Wednesday, February 02, 2011




This is my entry for my "12 Connected" group.
Changed - Cathy Ortelle


I might have taken this challenge too literally. I first heavily rusted (Change!) some Pima cotton fabric; it reminded me of a topographical map.



I then quilted some turquoise hand-dyed fabric to batting and overlaid the rusted fabric. Voila! Clear blue lakes nestled in Northern California mountains. I tried to machine quilt around the obvious places. Disaster! It looked horrid. So I ripped out the machine quilting and tried some hand work. Even worse. I don't have the dexterity to do good hand work any more. So I will be doing more machine work in the future.

I missed last month's challenge - sorry again. I have a huge Christmas party and my whole house is turned upside down and things are packed away. I still haven't found the challenge that I had almost completed before Christmas. Maybe it will turn up some day.

There's lots of fun work in this challenge. I'm looking forward to the next!


The theme was "Change".





I've also been setting up my Etsy shop and designing new patterns for my Arashi Shibori silk scarves.

I also am working on some articles about plen aire painting for a couple of newsletters.


I've found it's really difficult to try to master different types of media. I'm entered in the Sketchbook challenge and find it difficult to do one a day. But I do several in one night, so I guess it works out.



1 comment:

Heidi said...

Hi Cathy

I have not heard from you for a long time. I have seen on your blog, that you are painting in oil now, and I hope you are well.

If it is so, could you please give us the 10th challenge word?

thank you so much and have pleasure painting your surroundings.

Heidi