Debra Jo Hardman's Crazy Quilts

Hi! I'd like to introduce you to Deb Hardman, she was at the hobby show at the Museum on Sunday, and she's a crazy quilter. Or is that crazy for quilting?
See, this is her name tag-

Crazy quilting is less structured than most traditional patterns, and allows a lot of embellishment and artistic detail. What Deb does is to create with fabric, thread and other bits gorgeous quilts with a nearly painted effect that can be hung on walls. A lot of them have a strongly Alaskan theme, all of them that I saw also have amazing details.

Like this raven. The fabric for the moon is glow in the dark, so is much of the stitching.

The sparkly hanging from the raven's beak? Awesome. The little stitched star details on the moon? So very wonderful.

And it's nest is well lined with sparkling bits.

This raven almost looks like by a brook. One of those pebbles has a secret.

Can you see it? All the stones except one are actually soft sculpture embellishments on the quilt. That one stone is a real rock!

Snowflakes aren't exclusively Alaskan anymore than ravens are, but you have to admit, in Alaska, we see a LOT of raven and a whole lot of snow. The white fabric and white stitching on this piece are both glow in the dark. Can you imagine having something this lovely in your room to shine softly in the dark?

Check out that detail. The soft curved lines in a shimmering thread, the scattered sparkle of beads, and those wonderful bubbles! Plus of course the glow thread snowflake.

One of Deb's resolutions for this year is to be a better blogger, including having more tutorials. Check out Cold Feet Quilter for more information, inspiration and eye candy.

Printable Love Quote

Click on the image below for a larger version to print. The quote on it is from Kahlil Gibran's The Prophet.

"Love has no other desire but to fulfill itself.
But if you love and must needs have desires, let these be your desires:
To melt and be like a running brook that sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness.
To be wounded by your own understanding of love;
And to bleed willingly and joyfully.
To wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving"

It seems like in every generation, there are people who discover The Prophet all over again. In my case, it was one of my mother's favorite books and she had the record as well. I have her copy. My husband got interested in Kahlil Gibran's poetry after watching History Detectives.
Published in 1923, this collection of poetry on a series of subjects has been translated into many languages, and has been constantly in print.

Spontaneous trip to the museum...

Today I was planning to crochet, bead and work on some other projects. Then on my newsfeed on Facebook, Bosco's Comics and Games posted
"Come see us at the Anchorage Museum. It's Hobby Day. Goes 'till 4pm. Free admission and free comics and cards from BOSCO'S."

Free comics, free admission to the museum and hobbies? I asked TG if it sounded like fun to her and she was dashing into her room for a sweater before I could blink twice. 

The hobbies included model railroads of which I didn't get photos. William came over and told TG "There's one that has the Umbrella Corporation logo on it."

I don't play video games. Everyone else in my family does, frequently. But I don't follow them or play them. Figure I'm doing good knowing who Snake is, but that's only because Michael, TG and William were ALL hooked on Metal Gear Solid last summer. So when I walked over and heard the model railroader say "This car will be filled with bodies." I said "Oh, that's pleasant." at the same time my darling princess was saying "Oh COOL!" 

In hobbies that interested me but not so much the rest of my family, Debra Jo Hardman was there with some of her crazy quilt wall hangings. That's a whole post for tomorrow, but here's a sneak peek.

Debra's raven wall hanging with lots of sparklies. Even the quilting thread shimmers.

There were building blocks, and my nearly adult children became a lot younger once they spotted those.

The Amazing Turnip Girl getting ready to build a double decker bus. Because there were no blue blocks to build a TARDIS.

I went to the beading table and made myself a simple name necklace.

We decided that I just couldn't walk enough to really explore the museum today, so we just picked one area to explore. Everyone loves the hands on science part of our local museum. It's where the planetarium is, as well as geological models, kinetic models, sea life and other joys.

TG building mountains

There is a kinetics of jumping exhibit in life science, this is the screen as TG walked off.

The top image is William trying to put a bubble dome over a bubble dome.

Here's William again, on infrared. 

Starfish! Always very wonderful.

I also decided to take a photo of myself on the infrared. I think my glasses look so much cooler this way!

Also going on at the museum is a toy exhibit from last month. We were all charmed by this G-man sparking pistol.

And seriously creeped out by the circus exhibit of antique toys that included some very creepy looking clowns.

It was a lot of fun, worth sweeping the 8 inches of snow off the car and going downtown.

And Bosco's? They were handing out comics from previous Free Comic Book Day and 20% off one item coupons. So both William and TG were absolutely thrilled. I think William would spend his entire paycheck there if it didn't mean eating nothing but ramen.

(I think I'm going to have nightmares about that clown)

Book Review - Blogging For Bliss

Every so often I wind up in conversations about starting a blog, and trying to explain just what I know gets confusing and overwhelming for some people.

There are a lot of books about blogging that focus on all sorts of topics, but very few books for the person who wants to start a craft or art blog.

A couple of years ago, Tara Frey wrote a great book about  the process that should be recommended to everyone who starts a crafts or crafty life style blog. Blogging For Bliss-Crafting Your Own Online Journal: A Guide for Crafters, Artists and Creatives of All Kinds

The author puts a lot of the facts of blogging in it, the most popular blog platform programs, hints about how to customize layouts, information about basic html commands. Information about couple ad programs as well as tips on creative, beautiful photography and sizing photos for the web. In short, it's all the information you need to start a blog.

Where it shines is in the examples and interviews with some of the best known names in art and craft blogging, finding out about the inspiration that caused them to start blogging, the satisfactions of blogging what you're passionate about and even how they picked the names of their blogs. They also ask these luminaries which blogs they read daily. 

The information has inspired me to think about changing the layout of my blog and possibly the way I blog. I'll still keep the focus where it's at, but possibly include more entries about day to day life. Make my blog a little more personally mine, as well as a depository for craft ideas, projects and art.

The book itself is gorgeous, wonderful examples of photographs and blog layouts. The interviews will tip you off to other craft and art blogs you might be interested in. This is a book that's sure to inspire anyone who is just getting started blogging with very easy to understand information.

You can read an interview with the author here at LarkCrafts.com

My reviews are always my personal and honest opinion. You can read more about my review policy here.