100 Days of Dice Doodles: Week 4 Update with Online Teaching Highlights

This week of Dice Doodles' recap includes some of my online quilt workshops as both design inspiration and confirmation that it is possible to maintain a daily art practice even with a busy schedule! 

24/100:

Wednesday included two teaching engagements: a morning CREA-TV & Reality lecture/trunk show for the Orange Grove Quilters Guild followed by a 3 hour Magnificent Mandalas workshop for Mancuso's Online Quilt Festival. This was the first time I offered a doodle-only version of this workshop and really loved seeing all the spectacular mandalas that were designed by the participants!

Of course, I couldn't resist wrapping up my day with a mandala of my own!

25/100:

A fabulous day of Modern Free Motion Fillers & FUN! with the Orange Grove Quilters Guild.

Concluding with some free motion quilting of my own to capture these beautiful leaves that I pass by along my morning walks. 

"Every particular in nature, a leaf, a drop, a crystal, a moment of time is related to the whole, and partakes of the perfection of the whole."- Ralph Waldo Emerson, American essayist and poet

26/100:

Beauty was abundant in today's Mod Molas & Bright Blooms Online Quilt Festival workshop. What fun to see everyone's floral compositions grow and bloom with a brilliant finale thanks to some careful cutwork!

Instead of a brilliant bloom, I chose a monochromatic doodle for my own floral scene featuring one of my favorite floral themed quotes:

"Where flowers boom, so does hope."-Lady Bird Johnson

27/100:

Saturday was a day of Pebble & Play!!

Instead of perfect pebbles, I stitched out lots of interesting rock formations photographed nearly 10 years ago during a visit to Joshua Tree National Park. This desert terrain included a few pops of green for the shurbs growing amongst this rocky terrain and a brilliant blue sky.

28/100:

Woke up to a powerful lightening and thunderstorm that continued for quite some time around 6 am and included a 9 am encore performance. We very rarely get any thunder or lightening here in San Jose... and usually only 1-2 booms before it moves out of the area. Today's storm reminded me of falling asleep to a good thunderstorm while living in New York, and trying to keep my eyes open long enough to see another spectacular flash of lightening across the sky. 

While this storm brought some much needed rain to the Bay area, we soon realized it also ignited multiple wildfires throughout the Bay Area and larger Northern California (with the closest only a few miles away from our home).

I used a variegated grey thread (although wished I had a darker variegated grey thread) to stitch out the bear claw motif for the background clouds and then layered yellow thread with some holographic gold thread on top to capture the lightening strikes.

29/100:

In honor of all those going back to school, Happy National #2 Pencil Day!! Once again, blue painter's tape to the rescue. I cut 3/4" tape in half lengthwise and used them as placeholders, orientation guides, and straight edges for my bouquet of pencils. Once the outline was stitched, I was able to fill in the vertical lines and add all the other details one thread change at a time.

I couldn't resist sharing a quote from the movie You've Got Mail:

"Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address."  -Joe Fox to his penpal

30/100:

We have been experiencing super muggy and hot weather this past week. While it was tempting to skip my morning and evening walks, I just kept putting "one foot in front of the other." I kept humming these words to myself throughout the day and finally realized they were from one of my favorite stop-motion animated Christmas movies: Santa Claus is Coming to Town. While I realize there are 4+ months until Christmas, there is a lot of timely wisdom to be discovered in the song "Put One Foot in Front of the Other," written by Jules Bass & Maury Laws and sung by Mickey Rooney & Keenan Wynn.

"If you want to change your direction

If your time of life is at hand

Well don't be the rule, be the exception

A good way to start is to stand

Put one foot in front of the other

And soon you'll be walking 'cross the floor"

And there you have Week #4 of my Dice Doodles journey. While I may fall a bit behind on posting my weekly reviews, you can always follow me on Instagram, where I post each evening (or early morning depending on when I am able to finish!)