops, now we need to get them all quilted by the end of July to present them to our soldiers. A busy summer ahead for me and I hope you have a productive and creative summer. love and hugs, katiepm

Happy March!

Happy March! It has been raining and raining up in Northern California. Good for our trees and makes it so green up here but its a little old after a few weeks. Rivers were at flooding stage last week and my little creek on my property was up to the edge of the little bridge several times. Fascinating to watch the creek rise!! I can see it from my sewing machine window. I cleared all of the berry bushes out of the view path before it even started raining so I am enjoying it now, even if I got a bit of poison oak!! I have been very busy finishing up quilts before I display them at my Alegre Retreat in April. www.alegreretreat.com. We have a few spaces left in Cynthia England and independent study classes if you would like to join us at the last minute.

I have also been working on a quilt that uses my new fabric line with Free Spirit. I would love to show you but then I would be in big trouble. They won’t let me reveal it until just before it ships in November!! but I will be going to spring market in Kansas City to Premier it. So exciting. I just love it.

Our local Fortuna guild has a fun challenge going on. In January you gave a dollar for each UFO you were planning on finishing by the end of March for each piece you finished you would get your dollar back. I gave 10 dollars as I had a lot of pieces that I had started in my design course from Hudson River Valley art workshops in Greenville NY and I have them almost all finished!! Yahoo. then you bring all of the pieces you finished for a huge show and tell. That will be fun to see what everyone accomplished.

My brother Mark who wrote the Rose Quilt Mystery is working on his second book in the series and I am working on making the cover quilt which is a map of where the hidden money is from the civil war!! fun fun fun.


have a great spring! I am sure that it is right around the corner!!
love and hugs
katiepm

Happy New Year to Everyone!

Happy New Year to everyone. I had a very special Christmas celebration with my daughter, husband and 9 month old grandson. It was delightful to watch a young child enjoy the Christmas tree. In February I am teaching in Santa Fe so will get to spend time with 4 of my other grand kids so that will be exciting then in May we are all going to Disneyland!!!!!! That is my line up for family enjoyment so far for 2019.

In between I will be teaching around the country. I love teaching and traveling so it looks to be a good strong year ahead of me. I am diligently working on getting some old projects off my design wall so I can once again work on some new pieces for my still life series.

I have finished some pieces from my new class “Jumpstarting your Creativity” a five day course where each day we do different design explorations.

One lesson is using lines to create composition

One is using an inspiration photo to create a grid composition based on the colors and directions of movement from the photo

Another lesson is Distorted still life. where you start with a fused still life then cut it up and arrange it


In my painting series I finished a stitched painting from black and white and red painted canvases

I also finished a quilt from a water color painting

And two Artful log cabins were completed. One inspired from the stitched painting above, and one from an inspiration photo of a plant in purples and greens