no more dithering around.

©2012, Paula Kovarik, Round and Round It Goes, detail

I have been dithering around about where to enter this piece. FiberArt International? Quilt National? I'm over it. Finally named the piece after some consternation. I consulted with others, played around with metaphors and poetry, sang some nursery rhymes and gnashed my teeth. Hey diddie diddle.....time is up.

The name of the piece is Round and Round it Goes. Created on a linen tablecloth in a spiral configuration. I entered it into the Quilt National competition. Can't show the pic here yet since there are some rules about that. This detail may give you a small preview.

Crossing my fingers to be accepted into this national show. The show travels to several venues and the artists are top of the heap, cream of the crop, buzz of the hive. Love to be a part of that.

One-of-a-kind

My mom is making these lovely cards from discarded quilt scraps. She adds crazy quilt stitches, chooses a card stock to match and then sews the patch to a window in the card. Each one is unique. She's having a great time making them. Our local restaurant/gift shop, Stone Soup, is selling them. Bravo Mom!

 

The Donna Reed filter

Each morning when I get into my studio the light from the east-facing window spews across the tables. It catches little vignettes that are quite magical. The color of this quilt melds perfectly with the pins and felt of the pincushion. And I love the repetitive circular elements.

It looks like the lens on my camera has some gunk on it that smudges the focus of elements within it's gaze. We (those of us in the ad biz) used to call this the Donna Reed filter, because every time Donna Reed (for those of you too young to relate please google the name) came on there was this gauzy soft focus image of her that made her look smooth and glowing. It's a look that should come with a soundtrack. I know I am always looking for a little vaseline to smudge on the lens when someone points a camera in my direction.

For now, I will leave the smudge in place. Because a little blurring of the edges seems right to me.

 

You can never have too much orange

Serpent, 2012, Paula Kovarik

I'm working on a series using wonderful tangerine colored linen napkins. Each napkin is a completely different 14" x 15" composition that allows me to experiment with stitch patterns. This one is called Serpent. This detail does not show the spiral configuration of the drawing, but that early morning light that grazes across my desk each morning shows the wonderful texture. And, of course, you can never have too much orange in your life. After seeing a copperhead snake in our lily bed I have been more interested in the snake shape, its meaning in mythology, how to identify them and why people are so afraid of them. I find snakes elegant and solitary creatures. This spiral-designed version was inspired by a series of pre-columbian pottery I was looking at last week.