Hello, February!

How is it February already? Time sure can fly when your busy. I've been gearing up for a Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators conference in Austin this weekend, in which I'll be meeting with an art director from Simon & Schuster to have my portfolio reviewed. The month of January was spent knee deep in paint and pencil shavings, creating several new pieces of art for my portfolio, as well as finishing up a new dummy book....one I'm pretty excited about. In addition to beefing up my illustrator's portfolio, I created five new paintings for Gallery Direct, and finished two commissioned paintings with a third close to completion. And with the conference coming up in a few short days, I have one more illustration to finish, and a lesson to plan for the first day of classes for our homeschool cooperative which start the day before the conference. It's a little stressful trying to make sure everything's ready for the conference, as well as my class which grew substantially from last semester's. I'm looking forward to Monday when it's all over and I can relax for a moment, and perhaps join this cutie in playing one of his favorite games he calls "Night, Night:"

All Gus needs is a pillow and a blanket and he'll snuggle up and tell you "night, night" over and over again. 

Throw in a changing pad, and an old trunk, and he's quite the happy camper.

 

Love that little boy!

xo

nessa dee

Baby Quilt

This is the start of the quilt for baby boy. My mother-in-law and Audrie started piecing this together a couple of years ago, but we never got around to finishing it. A new baby gave us the perfect excuse to do so. Plus the colors are going to work great with some of the things I've already bought for the room. Hopefully Audrie and I can finish it before this boy debuts, but as I'm not much of a quilter, it might be a longshot. If that happens, we'll just frame it and hang it up as art.

xo

nessa dee

Hidden Treasures

When my mom and I decided to have a quilt theme for our ladies weekend, my Gangy let us rummage through boxes of material left over from her quilting days. To my surprise, the boxes were filled with so much more than I had expected. I was in quilt heaven. There were tons of fabric scraps. Some brought back memories of handmade clothes sewn by Gangy and Granny. I recognized other materials that often filled the scrap box in their quilting room, materials my brother and I rummaged through to make our own quilted creations.

There were also beautiful buttons...

a box full of trim...an old Sucrets container with pins....

And then, I found quilt blocks...

a lot of them...

much more than these pictures show...

some pieced by my grandmother's grandmother...

some small and delicate...

some bright and bold....others waiting to be pieced together.

this box contains mine and my cousin's quilt...

and this is my dog, enjoying my quilt.

This quilt was the one adorning the table at our retreat. It was pieced by my great-great-grandmother.

It caught my eye. I love the colors, the bright reds, turquoise blues, hot pinks, and lime greens. I'm already redecorating Audrie's room (in my mind) around this quilt top, and it seems to be inspiring some of my latest pieces of art. (which will be showing up in my shop soon, by the way)

I'm by no means a quilter, but I have love for fabric and an appreciation for old quilts. All of the quilt blocks in these pictures were put together using the materials on hand at the time. They weren't purposefully pieced and planned out with designer materials. These were the "use what you got" kind of quilts. There's a lot of warmth in them. There's a lot of sentimental value. I do want to finish some of these quilts one day. (I'll have to get Gangy to teach me how!) I hope to be able to give a quilt to my daughter with her knowing it was pieced by multiple generations of women from this family. What a treasure that would be!

ND