Virginia A. Spiegel

Fifteen by Karen Stiehl Osborn
15″ square; Karen’s hand-painted & dyed cotton cloth and canvas.

My friend, Karen Stiehl Osborn, has a soft heart.  Even though she already had two dogs, she agreed to foster the cutest little rescue dog.  Why?  Poor Chili had a leg amputated and Karen didn’t want Chili to recover in a rescue kennel.

Now Karen is auctioning the artwork shown above to help the rescue pay for Chili’s surgery.

The auction is now open.  All the details you need to bid are right here. Click on over and give Karen a helping hand in her mission of kindness.

Logo by Jeanelle McCall

ToteTuesday raised a whopping $$15,649 and Karey B’s Monet’s Flowers CD has raised $410 so far.  So we are definitely over $205,000 total raised by Fiberart For A Cause since 2005.  It’s great to retire Fiberart For A Cause on such a high note.  Sincere thanks to everyone who made this success possible.

We had several bonus challenges for the Tote Tuesday finale and bidders were up to the challenge:

1. Any patron with a winning bid of $350 or higher on one tote/artwork will receive four wonderful quilting books from FFAC’s Honorary Chair, Karey Bresenhan: Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project; I Remember Mama: A Book of Love About Mothers, Daughters and Quilts; Celebrate Great Quilts!; and America From the Heart.
Nine generous patrons will receive this bonus: Karey will contact you directly.

2. Every patron who wins a tote/artwork with a bid of $1000 or more may choose either one of my famous “never sold, only gifted” fabric bundles (The fabric bundles are hard to explain, but think of origami <kind of> with my own fabrics and specialty fibers wrapped and packaged in a way that makes some recipients say they don’t want to start unwrapping it at all) in the winner’s choice of colorway OR one of these artworks OR one collage ($75 or less) from Karen Stiehl Osborn’s Mixed Media Gallery.
Lynne Allen did and I am happy to send her Create Spaces from the Third Thoughts series.

3. If Art Cloth Extravaganza: A Dream Tote raises the most money during ToteTuesday 4, the generous artists of Art Cloth Studios will send the winner an additional $500 or more of art cloth.
It did ($1000) and they, very generously, will.

4. Peggy Schroder will donate 10% of the winning bid (up to $1000) for the Think Pink tote to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For a Cause.
The Think Pink tote raised $350 and Peggy contribued another $35 to the ACS. (Peggy is busy shipping out the many totes she sponsored.  Thank you, Peggy, for your huge contribution to ToteTuesday,)

5. If we raise a total of $15,000 from ToteTuesday, I will hold a drawing among all winning bidders from all the ToteTuesdays. The winner may choose one of these artworks OR one of my “never sold, only gifted” fabric bundles (description above).
We did it! The winner is Ann Thompson.

Logo by Jeanelle McCall

Perhaps I have been watching way too much of the Olympics, but the spirit of competition (for a good cause, of course) is upon me.  Let’s spice up the ToteTuesday with a bidding twist and some bonuses:

GOLD MEDAL ROUND TOTES: There will be four totes with no Go For The Gold bids. They will be in head-to-head competition to raise the most money for the ACS during the ToteTuesday finale. Check back here tomorrow for the link to the auction page with all the details.

BONUS REWARDS:

1. Any patron with a winning bid of $350 or higher on one tote/artwork will receive four wonderful quilting books from FFAC’s Honorary Chair, Karey Bresenhan: Creative Quilting: The Journal Quilt Project; I Remember Mama: A Book of Love About Mothers, Daughters and Quilts; Celebrate Great Quilts!; and America From the Heart.

2. Every patron who wins a tote with a bid of $1000 or more may choose either one of my famous “never sold, only gifted” fabric bundles (The fabric bundles are hard to explain, but think of origami <kind of> with my own fabrics and specialty fibers wrapped and packaged in a way that makes some recipients say they don’t want to start unwrapping it at all) in the winner’s choice of colorway OR one of these artworks OR one collage ($75 or less) from Karen Stiehl Osborn’s Mixed Media Gallery.

3. If Art Cloth Extravaganza: A Dream Tote raises the most money during ToteTuesday 4, the generous artists of Art Cloth Studios will send the winner an additional $500 or more of art cloth.

4. Peggy Schroder will donate 10% of the winning bid (up to $1000) for the Think Pink tote to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For a Cause.

5. If we raise a total of $15,000 from ToteTuesday, I will hold a drawing among all winning bidders from all the ToteTuesdays. The winner may choose one of these artworks OR one of my never sold, only gifted fabric bundles (description above).

Logo by Jeanelle McCall

Peggy Schroder received such a great response from fiber artists for her Have A Heart tote that we just couldn’t bear combine the artwork in an actual tote.  Owning artwork is so personal that I felt you should have the choice to bid only on the pieces that speak to you.

So each Tuesday, the magical “HeART” tote will open and several individual pieces of artwork will be available bid during ToteTuesday.  Please note that the Preview and actual sale will now be held on my website. The urls will be posted here on my blog Monday.  Trying to showcase 12+ totes and these great artworks on a blog would lead to massive carpal tunnel outbreaks from scrolling.

Starting us off on Tuesday, February 9 will be these two artworks:

This is Ellen Lindner‘s Emerging Hope.  It is an  8×10″ fabric collage and, yes, it is finished.  If you would like to see what it would look like mounted and frame, visit Ellen’s blog.  This artwork was custom made for ToteTuesday; you can read more about Ellen’s creation of this artwork here.

Karen Stiehl Osborn created Aurora especially for ToteTuesday and held strong when a gallery wanted to buy it. The dedication of artists to the cause is inspiring!  The artwork is inspired by the colors of a Winter sunrise.  Materials:  Canvas and Kona cotton cloth, hand painted and printed by the artist.  Approximately 10.5″hx6.5″w, mounted on 14″x11″ watercolor paper.  (I recently interviewed Karen about the change in her artwork to using canvas).

And that’s not all.

Marti Lew has organized a number of cancer survivors and their friends from the Quiltart list to donate art also for a special Celebrate Life tote.  Again, the artwork is just too wonderful not to be displayed and put up for bid individually.  The first of the Celebrate Life tote artwork to be up for bid on February 9 is Marti’s own Celebrate With Lupines in Winter. I had to leave this photo as Marti shot it as it’s perfect for the title.

Marti’s artwork was created by using hand painted fabric for the background, french knots, free motion stitching.  Measuring 4×4″, it was mounted on a 5×5″ canvas which was covered with hand painted fabric by Mickey Lawler.

All donations for ToteTuesday are made directly to the American Cancer Society through Fiberart For A Cause.  I thank the generous fiber artists and businesses who have so generously donated to ToteTuesday.  See you on Tuesday, February 9 starting at 11 a.m. when these wonderful artworks AND more than a dozen themed totes will be up for bid.

Karen Stiehl Osborn conducted a fundraiser to help her friend, artist Beate Knappe of Germany.   Karen donated 80% of the proceeds from her Autumn Aura collages to Beate, a self-employed artist, to help with substantial vet bills:

Beate adopted a beagle puppy named Jeannie. Unfortunately, on October 4th, Jeannie was hit by a car. Since then, she has needed several surgeries and now rehab to put two of her legs back together and teach her to re-use them. All of this has left Beate with vet bills in excess of 2000 euros.

Karen’s collages sold out.  Is there something you could do to help?  Beate has an Etsy site as Bella Donna Design and a wonderful website with more news about Jeannie.