One Year Anniversary and eleven days since . . .

I wish that I had a photo of something to post, but alas my computer is in sick bay, again.Today is cause for celebration being that it's Stacy's first anniversary of her kidney transplant. On Sunday afternoon mom, Stacy, and I went to see Cirque Dreams Illumination which is a traveling performance of students of Cirque. Students? Perfection magnifico!

Eleven days ago was one of the worst days in my life. My man, my rock, my sanity, my companion, my love, suffered a small stroke that was doable, some speech slurring. He was able to walk into the ER at 9am. At 3pm he had a severe stroke and is now paralyzed on his left side, no speech, and not much life. But he is reponsive. His three sons arrived within 24 hours and we started to prepare ourselves to have Palliative Care help us through the end. But Roger kept giving us thumbs up that he wanted to fight. He indicated that he wasn't ready to give up. A feeding tube procedure was done last Friday, yep, can't swallow either, and on Monday he was moved from the hospital to a transitional rehab center. The prognosis continues to be unfavorable.

We had gone to Redondo Beach to stay with my grandsons while my daughter and SIL were in Norway celebrating their 10th anniversary. I don't know any of my neighbors but my daughter lives in one of the best neighborhoods ever. Two neighbors came to my rescue and stayed with mom and Stacy and took care of the boys. I came home on Sat. to take care of numerous things and will return to Redondo Beach on Friday. Driving freeways isn't something I'm crazy about, but I know longer have anyone to do the driving.

I'm devasted . . . .

Fabric book?

Finally, back to working with fabric! Just in time for a two week break; next weeknd we leave to stay with my grandsons while their parents celebrate their 10th anniversary by going to Norway. I've never gotten the boys ready for school or made sure that homework was done, or taken them to their numerous activities so it will surely be an experience.

Anyway, I'm not sure yet if this is the cover the Vegas Fabric book, but in case it is I stitched the Las Vegas Blvd photo onto the canvas fabric and glued on the room keycard. The top photo is the one I posted somewhere below and while it's not as rich printed on muslin I still like it a lot. It's the night scene of the water show at the Bellagio with street lights in the foreground. In case you can't tell, that's a swirl earring stitched on at the base of the lights. After the photos were stitched on the edges were painted with layers and layers of paint.

This isn't the first page; I plan to use some photos of the Mohave Desert taken from the car in route to Vegas for the first page.

So, the plan is to sew tabs onto the edges and either do a piano hinge book binding technique, my version. Or, tie the tabs together. The base fabric is canvas, nice and sturdy. The Paris page was done on muslin that might be stitched onto the canvas, or fused on.

Two photos were printed onto the inkjet prepared muslin. I use Bubble Jet Set 2000. Then the muslin was fused onto a thin fusible to make the muslin sturdy enough to embellish with paint and stitching. On the left and below the Paris balloon are rows of stitching that added texture when painted over. Barely visible in the photo of the Paris street sign is the pole it's hanging from; I used blue paint around it to help blend the photo with the background fabric. The Paris balloon photo was our first sighting of the hotel, taken from the car and includes a portion of the Eiffel Tower. The black and gold letter "P" is wood and the black circle with the round gold dome is an earring. Now you know all of my secrets!

Quote: Assume the best, until you know otherwise. Sally Husss