Yesterday

The tree quilt is finished. I just need some sunshine in order to take a good photograph of it. But it's raining right now.
Yesterday was bright and sunny. So, I took a little walk near the water. The plum trees are already blooming. I even saw a Japanese cherry tree almost ready too.

Pink

I've been obsessed with the colour pink, more precisely the colour of sakura. One of the ways to say pink in Japanese is to use "sakura colour" 桜色 (sakura iro).
I can see a sakura quilt in my near future. I still have lots of pink fabric, but I needed to dye some blue for the sky. I did a few small pieces, and two larger ones. That should be sufficient for the quilt I have in mind.

The colours are brighter in reality, but today is a pretty dull day and I can't get the colours right.

I also did a few monotypes, on paper. Pictures will be for another post.

December...

Already? Really?... Am I losing the blogging habit?
I'm afraid I am...
I still take pictures of my work though. I even had this little mosaic ready at the end of October, showing a little peek at my sketchbooks and some beautiful paintings of my GD...

I don't know where November went... I didn't get much studio time, but I managed to do two small quilt tops, one mixed media painting, and lots of sketching.
I also finished my colourful piece of weaving and started another one, although I try to be careful with this as my back pain might  be coming from there.

On the Japanese studies front, I finished the first unit of "Japanese for Busy People II", I know about 140 kanji (still a long way to go!), and I discovered the NHK News Web Easy, which is wonderful. :-)

And now, let's see if December can be a blogging month... Once a week maybe? What do you think?

Indian Summer

We are enjoying very mild temperatures for this time of year.
Summer plants are blooming again. We even discovered a few tiny fraises des bois in the garden.

The other day, I had a little student. I'm not sure GD's way of holding her tapestry needle is very academic, but it is incredibly efficient...

She also made herself a beautiful necklace.

No need for a needle here, we used very stiff cotton yarn.

Next is a little peek at some of my sketchbooks...

I've been trying to draw everyday for several months now. Some days, it's only a five minute sketch, or just a little colour experiment.
I made some of the above sketches while taking Alisa Burke's "Summer Sketch" online workshop. Two or three drawings are from my travel sketchbooks. And the last one must have been inspired by Carla Sonheim's "Imaginary Creatures" workshop I took last year.

A small quilt

This is a quilt I made last month with fabric scraps from my Twelve by Twelve projects. I dyed so much fabric, especially for the Colorplay series...

I'll try and use those fabrics for a new project that I can't show on the blog yet. I think I'm almost ready to start working on larger quilts again.
In the meantime, and when I'm not studying my Japanese vocabulary, I've been playing a lot in my sketchbooks, experimenting with watercolours and acrylics.

I also dug out some old sketchbooks that I had forgotten about...

Not sure I'm going to keep all this.... Maybe just cut out what I feel is usable... What do you think?