Tracy McCabe Stewart - Contemporary Fiber

Well, by my lack of posts, you can probably guess who’s been winning this one.  I finally got the pictures off my phone, but found I had oodles of other pictures on there like movie promo stills and headlines off the BBC.  Weird.  Anyway, when I tried to delete them, I ended up copying them endlessly.  I tried to make a folder with the photos I’d actually taken and deleting the rest, but ended up deleting  some of the photos I meant to keep.  I did manage to save some, so here goes.

I had a wonderful lunch recently with Margie Trembley from the Needle Arts Guild in Chicago.  She was out for a wedding in San Jose.  Beside being an artist herself, Margie and her husband, Glenn have a great gallery in Springfield, NE called Springfield Artworks. 

Margie introduced me to fiber/bead artist, Shirley Cook.  I took some pictures of Shirley’s beautiful work:

Felted Vessel (C) By Shirley Cook

 I took these at the restaurant table with my phone camera, so excuse the backgrounds:

Felted Vessel (C) By Shirley Cook

This one turned out a bit blurry:

Felted Vessel (C) By Shirley Cook

I’m sad to say I managed to delete the other photos I had of Shirley’s work.

I am setting up my raised bed vege garden this week.  I’ll post pictures, provided that my phone cooperates:-)

It’s been a whirlwind couple of months!  I left Chicago on August 4th with my 2 dogs and drove about 2200 miles over the next 3 days to reach San Jose.  We spent the next 9 days living with a bed and  plastic  utensils and paper plates.  The movers delivered our stuff on August 15th.  Since then, I have managed to get mostly unpacked, but we are still waiting for our garage to be built before we can unpack all of the stuff that we had in the basement of out old place.  I am hoping that will go up in the next week or so.

My sewing room is set up, but I don’t yet have a place to dye or paint fabric, so I haven’t really started any new work.  I also can’t find a regular sized USB cord, so can’t upload all the pictures I’ve been taking with my phone.  I am going out to buy one this week! 

I did manage to take a class at a great art studio in my neighborhood- A Work of Heart  It’s got equipment/classes for everything from stamping to dyeing fabric, to precious metal clay, including a class I signed up for in cyanotype printing on fabric  The place has a great vibe and really nice people.  I am sure to be a regular there.

I also joined  the Contemporary Quilters Fiber Artists group.  This is a group of extremely talented people that do lots of surface design techniques.  I am sure to learn a ton from them.

To top it off, I went to the regional meeting of the Surface Design Association today as well.  It met at artist Judith Content’s home, which is a work of art in itself.  This is a group working and teaching in all aspects of surface design.  Applications include anything from weaving to designing fabric, to felt vessels.  You name it.  Very inspiring!

I learned about a really cool company today as well called Spoonflower.  Seems like everyone but me knows about this.  For what I think is a pretty good price, you can upload an image and they will custom print it onto fabric.  Amazing!  Like inkjet printing you do at home, but on a much larger scale. 

More later and I’ll have pictures!!!!