Studio PROGRESS!!!

I'm so excited!! I'm soooooo very excited!! I've been upstairs in my art-quilting-studio quite a bit over the last week or so. Here's the evidence. This will eventually become a two page spread in my upcoming book, "Red, White & Blue" to my song by the same name. Yippee. I need to create sixteen quilts for a thirty-two page book and this makes number 13 nearly finished!!! I'm coming down the home stretch. Slowly, but surely.

The song is from my fourth CD and I wrote it the Friday morning after 9/11. It started a tweek bit simpler, as I wrote it while washing my hair that morning of national prayer, mourning & reflection. That morning I was headed to the New Albany Jewish Community Center's preschool and I wanted something that the children could perform for their parents & grandparents during Tot Shabbot. I had a bag of flags and each child stood on the temple's steps and held a flag. By the time we got to the recording studio it had become four verses and a chorus.

This will be my third book. I have been working on these quilts for nearly four years -- ever since the release of my first picture book, in fact. Needless to say, this is taking me a long time. Anyhow. I have a NEW goal!! A goal that I am going to verbalize here. A goal that you are welcome to help me keep on track to reach. I'd like for all of this effort to culminate in book format for the tenth anniversary of 9/11. That seems like a relatively straight-forward goal, but in order for anyone to 'know' about it in time for it's use for the anniversary I need to be introducing it the seasons before hand.

I have been invited to give the keynote in Louisiana in January of 2011. So that is my BIG goal. Have it done and in my hand by then. Wouldn't it be awesome if it were ready for NAEYC this November? Anaheim?? That would take an enormous amount of effort, focus and determination. Time will tell, but this is lucky number 13!!

This one is held together with Steam-a-Seam II, fused with the heat of an iron. I amused myself and counted the unique number of fabrics. Wanna guess? I counted 83 different fabrics in this two page window opening. It's a good thing I have such a big stash to choose from.