I was thumbing through the quilt magazines at the grocery store...

and I ran across a pic of this quilt:


By Diane Magarelli
This quilt is in the Issue #2 of the $100,000 Quilting Challenge. It makes buying the issue worthwhile.
Astounding work! What you cannot tell by this pic is it is 5 layers thick so it is 3D in design. It simply takes my breath away!


Another shot of the same quilt by Diane Magarelli
In the Issue #2 of the $100,000 Quilting Challenge.
This one shows the layers better, but my scans do not match the details shown in the magazine by a long-shot. Just a prime example of the great things you can do with commercially made fabrics, no matter what anyone says.


I'm afraid I drooled on the magazine so I had to buy it ;)

Everything I needed to know about life ....

I learned while weedwacking the yard :

1) Keep your mouth shut (VERY, VERY important).
2) Keep focused on your objective, life is full of diversions.
3) Watch what you are doing and where you are going, always.
4) When shit is flying, 90% of it is sure to land on you.
5) Be mindful of the little things, tread softly but surely.
6) Take time to smell the flowers, and to plant some... (instead of dreaming of having a nice garden "someday"). Even a single flower adds color to your life, and if you plant one every week, your "someday" garden will be here before you know it and you can move on to other dreams...
7) Making the 5YO the boss, keeps him out of trouble & your blood pressure down... & let the dog supervise so they do not get underfoot.
8) No one will ever appreciate the effort you put out as much as your dog.
9) Do not swipe away blindly at the weeds in your yard (or life)... they will take over if you let them. Rip them out leaving no roots if you want to be free of them. Weeds are a pest that will not go away on their own and one that will return if you are not deliberate in their removal.
10)Not everything that stinks or that looks ugly is bad, and not everything that looks pretty or seems sweet is good.
11)Strange noises coming from the darkness under the deck is NEVER happy noise
12) Always, and I do mean ALWAYS run FAR away from a fast moving snake in the grass (leaping is also permitted and encouraged)


I need a drink....
Oh, and the neighbors are no longer napping in front of their TVs, the screaming that went along with #12 pretty much insured that.

This is so annoying....

I reworked the template 3 times , reloaded and still my links to other blogs are not appearing.... Live journal is not this difficult to use, (one click and you can follow other journals , no muss no fuss). I may need to just drop this journal. If I disappear from here all together that is where you will find me, as user dejablu503.
Edit: Finally they appeared! WHEW!!!!!!! I'm still annoyed though

How I became this version of "me"

My life seems to revolve around overcoming clutter & chaos, I guess that's why being drawn to the kind of art I do was a natural outcome. I'm a self imposed, semi-reformed packrat. I keep things long after most people would throw them away, every item in the pile is a cherished fragment of memories I have trouble letting go of. Each one is tied to my past, to things I care about... so in my mind it seems disrespectful to toss any of these fragments into the trash. This "keeping" practice alone creates chaos , but it's a comforting chaos....at least to me. My children hate it, I should mention that.

When the world goes mad I sort through and rearrange these memories and fragments, & as if by magic I am transported from the current madness that fills my life into a different time, when things were not so insane or overwhleming. Simplier times, when having almost no money meant vacations were simply creative but not non-existient. Times when getting away meant putting my finger on a map, filling the car with gas, loading the kids and camping gear in, packing a cooler and going off on an adventure... to discover the thrill of experiencing new places....only to return with memories and treasures you cannot buy at places like Disneyland. We discovered each other as well on these trips, to this day we are closer than most families, we have not drifted apart even though the kids are adults now, living their own lives, spreading their wings... they know home is always there, a safe place filled with love.

In my artistic endeavors I specialize in putting fragments together, I quilt, I make multimedia sculpture and usable things out of discarded fragments, I alter books into art journals and life journals, I use textiles and fibers to 'paint' pictures of the fragments of memories that hold a place in my heart or mind, I reclaim furniture that someone else has tossed as having no value and give it new value in either my heart or the heart of someone else. I take old clothes, and remake them, I reinvent them... into something else entirely. All of this has been a very natural path for a packrat like me to take.

This blog is going to be about my artistic adventures, my piecing of fragments into whole visions. It's going to start slow, as I pick through the chaos, as I clear a space to work in, as I clear my mind of clutter and search for a defined direction for each new piece. One by one they will apear here, take them for what they are.... fragments of one woman's mind/life given a public voice. You can listen or cover your ears.....

You Are a Prophet Soul

You are a gentle soul, with good intentions toward everyone. Selfless and kind, you have great faith in people. Sometimes this faith can lead to disappoinment in the long run. No matter what, you deal with everything in a calm and balanced way. You are a good interpreter, very sensitive, intuitive, caring, and gentle. Concerned about the world, you are good at predicting people's feelings. A seeker of wisdom, you are a life long learner looking for purpose and meaning. You are a great thinker and communicator, but not necessarily a doer. Souls you are most compatible with: Bright Star Soul and Dreaming Soul

What Kind of Soul Are You?

Checking in and checking out....

This is my first entry on Blogger....so this post qualifies me as checking in.
One of my favorite quotes:
"When life gives you dilemmas, you might as well make dilemonaide"

And gawd knows I am the queen of dilemmas. First of all I am Andee ( short for Andrea). I am also a mom, a grandmother, a sometime artist and I am always struggling to find a way to be a full time artist. Born in Illinois, raised in California, and since 1999 I have lived in Oregon, New Mexico and Arizona, I currently live in Portland, Oregon. I routinely work 70+ hours per week with Hospice clients as a caregiver. I use to own an Internet Coffee House on the southern Oregon coast, and now I don't. It's a long story, filled with some very good memories, some rather harshly delivered realities and it terminated with with a very sad ending. That whole experience created it's fair share of basic thinking changes for me and now that part of my life is ancient history. It's truly not something I talk about much anymore. All of this, and everything that life has thrown at me has helped to build my character... and when you mix it all together you get who I am now. I'm a decent enough person, with a good heart and a free spirit, but keeping with the duo nature of my Gemini birth sign it is mixed with a deep-down-mourning kind of sadness on a very deep and passionate level. I also found out along the way that when the chips are down, I am a survivor. (Good to know).

I am also a tad eclectic, mildly eccentric, and I have a calm interior. My outside occassionally gets a tad over excited about things, it's part of my charm, at least that's what my friends tell me. I tend to somehow manage to wind up surrounded by stray dogs, pregnant cats and odd people on a fairly regular basis....it keeps life interesting. What would I change about my life? Well, my oldest daughter was diagnosed with MS on 2003, I guess I would change that for her. But for myself? Probably nothing... because through every happy or sad experince I have faced in my life, I somehow directly or indirectly built this current life for myself and now I am living it, one day at a time. Some days are a struggle, but for the most part I am content with my life as it stands, & with where I am... at least for now. I have to admit that don't see myself staying in Portland Metro forever, (I truly am a small town girl at heart), but for now it's okay, at leastI am surrounded by great fabric & art supply stores.

I'll be posting some my latest art adventures here from time to time, (along with a peek at some of my past ones). Sometimes it will be whimsically painted furniture, sometimes it will be an art quilt, or wild art doll, other times with will be a head-on dive into multi-media art. (My mind and current interest/inspiration) tends to wander from time to time. I'll try to keep it interesting.

I've actually had a livejournal.com blog for years under the username dejablu503, but it is simply time to separate my art life from my daily ramblings, so this blog is being created.

For now, I am going to move on to the checking out part of this post, as I wander around blogger andcheck out who is here and what they are doing.