Sunrises For Sale 🌅🦃🦃

Looking for a unique gift for the holidays?

Sunrise No. 1 (on the left) and No. 2 (on the right), November 2018.

In keeping with the Holiday spirit ❄️, I am offering Sunrise No. 1 and No. 2 as affordable gift ideas to show someone you care.

This is a Limited Offer just for my Studio Notes Readers.

Please make your decision by 12.10.18 so your Art has time to arrive safe and sound.

Each piece is $65 including shipping to the continental USA. 

Click either button below to pay with Paypal or ask me any questions.

Be sure to let me know which Sunrise you would like and where to send it in the Paypal link.

I’m taking a holiday vacation this week for Thanksgiving.

To all my readers in the United States, have a wonderful holiday full of things to be grateful for.

Last year at Thanksgiving, I wrote an article on the Power of Gratitude. Still one of my favorite ones. Click to read it.

Sunrise No. 2

Sunrise No. 1

Sunrise Over Lake Michigan Series

Sunrise Over Lake Michigan No. 1, November, 2018.

These past weeks I have been wrapping my 25 day series around 24” square canvases. As I was rooting around in my stretched canvas frame inventory, I found some frames I bought just as a lark. They are 6” square frames with a width of 1.5”. This means they can stand on their own, like on a shelf. However, I did not know that at the time. I figured this out just when I had committed to try them out with some new artwork and opened the package. The possibilities are intriguing. 

Following up on last week’s article about how I love the artwork you see on the edge of the wrapped canvas, this is a supersized edge that really stands out even on a smaller 6” square frame. 

Sunrise Over Lake Michigan Nos. 1 & 2, November, 2018.

For my design, I still wanted to play more with the idea I started in the Skyline series back in 2017. This time I wanted a color palette to reflect the Sunrise over Lake Michigan. Hence, the name of the series. I researched images online of sunrises over water. I love the contrast of the warm colors in the horizon atop the darker blue for the lake and slightly lighter sky above the horizon. I used my technique I wrote about over the past few weeks discussing the Four Seasons series. I layout the fabric pieces on my cutting mat to fill in the design and then sew them into bigger blocks and finally sew all those blocks together to make the final piece. After I decided the blues for water and sky, I turned to the warm hues for the sunrise along the horizon. I went into my deep stash of small scraps of fabric. Some may think it is weird to keep small scraps 1-3” big. But I get loads of inspiration from playing around with these small shapes and building them up into a more interesting whole. 

I have two more in the series planned out but may continue. I have more of these funky frames and more ideas to follow. 

What is an Inverse Series?

This past week in the studio,  I finished framing the Inverse series: Windows and Trees from my 100 day project of 2017. It has always been one of my more cerebral series. I will try to explain the idea behind this series below and hope that once you read my thoughts, it will be more clear why I used the title Inverse.

My original two ideas for this 100 day project series were vertical lines of fabric representing trees and a square representing a window, the two pieces on the right in the photo. Since I wanted to make four pieces in total for the series, I thought about the inverse of each design. For the original Trees, I used different colored strips of fabric within the trees inserted into a solid grey background fabric. Then for Inverse Trees, I decided to have cool tones of colorful strips of fabric as the background and just have a solid colored inserted grey line for the tree.

For the Window piece, I started with one gray square of varying sizes. The next step was to add warm colors in squares and rectangles around the square to look like crazy wallpaper around the window. The Inverse Windows has a grey solid background where you’re looking out the square window at sunset with warm colors.

I wrapped all four pieces around 24” stretched canvas frames. They are hung as a series. When they are all together, you can envision their Inverse concept easier than I can explain it in words.

The rolling to-do concept from a past Studio Notes article was super helpful last week because Monday and Friday are my usual studio days but I had made a doctor appointment on Monday and then went to a local quilt show at our Botanic Gardens with my Dad on Friday. These were important and I was so glad I could do them without worrying about missing studio time. So I rolled my studio time to Saturday afternoon. I powered through ironing all 4 pieces, lining up the frame accurately and stapling the pieces of fabric art to the back of the frame.

I had an experience that holds a valuable lesson for me. I wanted to use existing 30 inch sewn 25 day pieces and the largest standard size square frames are 24 inches. That means 6 inches of the 25 day pieces will not be visible and seemed “wasted” to me.  I knew I need 1.5 inches extra fabric on the edge to wrap around the canvas. So I was worried about 3 inches of wasted material. Some very interesting pieces of the daily squares are not seen on the back side of the frame. I had to let it go and move on. But lo and behold, I saw so much movement and more interest in these pieces because some of the design elements stop unfinished right at the edge and keeps you guessing. It makes the whole design appear like it is expanding rather than closed in like in a frame. You imagine the rest of the design. As a bonus, the interesting design on the edges of the frame look even better than I thought. I have included pictures of the edges of the art and how the design wraps around for you to see for yourself.

So sometimes circumstances that you think may not be ideal can take an unexpected turn and may be even more interesting than what you originally thought. I guess it helps to be open-minded.

If you are thinking about holiday gift giving, I offer gift certificates for items in my shop or custom EcoMemory art.

Let me know if you have any questions. Just click the CONTACT ME button below.