retail therapy/progress is incremental

Today I accompanied Cathie out to Maplewood, on the eastern edge of the metro, to an adoption appointment. Cathie's dog rescue org adopted out a black lab to a woman in a split level ranch home, and final papers needed to be signed. After we finished there, we drove back to Minneapolis and found Colorful Quilts, a store I've only recently started tracking. It's close to me, but awkwardly situated for someone who doesn't drive, between University Ave and the St. Paul campus in a neighborhood I lived in long ago.

It turned out to be small, but well-stocked with stuff I'm anxious to get next to: lots of pretty batik fabrics, plenty of hand-dyed fabrics and silk fibers, embellishments, paint sticks and all the usual stuff (sans beads) that art quilters read about in the magazines. I found black Misty Fuse in stock as well as silk beads, Sulky Blendables threads and all the hot books you can't get from Borders. So I spent a bunch of money (big surprise), signed up for their mailing list, picked up flyers for all the little quilt shows (mainly to the south of the Cities) and had some fun. Cathie let me buy her a couple cute batiks while I was at it, and she enjoyed looking at sample quilts and chatting up the clerk, who said she recognized me. (Not sure that's accurate though -- I never get out. Besides, I'm mistaken for other women fairly often. I have that kind of face.)

I'm really using the "Desire" piece as a means to experiment, and I'm sure it will show, but I can't let that discourage me. I picked up a book on working with velvet (almost a chapbook really, part of an instructional series by Jean Littlejohn.) It expands on some nifty ideas I've seen in the magazines -- dye discharging with bleach, using soldering irons to emboss and burn velvet, etc. Not sure I'll do any of that with "Desire" since it's a little late to add a new all-over technique, but I have a fair amount of velvet left and I've developed a taste for it.

I'm finishing up the doors on the reveal. I'm not sure the whole will escape the sum of its parts, but I'm trying. I have to remember to put the trash bag over my pieces at night, or the darned cat gets up on the sewing table and flattens everything, leaving his hairs behind as an integral part of the piece. Grr.