Well folks….I’m happy to report that I have not only made more progress on the Tableau (nativity) quilt, but that it is coming together! I was getting worried there, but I lopped off some of the sky (which I’d been intending to do all along, but actually trimming it down helped immensely).

Then, I cut the inner borders (made from the same winter uniform skirt / jumper fabric as the mountains) and pinned them up. Then I took the rubbings I did of the plaque at the flagpole with the dates of the four Dominican schools in California and placed them as outer borders. I decided finally to use both, as the vertical borders. On the top I will quilt “San Domenico School” (maybe trapuntoed?? or mock trapunto?) and the school motto, “The tradition continues” on the bottom.

As you can tell from the sky area, two major things remain … the angel (her face and halo are done, but her body and wings are my treat to myself to finish last) and the comet / star. The roof of the arched / collonaded building is a bit boring, so hoping the angel’s dress will reach that far and spiff things up.

I got the manger done … and since I have cats, of course the cat is about to jump into the warm spot just vacated by baby Jesus since his momma picked him up to snuggle. Eli wants me to add a mouse (his current favorite critter), so he drew me one which I’ll add to the hay in the manger “grin”. OK…that’s it for now. Have to finish the March, April and May journal quilts and get jpegs ready to send to Houston…. need to quilt and bind May, then do the paperwork…due date is May 31 or June 1.

Now….hot shower, tylenol (Eli has shared his germs again, and I’m getting achy), and a book and TV. Hope you like the progress!

Robert Genn publishes a bi-weekly newsletter about and for art / artists. Today’s post was particularly interesting (at least to me …. ). I asked and received permission to repeat the body of the newsletter here. I liked both the seven virtues, and the idea of different types of perspective: of line, of color, of clarity.

The da Vinci Mode
May 23, 2006
Dear Sarah,

Leonardo da Vinci’s life was a living demo of his “seven virtues.” For those artists of life and of art who might plot to develop higher levels of accomplishment and greater self-realization, here are his seven virtues, as I understand them:

· “Curiosita”–an attitude of curiosity and continuous learning. What, when, where, why, and how?
· “Dimostrazione”–an ability to learn and to test knowledge by experience. Experimental nature.
· “Sensazione”–a development of awareness and refinement of sight and other senses. High sensitivity.
· “Sfumato”–a tendency to embrace and accept uncertainty, ambiguity and paradox. Free thinking.
· “Arte/Scienza”–a development of balance between science and art, logic and imagination. Whole-brain thinking.
· “Corporalita”–a calculated desire to achieve poise, fitness and ambidexterity. Physical action.
· “Connessione”–a recognition that all things are connected. Systems thinking.

“How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day,” by Michael J. Gelb, and, “The Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci,” edited by Pamela Taylor, are two of the noteworthy sources of Leonardo insights. In the latter, the first chapter, “The Painter,” is particularly valuable. For example, Leonardo neatly divides perspective into three types: “Linear perspective”–scientific diminution of objects as they recede from the eye; “The perspective of colour”–variations in colours as they recede from the eye; and “The perspective of disappearance”–the increasingly unfinished rendering of objects as they become more remote. Could anything be clearer?

In my daily evangelizing, I’m constantly devising ways to press creative people into thinking about things in a Leonardo mode. Whether we’re talking about flying machines, military engines or easel paintings, we are led to a greater realization of our potential through personal, self-generated knowledge of the what, when, where, why and how. Perhaps because of Leonardo’s charming admissions of personal weaknesses (procrastination, for one), we feel the uncanny presence of a contemporary who’s just dropped in from the local Brotherhood and Sisterhood. For many of us, an evening curled up with The da Vinci Mode would not be a waste of time.
Best regards,
Robert rgenn@saraphina.com , http://www.painterskeys.com

Sounds like an outline for self-education in art to me! Now, upstairs to make some art (well, at least I hope it will be artistic!).

Hi all! Well….at long last I have another update photo for the Tableau quilt, which means that at long last, after returning from Mom’s, I have begun to re-focus. If I intend to enter this in Houston (gasp), I’d better hurry and get it DONE! Here’s the full shot:

I painted a wash of greens and black on the mountains to tone down the white in the plaid (the winter uniform skirt …. to re-cap, this quilt is to celebrate 100 years of the Christmas play at my school, where I attended from grades 7-12. I got the best education of my life there … better than university and grad school, because (a) the sisters and teachers cared about us, and (b) they taught us to love learning and (c) they taught us how to learn). Then I added (oh gag) camouflage mesh and this hideous black spiderweb tulle from Halloween at JoAnn’s Fabrics in bits on the mountains to create some depth and dimension. This afternoon….time to sew them down, and then applique the figures.

I also did some free-motion embroidery / threadwork on the figures, which are now ready to applique prior to basting and quilting.

I mentioned in a post on the QuiltArt listserv that I had painted the backside of some Halloween bat fabric (used years ago in pants for my oldest son), using black to blot out the red (nose) and yellow (eyes) dots, then using a wash of browns and blacks. Places with the wings running vertically, I think it kinda looks like plaster walls. The photo above with the shepherds and sheep shows a building which has an exterior collonade (will be more obvious once quilted…go with me on this one), and bat fabric on the interior. The same fabric appears again on the far right, above the donkey.

And here’s what it looked like to begin with:

Teehee! Enjoy….back to work!

And yet MORE pictures from the gardens where my mom lives –the last of the photos from the California trip (not mom’s garden by the way, …the one for the complex…mom’s idea of “gardening” is to stick fake foliage in a window box and leave it for ten years, faded, icky and all…..shudder!).

Love the juxtaposition of the purple and scarlet-orange.

Don’t know the name of the shrub with these yellow blossoms. The buds are a yellow, turn to a rust color, brighten as they open, then fade to a wrinkled rust. It’s a large shrub….almost a small, multi-stemmed tree.

Then, of course, the ornamental cherry:

More of the tangerine and violet, with a dash of cooling white.

Does it get any better? Nasturtiums and yellow!

Think of the quilting patterns….line drawings of the flowers and leaves, background motifs, wholecloth shapes……

Deborah Boschert wrote not too long ago that, for her, it’s all about the line. I can’t say quite that…but the line and the color! The color is what grabs me, the line is what keeps me. The quilts don’t come to life until you add the line.

Lines that is…nature loves radiation! Here are a selection of photos from visiting Mom (plus one other):

Some plants were sufficiently tall, and back in the flower beds, that I couldn’t get an overhead….but I love the clusters of leaves and flowers (or are these bracts?) the are spaced out along the stems on these yellow flowers. I’ve seen them in the gardening catalogs, but for the life of me can’t recall their name:

Some look like a cross between a palm and a papyrus (but I’m sure are neither):

Some are not full circles, but partials:

Some don’t come from nature, but I loved this shadowy tree grate anyway:

And for good measure and fun, and a blissful dose of color, Kathy’s embroidery floss: