Girasole

For those who are reading this blog regularly, you may be startled to find a background today that was not here yesterday. Girasole is Italian for sunflower. When I first started my fabric quilting, I was living in my first house in Providence, where I lived for 25 years of my adult life. Being in the city, there was little room for gardens, so every space I could find was dug up and planted. The space between the sidewalk and the road on our busy city street was planted with sunflowers every year. Sunny, bright, happy and commanding flowers; they seemed to elevate our city existence. I got to be known as the sunflower lady.

My first studio was an investment into an old mill make-over downcity, named Monohassett Mills. I had a 1200 sq. ft. area on the first floor overlooking the Woonasquatucket Riverway and it was just the most glorious adventure I had ever had. In it's inception, I was faced with giving it a name. The sunflowers I was growing and drawing seemed to nod their heads in approval to the name of Girasole. Studio Girasole was born. I would like to take a minute to say that Monohassett was a gift from my dear Mom, who realized that a studio would be just the ticket for a middle aged, wanna-be artist. I will always be thankful for my mother's support and admire her for her vision and guts. It took over 4 years and many millions for the owners, a group of area artists, to finish the building. It was then, that I decided for financial reasons to sell my space back to them.

I continued sewing at home in the dining room, even though we moved across town to a smaller house. I remarried, and with my new husband bought a home in Smithfield with 2 acres of land to grow my sunflowers. I now have the most beautiful studio right at home. It's sunny with lots of big windows, skylights and sliders at both ends. I can see my sunflowers growing, and Studio Girasole is once again happily humming with activity.

I came upon this background while searching for something less boring than my plain white space. It spoke to me. So here it is to stay. I would like to apologize for my inability to figure out how to change the color of the text on my old posts. Until I can get my kids to help, I think I'm stuck with my previous color choices, which in some cases blend so well with the background that you can't read them. :( So sorry for the inconvenience.

Thanks for reading my blog. Have a 'sunny' day!