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Friday, March 15, 2013

“Kick Off Your Heels” fundraiser

 

I just completed a pair of art shoes I am submitting for the Kick Off Your Heels fundraiser. It is a juried invitational with the goal of raising $5,000 for The Barbra Streisand Women’s Heart Center at Cedars-Sinai Hospital in Los Angeles, California. They they not only treat women, but also educate and do major research on heart disease with women, exclusively. 

Did you know that more U. S. women die each year from heart disease than from all cancers combined? Organizers Jamie Fingal and Sue Bleiweiss didn’t either. After watching a segment on Katie Couric’s new talk show about this subject, they decided to put together a project to help raise awareness of heart disease in women. The link to the segment is here. All of the heels that are juried in to this fundraiser will be sold in May 2013. They are designed to be works of art, not wearable shoes. As we get closer, I’ll keep you posted on how you can help by buying a pair of shoes.

Here’s how I made my shoes:

I started with blue pumps purchased for $2 at a local thrift shop, sanded them lightly with sandpaper, and painted them with gesso. The shoe in the front is the original color, and the shoe in the back is painted with gesso:


I painted them sky blue with brown tree branches:


I bought the nest, eggs, silk dogwood blooms and the bird at local craft stores, and auditioned them:


The birds did not resemble any I’d ever seen in nature, so I trimmed their feathers and repainted them to look like chickadees, my favorite bird. Then I glued wads of paper inside the shoes, and glued or pinned in the moss, lichens, nest, eggs, birds and dogwood blosssoms. Here they are, all done!

 



Alex and Ricky celebrate International Quilt Day


Me, on the set with Alex and Ricky, to shoot an episode The Quilt Show in 2011.
International Quilt Day is Saturday! To help celebrate, and as a featured artist on a past episode of The Quilt Show, I wanted to let you know about a gift that Alex and Ricky have put together for quilters around the world.  

Beginning today – Friday, March 15 through Sunday, March 17 – everyone who signs on to The Quilt Show will have free access to over 120 of their internet shows, including my episode, #901. You can watch the shows, check out the great tutorials, browse the gallery of over 19,900 member quilts, visit the forum for answers to the most burning quilt questions and lots, lots more. And if you missed my show, you can see it now.

You can also enter the TQS prize drawing with fantastic prizes from companies like Bernina, Gammill, Superior Threads, AccuQuilt, C&T Publishing, RJR Fabric. Ricky and Alex will have gift baskets to give away, too. The grand prize is a new Bernina 550QE sewing machine!