FIREWORKS: #14

HERE IT IS!!!! I can't even begin to tell you how long I've been "thinking" about fireworks. This is the culminating effort over the last ten days or so to pull together what will be the final two-page spread in my upcoming picture book. This is the fourteenth quilt that is finished, leaving only two more to go!!! It's been such a thrill to work in my studio and make such a big mess of progress.

We set an 'arbitrary' deadline of getting these first fourteen quilts really-truly finished up by 3:15 this afternoon. I started the day before 6:00 a.m. in a Herculean effort to make this happen. Allen took the whole newly steam-ironed pile off to get scanned this afternoon, making it to their office just before closing time. He came up with the idea of getting things underway, with the pieces that are already finished and then we can just drop in the final bits as I finish them up. WHOOOOHOOOOOO!! Raise your glasses in a toast of coming down the finish line. The goal is to have the books back in time to take them to NAEYC in CA the first week of November. Ambitious you say? A goal is a dream with a deadline!

Anyhow. What you see documented above is the process of 'fusing' fabrics together to become a quilt (as opposed to sewing them together in the traditional manner.) I am a big proponant of this process for the collage effect that it offers. Some of these elements encorporated in the finished product are sprits that I assembled this time last summer. Other bits are from fabrics I just purchased last week.

The biggest element in making progress toward this years-in-the-making goal is to have blocks of time to pull it all together. YIPPEEE!!! Now for the mad dash to the finish line. Still awaiting (besides the remaining quilting effort) is the music notation and my line drawing the sign language to support the text. Oh, and the actual credit page. And the title page. And the page that details all of the publication blah-blah-blah..... just a few more details. LOL. Honest to goodness, though, I see a light at the end of the tunnel & a new book in my hands.