I seem to be writing one serial post after another. Is this wrong?

In my own blog reading, I find that a really long post is too much. I want a bit-size thing to think about for the day. AND I want pictures. So, that is what I try to do here, and sometimes that means a post is like chapter. Here we are–Chapter Number One of the Alaskan Capitol Christmas Tree project.

With the hubbub of QuiltCon2015 and then Spring Break, I have just not gotten around to this super exciting news, until now.

Next Christmas, the people of the Chugach National Forest–the forest in my backyard–will haul an evergreen all the way from Alaska, across the continental United States, to the White House Lawn.

This tree will be the the FIRST ever Alaskan U.S. Capitol Christmas tree. How cool is that? According to the press release about the tree, “the tradition of placing a Christmas tree on the west lawn of the Capitol during the holiday season began in 1964, and since 1970, a different national forest has been selected to provide the tree each year. The 2014 tree came from Minnesota’s Chippewa National Forest and made appearances all over Minnesota and the Midwest before arriving in Washington.”

Of course, if it is a Christmas Tree it is going to need some ornaments. Alaska Geographic, the Chugach National Forest, and the Alaska State Council on the Arts put out a call for artists to submit ideas for those ornaments.

They were looking for ten artists to decorate the tree. The ornaments had to be less than ten inches tall or wide, weigh no more than a half-a-pound pound, be made out of repurposed materials, have weatherproof qualities and there needed to a template of the ornament that could duplicated by youth from across the state.

The list of requirements was a bit intimidating for me. A quilt is not really going to work in this scenario.

AND there is already one very famous ornament artist in our family. My mother-in-law Sue Tague was an ornament artist for Hallmark for dozens of years. She is a celebrity in that world, and I felt a bit sheepish putting my little light next to hers.

Still, if I was selected, I would get to be a part of Alaskan history, and I kind of wanted that. So I decided to throw my hat into the ring or to put it another way–I tried to throw my ornament on the tree, and it worked! I am one of ten Alaskan artists who have been selected to create ornaments for the first ever Alaskan U.S. Capitol Christmas Tree.

My ornament involves thread–lots of it.

And wool.

And a star.

It’s about the Winter Solstice and the starry nights of Christmas darkness we have every December.

Here is a peak.

I’ll be sharing the work of all ten artists in the upcoming months. For each artist, we’ll take a look at the work they are known for, the ornament they created for the FIRST ever Alaskan U.S. Capital Tree, and the template that will be used to create thousands of youth ornaments for our nation’s capitol.

You know you are a celebrity when you are invited to be photographed with these guys.

If you want to follow the journey of the tree and its ornaments you can by visiting the Capitol Christmas Tree page on Facebook.

Happy Equinox folks! We are officially turning towards the sun.

21 Mar This entry was published on March 21, 2015 at 11:20 AM. It’s filed under News And Events and tagged Alaska Geographic, Alaska State Council on the Arts, Alaskan Capitol Christmas Tree Project, Christmas Trees, Chugach National Forest. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.