I made a promise...

An outcome of taking Jane Dunnewold's "Artist Strength Training" workshop (which I highly recommend) is a personal commitment to three actions:  Schedule time for working in my studio, create one piece a week, and communicate.  I will use this blog as my primary tool for communication and the content will be what I make/do each week.  From past failures I've learned that I need to start with small commitments so I'm simply going to publish something weekly!  Ideally it should be about my art and there should be an audience, but for the near term I'm happy just to work on building a habit of blogging.

So, what did I do this week?  Well, I already took self-kudos for making [achievable] commitments.  I did spend time in my studio but I focused on completion rather than creation with a mundane task of attaching sleeves to a piece going into an exhibit in November, and the rather laborious task of quilting and binding three quilts as gifts.  I still enjoy the craft of making a functional quilt now and then, and I consider my designs part of my art so I'll let these represent my work for the month. 

The first is one I made as a birthday gift for our oldest daughter.  I put it in the TV-watching-huddle-on-the-sofa category.  I started with a top I made years ago and backed it with a new top I designed to be more contemporary and in the colors she's chosen for her living room. 



Original top, now the back

New Design for the top

The next two quilts were the outcome of a self-challenge to deliberately work down my stash in order to free up even a teeny bit of space.  While more conventional in construction and using commercial fabrics, I am happy with the outcomes and these will go to the brothers of my god-daughter. 



Marshal's Quilt

Zan's Quilt

And so ends week one of Post-AST!