Inspiration & Joy: Artistcellar, Quilters Take Manhattan & Amy Butler

A few days ago, I was asked to join the Artistcellar http://artistcellar.com/ design team. Naturally I jumped at the chance to test the Artistcellar products, use them and blog about my experience and process weekly. I will be the new Friday blogger.

The good news is that there are pretty much no rules, so I can do what ever inspires me--art quilts, dolls, wall hangings, triptychs, journal pages or anything else I can think of. I just have to take photos of the process and write about it...which is something I do anyway.

To celebrate my recent birthday, I treated myself to today's Quilters Take Manhattan event at FIT. It was full of beauty, inspiration and really nice people. I met Jamie Fingal, and will be taking a class with her tomorrow at City Quilter.  http://www.jamiefingaldesigns.com/ I also met Stephen Fraser, owner of Spoonflower,  http://www.spoonflower.com/welcome who was super nice. I have a line of fabric for sale there (under the name Edzellinni) so it was great to chat with him. I met Allie Aller, and got an autographed copy of her book Crazy Quilting. http://alliesinstitches.blogspot.com/

The featured speaker was Amy Butler. http://www.amybutlerdesign.com/mainmenu.php She designs a gorgeous fabric line and was such a heartfelt, poignant speaker. Her presentation made me step back and realize that with the many things going on in my personal and business life,  I had slid away from the mind-body-spirit connection a bit and needed to clear my mind of clutter and negative thoughts, especially any worries about my new design project with Artistcellar.

I made this journal page a few weeks ago. It reminded me of Amy Butler's designs a little, with the rose, paisley and light airy feeling. It also made me think of Artistcellar since I used several stencils on top of the collaged base.