Author: Laura Kate

One of six children, I was raised by a busy mom, who instilled in me a love of fabric. Though I learned to sew and knit at a young age, it was the arrival of my first grandchild that pushed me into action. A long-time knitter, I am now ready to explore all things fiber.
Posted in drawing, painting

Sketching Sunday and a Finish

Posted on by Laura Kate

My art association is planning to hold a second fundraiser by selling 6 x 6 inch artwork created by their members. To kick it off, there will be an open studio today. I want to support this worthy organization, so I will be participating again. Last year, I focused on small subjects for the small canvas. Going through my reference photos in search of suitable subjects, I came across this little sea turtle. It is something I dowloaded from Unsplash several years ago.

Cute and easy, I think. I like that the turtle has made it to the water’s edge. Just another little push and she will be launched.

To reframe it into a six by six size, I compressed the image and did this pencil sketch.

Today I will take this drawing to the art center and turn it into a watercolor painting.

On another subject, I managed to finish the landscape painting of a seaside cabin in Iceland. This painting was an exercise in water reflections.

Reference photo:

The weather is completely clouded over, so no shadows to paint. My painting:

It’s on a not-so-big piece of cheap watercolor paper (although it is 100% cotton.) So I didn’t fuss over the many windows in the cabin. I will need more practice on painting reflections, to get a more consistent effect over the entire water surface.

Posted in quilting

SAHRR 2025 Round 4: A Nod to Boro

Posted on by Laura Kate

Pieceful Wendy is our host for round 4. She has given us instructions that lend themselves very well to scrap-busting and improvisational piecing: Cut a square of fabric. Slice it in half in any direction. Cut a strip of another fabric. Sew the strip to the cut sides of the square. That’s it.

There is a pattern in my Japanese quilt block dictionary that references Boro stitching.

In Japanese sewing culture, boro refers to the technique of mending old clothes by sewing odd pieces of fabric over the worn places. It began out of necessity: in olden times, fabric was scarce and expensive, so each little piece was saved and used in the mending. In modern Japan, fabric is readily available and boro stitching is done just for the sheer pleasure of making things by hand.

To read my post about boro stitching, click here.

My blocks for Round 4 are not traditional boro. I was inspired by the idea of using scraps. I started by cutting many strips of dark fabrics.

Then, following Wendy’s instructions, I slashed them.

Because I have chosen to use the color gold as a unifying element, I inserted strips of gold fabric, cut at around 1 and 1/4 inch wide. They finish out at 3/4 inch.

I sorted them into groups by color and direction of the insert. Then I stitched them together in three sections, to become the shoulder area of my kimono.

Left side
Center Section
Right side

This ten-inch tall section will sit on the shoulder – 1/2 on the back of the garment and 1/2 on the front. Here is my quilt after adding the round four blocks:

Even though the back is not quite done yet, my focus for the next two rounds will be to build the blocks for the kimono’s front.

I hope you are enjoying the quilty fun happening during the Stay at Home Round Robin challenge. To see others who are participating, enter the InLinz link found on Wendy’s Pieceful Thoughts site.

And here is the complete list of our hosts for SAHRR 2025 along with their blog sites.

Posted in painting

This week’s watercolor work

Posted on by Laura Kate

Hi, Friends,

When I finished the 12 week Artist’s Way course, I made a commitment to myself to follow up with 90-day self-nurturing plan. It includes a concrete plan of action to write daily, take myself on an artist’s date once a week, and explore more fully my favorite creative practices. One of these is watercolor painting.

My “date” this week was to attend a workshop at the local art association, which took place on Wednesday. It included a one hour tutorial by Tony Couch. Today I am sharing the practice pieces that I painted as a result of the workshop.

Tony talked a lot about what the landscape artist paints. He insists that we don’t paint a tree. We paint a symbol of a tree. We don’t paint water, we paint a symbol. Symbols have specific characteristics that make the objects instantly recognizable to the viewer. For example, for a deciduous tree the characteristics are shape (round crown), colors (varies with the season) and textures (expressed by the leaves and the bark)

Painting the symbol of a tree.

Painting a symbol of still water.

To practice the still water technique, I painted a scene from Iceland. It’s based on a photograph published on Unsplash – a free use site for photographers and other artists. Here is the reference photo:

I started with the sky and worked my way down to the water.

Initial washes are complete. I will come back to deepen some areas and add finishing details. This was painted on a Stonehenge paper block using a palette of Hansa yellow deep, Winsor green yellow shade, ultramarine blue, pyrrol scarlet, quinacridone red, carbazole violet, burnt umber and Payne’s gray.

Posted in quilting, sewing

WIP Wednesday: SAHRR Round Three

Posted on by Laura Kate

It’s all Japanese quilt blocks all the time around my house these days. First of all, let me show you the fabrics that came yesterday from kimonomomo on Etsy;

They are all types. There’s smooth cotton and homespun, shiny metallics and quiet two-color prints. What I forgot to buy was fabric in light colors. So my completed squares are about to get darker.

But not this week. Quilting Gail asked us to make star blocks for round 3. I found only one Japanese star block in Susan Briscoe’s book. The Japanese word for star is hoshi.

This is a basic eight point star assembled from diamond shapes. But it is not an easy one. The directions are rated difficult and the technique includes sewing lots of Y-seams. No thank you.

A google search helped me get out of this assignment. I discovered many Japanese quilts that incorporated hoshi blocks in different techniques and styles. So I decided to use this criss-cross star block as described by Anorina on sameliasmum.com

To give the block a little Japanese style, I made the center square with an appliqued crane, which symbolizes longevity for the Japanese. This applique is included in Susan’s pattern book and described as a crest.

Crane on gold square
Crane on dark square

I sewed three criss-cross blocks in all. And here is my quilt at the end of round 3.

I will be continuing to stagger the placement of blocks. That means I need to wait for Round 4 to finish this row. Two blocks from Round 4 will replace the outside stars in this row. They will be moved to row 4.

I hope you are enjoying my little adventure in international quilting. Be sure to visit the Linky party. It can be found on Quilting Gail’s site.

Here is the line up of all 2025 SAHRR designers.

See you next week.