I had a lovely phone call from Shirley Suettinger in Wisconsin a week or so ago. At the end of our conversation, she said “I have a suggestion.” I love to hear that – because there’s always something interesting coming – and this was no exception. Shirley told me she uses a potato peeler to […]
Sneak Peek at New Products
Oh my goodness, what a week! I flew to Cleveland last weekend and taped a couple of new segments for Quilting Arts TV on Monday. While I was there, I had the opportunity to tape a couple of additional segments for the website, so we’ll be posting those in the next couple of weeks. (I […]
The things we do for photos…
When I started quilting, it never entered my mind how much time I would spend trying to photograph my quilts. And it really never occurred to me that I would resort to climbing on counter tops and putting myself through all sorts of contortions to get the camera in “just the right spot” for a […]
Clean-Up Tips
Whenever I do paintstik demos, someone inevitably asks “how do I clean up?” After playing with these paints for 10 years, I’ve gone through a lot of different cleaning products. Here are my favorites. Cleaning Brushes My favorite cleaning for cleaning brushes depends on how long they sit before I clean them. If I clean […]
More Beautiful Coneflowers
Once a month I join a small group of adventurous quilters called the DIVAS for a Monday afternoon meeting. We share our recent work, new ideas, work on group projects, and try new techniques. But summer is special in Minnesota, so our August gathering was simply a picnic at Becky’s lake cabin. It was a […]
A Summer Tradition
The first weekend of August is always special in our little corner of Douglas County (Minnesota). It’s the weekend of the Rose City Threshing Festival. The men bring all their (very large) toys, like steam engines, tractors and threshing machines. They get most of the attention for the weekend, but the women have their own […]
Simple Paintstik Storage
Lots of people ask me how to store paintstiks. Just about anything works. You can literally toss them in a zip bag and put them in a drawer. But lots of people want something a bit more “organized.” So here’s a simple, inexpensive idea from the Back-to-School section. I had stopped into my local Walmart […]
Lauren Vlcek’s Fabulous Faces
A couple of weeks ago, I received the most wonderful letter in the mail. It was a note from artist and teacher Lauren Vlcek (pronounced vel-check), from Colorado Springs. Her letter was accompanied by photographs of two of her journal covers with amazing faces. Here is a paragraph from her letter and a couple of […]
Rubbing Plate Portraits
I’ve been working with paintstiks and rubbing plates for almost 10 years. In that time, I’ve almost always overlapped the images and made an overall print on my fabric — much like making a batik. But after making samples from the new Happy Holidays plates, a little idea popped into my head. I really liked […]
Got rubbing plates? Make patchwork!
I’ve been busy this summer working on a new pattern called Paintstik Patches. It started off to be a holiday quilt, but it’s really more than that, so I changed the name. (I just love being able to do that!) The pattern came back from the printer last week, and we’ve been busy shipping orders […]
Winners!!!
Wow! The MN Designer’s Blog Hop was amazing! I’m having so much fun reading your comments. Thank you so much for joining us for this event and leaving your wonderful comments. I hope you had a great time and will continue to visit us in the future. Without further delay, let’s get down to the […]
Easy Paintstik Placemats
Welcome to Day 10 of the Minnesota Designer’s Blog Hop. I’m so glad you stopped by to join the fun. I’m Shelly Stokes, and I’m the owner of Cedar Canyon Textiles. Most people know me as the “paintstik lady.” I discovered this wonderful paint product about 10 years ago in a book from the UK. […]
