Fiber Art, Snow Geese, and Sketches

Enjoying nature, shapes, lines and colors.....Snow Geese
We headed north to LaConner on Friday to the Skagit Valley farming area to see if we could spot some snow geese or eagles. There were thousands of snow geese! And I counted 12 eagles. As always, I carry my sketchbook, and captured a quick sense of the shapes. Lately I am paying more attention to shapes in my paintings and perhaps these will end up more refined in paintings to come.
As far as the eye could see, white covered the farmer's fields. They did look like snow, and up close, lovely swan shapes with black tipped wings, honking madly. We were lucky to see this entire flock raise up as one, flooding the sky with beating wings, turning on a dime altogether, like one massive organism changing directions, here, then there, and turning back around and landing again.Fiber Art
I have been focusing on birds the last year. Two weeks ago I worked on a fiber/paper stitching project. Here is a close-up portion of it. It incorporates fabric, my sketch of a heron transferred to fabric, embroidery stitching, tea bag paper, beading and more. I'm not done with it yet, it's an experiment but I'm liking the mix of textures and the pale muted colors, different for me.We visited the La Conner Quilt Museum again. There's a wonderful exhibit of contemporary hand stitched items which I would post pictures of, but they weren't allowed. However, there were also some outstanding examples of crazy quilts from the 1800's, with their amazing quantity of handstitching on every one.
And a final quick sketch - from the turret window of the museum looking across the street.
Taking time for nature, art, sketching, stitching with good company, what could be more satisfying...