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I recently finished this quilt for my local quilt guild challenge. The theme was movement. I enjoyed creating a river scene using my hand dyed fabrics, a piece of needle felting that I made, and a lot of texture and free motion quilting. The size is 18" x 14".     I hope that you enjoy seeing this quilt.
Thank you, Janelle
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Wow, I knew it had been a while since I posted, but I didn't realize just how much time had passed. Since I talked to you last I have been busy working a lot and trying to get my new house unpacked. I'm still working on the unpacking. I'm hoping to get my studio completely unpacked and organized in the next couple of months. That's my goal and I hope that I can accomplish that much at least. I miss my daily creative time and having a lot of projects to share with all of you. Hopefully I can get back to art full time and not work my other job quite so much in the future. I did enjoy the summer here in Soldotna. It got warm and we had plenty of sunshine and rain. We saw moose, cranes, and caribou. The fist two visited our house fairly often. We also got to do some sightseeing this summer. We visited Seward and Homer, both of which have gorgeous scenery. I have been picking low bush cranberries in the past couple of weeks. They will taste very good this fall and winter, when we want some of that great tart sweet taste. I'll try and post more regularly this fall and winter and not stay out of touch completely. Until next time enjoy these pictures of Alaska. Janelle  Moose visiting our yard.  Mt. Redoubt across the Cook inlet.  Caribou by the road.  Exit glacier near Seward, AK.  Mountains across the bay near Homer, AK.  Lower Fuller Lake. We had to hike in to see this lake.  Wild Alaska berries picked at my place. I entered two quilts into the Art Quilts Extraordinaire exhibit at the Kenai Fine Arts Center. I also have the tree quilt showing, that I made earlier this year, as a part of our guild exhibit in the same exhibition. It opens tomorrow night from 6-8 pm. If you are in the area please come out and see the quilts. The exhibit goes through the month of June. The center is located at: 816 Cook Ave, Kenai, Alaska 99611 These are the three quilts of mine that will be in the exhibition.    I hope to see you there,
Janelle Along with unpacking all of my family's belongings at our new house, I have also been getting our new cabin ready to rent. We live in an area close to the ocean, beautiful mountains, and the Kenai river. The river is a world famous fishing river, especially for salmon. There are many outdoor activities to do in the area even if you aren't a fisherman. There are numerous hiking trails, scenic adventures and wildlife viewing here. We decided that we would rent out the cabin on our property when we didn't have family or friends visiting that wanted to stay there. Here is the link so that you can check out our new cabin and perhaps come for a stay. https://www.airbnb.com/rooms/12855789?guests=2&s=soLdCBP8  Have a great weekend,
Janelle I finished this art quilt, turned it into the guild, and now it is on tour with the group. There were quite a few tree art quilts turned in for this challenge. When it comes to the area again, I plan on going to see them all on display. For any of you in Alaska you can see the quilts in these locations. Homer- May Mother's day Quilt Show Kenai- May 28 to be entered into "Art Quilts Extraordinaire" at Kenai Fine Art center for June show July -the blocks go to Seward They will be displayed at the Anchorage Log Cabin Quilt show Sept 17-18 This was a fun challenge to enter. Here is my quilt and how I finished it. I added green ribbons and yarn randomly to the tree area.    Then I couched green yarn all around the top to outline the trees. I couched black yarn with a touch of other colors over the whole area. This way only bits of the greens showed through to give the trees more depth and interest.  I finished the edges and sewed on a few more beads, then called it done.  I didn't get this post written sooner, because I have moved. We finally have a house again, so all my time has been spent in unpacking, taking care of my family, and working. My new studio is about halfway unpacked. Once I get that done I'll share some pictures and I'll be able to get started on a new project.
Until then I'll probably be pretty scarce online. Have a great week, Janelle It's been a while since I wrote here. Life has been full of selling our Michigan house, looking for an Alaska house, working at my part time job, being sick, and just general life stuff. I'm back now being creative. I have a challenge quilt due for the guild here in early April, so I decided to started working on it. The theme for this small quilt is trees. I was inspired by an early morning scene that was breathtaking. I love the landscape here and all the inspiration that comes from the beauty. This quilt is still in progress and I haven't decided on a name yet, but that will come in time. I painted the scene on a piece of cotton with textile paints after sketching the basic outline.  Sketch on cotton fabric.  Color samples  Painted sky  Painted trees After I got the background painted, I added blue tulle to the quilt and stitched around the trees. It adds a bit of shimmer and depth to the sky. I also added the moon that's a combination of white fabric and iridescent cellophane.    Now I'm in the process of adding beads to the sky for stars. I also have plans for the trees. Since the theme of the quilt is trees, I want the trees to stand out. I'll post again when I have more done.
For now have a great weekend, Janelle I'm still getting used to living in Alaska. We went through the biggest earthquake that I have ever been through. It was a 7.1 magnitude, that woke us up during the night with quite a shake. Fortunately we didn't have any damage, just shaken nerves. My family and I are still looking for a house here and trying to sell our Michigan home. I'm hoping that the new house has some space that I can set aside for my studio space. I'm really looking forward to sewing again and being able to unpack my things. At least in this dry period I'm gathering inspiration from the natural world and all the gorgeous scenes outside my door. We took a drive from here to Anchorage last weekend. We have to drive through mountains to get there and I took a lot of pictures. We drove part of the time during the sunrise, so I captured some really gorgeous scenery. I'll share some of those later in this post. I finished a new page in my art journal this morning. I was playing around with Tombow markers and water, drawing some simple flowers. Just for fun I added some iridescent medium through a stencil. I love adding layers to my pages and making the layers shimmery is just a bonus.  Drawing and Tombow markers as watercolor  Stenciled layer with iridescent medium   This was the sunrise in the morning after the earthquake.  The clouds being colored by the sunrise.  Alpenglow on the mountain.  Moon set over the mountains south of Anchorage during the sunrise.  Mountains and Cook Inlet south of Anchorage. That has been my life recently. How are things going with you?
Have a great week, Janelle I have been working on a few small projects that I'm ready to share now. I'm making a felted kindle cover, that isn't ready yet, but I made to cover too large on purpose. I'm using the extra pieces of felt to make a cuff bracelet and a couple small pictures. I have to cuff almost done. I just need to find my box of snaps so that I can finish it up.  I needle felted and wet felted wool roving, silk roving, and some sparkly Angelina fibers. For the cuff I sewed around the edges and added some decorative stitching too. I just love french knots. Next I will sew a couple snaps on the end so that it fits just right and it'll be ready to wear. The edges are wonky, just the way that I like them. When I make some progress on the other pieces I will share them too. I decided that I wanted to practice drawing and coloring a fish too.   I want to keep practicing these guys and using different types of paper, to get different effects with the watercolor markers. Salmon are a big deal here on the Kenai peninsula. It will be fun to make more of these pictures. For those of you who love trees, snow and clouds I also have a couple of photos to share. Every time I go out I watch the landscape and the clouds and light. The light here is fascinating, so different from further south.      Have a wonderful weekend,
Janelle It's been a while since I posted here. With the holidays and my part time job, the time has just seemed to run away from me. I completed one project during the holidays for a commission that I'll share with you. I was asked by a friend to create fabric that looks like aged paper. She wanted it to cover a bulletin board for most of the year. Fabric works perfectly for this type of project since it is more durable than paper and can be manipulated to look like old paper. This image was my inspiration piece. I was trying to create fabric that looked similar.  I started with white cotton and unevenly dyed the fabric a pale yellow tan color.   To make the fabric look even more aged, I dipped it in very diluted brown fabric paint, squeezed out the excess, and laid it out to dry scrunched up. I added more paint over the tops of the peaks, to create some darker stained areas. As the fabric drys the paint pools in areas and creates a cracked look that makes it look stained and old.  Wet Fabric  After it dried  The next step was to create a dark boarder all the way around with more fabric paint.  The border is wet here  Here the border is dry I sent it off to my friend and she put it up on the bulletin board. I can imagine all kinds of uses for this kind of fabric. It was a fun project to work on and it was nice to spend some time manipulating fabric again.  Here is the fabric being put to its intended use. Have a great weekend everyone. I'll try to share more often. My mind is bursting with new ideas just waiting to come into being.
Janelle Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone. I have a few pictures to share from Alaska today. Soon I'll have some new art pictures to share with all of you. But for now enjoy the pretty frozen north. (Although we do have warmer weather and rain headed our way like so many of you do who live to the south.)     Janelle
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 Serenity Cabin(URL HIDDEN) AK, United States Modern cabin in Alaska wooded setting. Warm and comfortable with a full bath, kitchenette, and loft. Twin over full sized bunk bed. Access to carport and space for larger vehicles. Only minutes... 
 
 Janelle MarksI have a loving husband who thinks I'm a bit crazy to be so obsessed with art. I am a mother of five children from ages 21 to 5. I spend most of my time mothering and keeping house. In my free time I like to play with textiles, art journaling and painting. I have a degree in textile and apparel studies with a design focus. Right now I am more interested in fiber arts than apparel design, but I don't know where my journey will take me. Categories
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April 2019
Check out my husband's website. He is a writer and has written about our life and many other amusing stories. 
 
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