I had thought it was about three days since my last blogpost, not two weeks!   EEEK!  Thanks to a couple of you who wrote to see if I was still alive and OK…. just swamped!   I have decided I just can’t keep up.  Between the older son, my mother, teaching, trying to sleep, trying not to fall apart, the house, the husband and younger son, the end of school-year frenetic activities, Eli’s sports schedule, and whatnot, there are two options.  Fall behind or fall behind more~! And oh yeah… I’d actually like to quilt or make art and not implode somewhere in there, too!

So, blogging got put on the back burner, and the calendar evaporated even faster than usual.  I had intended to post this photo on  Mother’ s  Day.  Remember what I said about being behind?

with Mama (age 92) in early May 2011

Mama is in the dementia unit of a WONDERFUL local facility called Quarry Hill.  Since she fell and broke her collarbone (thank heavens it wasn’t worse) in February, her decline has accelerated.  We have begun hospice care, and I am so glad the charge nurse suggested it.  They are really being proactive about saying she needs pain meds (she is too far gone to remember / understand to ask or say she hurts, and the hospice folks have more leeway under rules and regulations to administer to those who can’t verbalize well for themselves) and attending to her care.  She is on a waiting list for a place in the area nursing care level facility for dementia patients, but for now, this is so good for her.  So I am grateful for their care and the time I get to see her.

Paul and the boys gave me flowers, a card (which Joshua’s girlfriend even signed…I loved that!), and I got to pick where we ate when we went to Portland for a Sea Dogs game the previous day.  Life is good!

Mother's Day flowers combined with daffodils from the garden in our new home

I’ll be back with more posts when I can.  I have tons to share, just not enough time to process photos, write, upload photos, and deal with the glacial internet here in the boonies.

Twelve by Twelve: The international art quilt challenge

A while ago an early review of this book summed up their feelings in two words.  Ditto:

Buy it!

Table of contents: twelve chapters for twelve challenges

That said, here’s a few more details about this fascinating, informative book!  The project began with Diane Perin Hock, who invited quilt artists –newbies and experienced– into what became the Twelve by 12 challenge.  (You can see their website here and blog here.)  My friend and fellow Frayed Edges member Deborah Boschert (website here and blog here) is among the twelve, so I am especially thrilled to have followed this group from their beginnings, to thinking about a book and submitting a proposal, to published.  And how well they have done all along the way!

The book is arranged into twelve chapters, one for each of the two-month challenges.  The first chapter is written by Diane Perin Hock who is the featured artist for the first challenge, whose theme “Dandelion” she also selected.  Each chapter opens with all 12 of the 12×12 inch quiltlets on the left hand page and a large photo of the “featured” artist’s quilt on the right hand page.   In this chapter Diane explains how she came up with the idea for the challenge and got things rolling including  My Quilting Life, Choosing the Theme, Exploring the Theme, Creating My Piece, and Starting Your Own Challenge Group, a  how-to sidebar.  At the bottom of each page  the other 11 quiltlets are shown (larger than on the group page) with a  paragraph by each artist about her piece.

The subsequent chapters follow a similar pattern, though the person who selected the theme is not necessarily the featured artists for the theme.  The book ends with succinct artist profiles and links to their websites and/or blogs and—as every good book must have—an index. Of course I had to pick Deborah’s chapter to share:

Chapter 12, Deborah Boschert featured artist; I love Love LOVE the "thread wrap" Deborah has developed for her bindings. You get a clear "end" to a piece yet the picture continues in the thread stitched around the binding. Way cool! (PS--sorry about the salt shaker...needed something to hold the book open and it was nearby!)

As I read through the book, and yes I wanted to read every word, you  can see how the sense of community developed among this group.  It is amazing that each person managed to complete every challenge on time (or pretty much on time), and they share how they needed to make the bi-monthly “reveal” date stretch to accomodate the fact that members live in Belgium, the UK, the US and Australia and the dateline and time zones shift!  Each chapter has a  how-to section, and I think what I liked most was reading how each artist developed here quilt, sometimes rejected false starts, or re-working them, or admitting that “this was my least favorite.”  Not everything “works,” and it is refreshing to see something in print that acknowledges this necessary part of the learning and art experience.

To go back to where I began:  buy this book!  It is a treasure.  You’ll want to sit down and read it through.  Then browse.  Then soak in the art.  Consider inspiration.  Consider technique.  Ask yourself “what would I have done with this theme or problem?”  Then read it again…the book is available many places online including at Amazon.

When I moved out of the old house, I removed the design wall from my old studio.  Since the corners were cut off the 2-feet wide rigid foam insulation, they couldn’t be re-used well in the new studio as the new design wall.  BUT, as I was hanging some artwork, I decided a ginormous “bulletin board” would be just the thing to display smaller pieces by sons, friends, inspiration, and so on.

The display wall installed, but without stuff...yet.....

With stuff...quilts and art on the left are by Betty Johnson, Jacquie Scuitto, my son Eli, some calligraphy from Lunnette (a christmas card) and a fabric postcard of hers, and on the right a photo that was on display at IQA-Houston, a leftover Koi from that quilt that will be made into something eventually, my very first (but I hope not my last) Houston ribbon, and a basket

Here’s how I did it, so you can try also.

1. I took the largest piece of rigid foam insulation which was 2 feet wide by 91 inches long as my “big piece.”
2. The second piece, with a corner cut off, would yield another 91 inch piece that was 12 inches wide.  I  cut the pink 2″ thick insulation with a new blade in the box cutter (extended to a scary distance) and managed to get a nice clean edge.
3. I used clear packing tape on both sides at the join so it wouldn’t buckle, then wrapped the flannel from the previous design wall (a sheet from Lands End) around the 36×91 inch piece (that’s just under one metre tall by about 2.5 metres long for my metric readers).
4. Next, I used “L” shaped brackets spaced about every 20 inches so there were 5 brackets on the bottom edge.  I bought some wood lattice (a thin strip of wood about 3/8″ thick by 91 inches long) which I screwed with very short screws to the brackets.  This gave me a long, flat, firm bottom edge on which to rest the display wall.
5. Placing the display wall on the strip, I marked the top edge just about above the five “L” brackets on the bottom.  I added another five brackets to the top edge, moving them down about 1/16″ or 1-2mm. below the marked top edge.   This way I can just slightly squish the rigid insulation and it is held in place by friction…no need to use glue or otherwise muck up the wall (well, any more than putting the screws in).

I made a smaller “bulletin board” with a 24×24 piece of insulation leftover from another project and covered it with this beautiful fabric.  It’s by the door the center part of the basement (which WILL get a different color of paint…sky blue, with green on the floor….but not soon….maybe in August or September after the year’s travel teaching is mostly done). I had to underline this one with batting because the pink insulation changed the color of the fabric–an effect I did not want.

The bulleting board next to the door is made the same way as the large wall, but I added batting because the pink of the insulation distorted the crisp white in the flowers, so I added batting to prevent that.

And when the closet is done, that vacuum had better fit inside!  Don’t like the look!   The blue bucket is my large new garbage can…5.99 from Target!  I think it was intended as a beach tote or bucket for filling with ice and sodas in summer.  Nope.  With the flexible shape and two handles it’ll be easy to tote upstairs to the outside garbage can. That’s it for now!

Hoooray…the floor is done Done DONE!  And here’s the last bits and pics….

This is how it looked the last time I shared...cluttered!

Then I moved all the “stuff” to the already-painted half of the room and proceeded to get rid of the old washing-off dark greenish paint (latex?).

I've folded back the damp towel. You can see the damp spot on the cement and outlined in bright green Photoshop dots the old icky paint than needed to be removed. This was all over the second half of the room. I am glad that is done...my bones ached after sitting on that cold cement floor!

Here’s the floor with almost all of the paint removed.

As you can see my helper is inspecting my work in the foreground....

The remaining bits refused to come up, so the floor will have a slightly “leopard spot” look when done.  Oh well.  Nothing much to be done–do NOT want to rent an industrial sander and create a dust mess just to remove them.

And compare the 3-coats on the top of the photo (the first part of the floor completed) and the single coat on the bare floor on the second half:

The top and right of the floor are done with 3 coats. The left side shows what it looks like with just one coat. Had two more to do after this picture was taken.

In progress….

In progress

DONE!!!!!!!

The second half of the room painted....floors done!

Well…the floors are done.  There was still more work…design walls, display space, closet doors (in a couple of weeks)…..stay tuned!

I LOVE teaching jobs that are close enough to reach by car in a day, and this trip was just a blast!  Life has been a bit hectic–we are still settling in to the new house and I am working on my studio so this was a few weeks ago in Late March.  As usual, I was so busy teaching that I didn’t take too many pictures (sigh).

A while back the Bayberry Quilters of Cape Cod invited me to give two lectures and two workshops!  What fun!  I drove down on a Tuesday (when we got another  dump of snow…why it couldn’t have done that on Monday or Wednesday I do not know!) and gave my first lecture (The Decorated Quilt)  that evening, then another (the journal quilts)  the following morning.  After the lecture, we had lunch at a FABULOUS little restaurant, Morrell’s Restaurant and Catering (in South Dennis); I had Shepherd’s pie that was so good I went back for dinner a couple nights later!

A Woods Hole back street with the typical weathered shingles and white trim

On Wednesday afternoon I was off, so I drove to Woods Hole in hopes of seeing some of the Oceanographic institute (Eli is really interested in Marine biology and oceanography) but pretty much everything that is usually open to the public was closed for winter.  It was still a lovely drive–very (well duh!) Cape Cod-ish! For the ride back I stopped here to get a cookie and latte…loved the name:

Pie in the Sky bakery

On Thursday I taught Balinese Garden, which is a pattern of mine (here) so this is –unusual for me–a project class whose goal is to familiarize quilters with the decorative stitches on their machines and some decorative threads (the fiddly ones!).  Here is my table runner take on the pattern:

The table runner I made from my pattern (still not quilted...sigh...time, I need time....)

I strongly encourage quilters to do their own thing, and this group did!  Some stayed fairly close to the pattern, others completely changed the set-up and two more totally did their own thing using their ideas for a quilt (one was jellyfish, another an Asian-inspired pond scene).  I totally loved it!

Laying out the "vine" on the background

Cutting leaves, buds and flowers

Using a more traditional wreath setting for the multi-yarn vine--so springy and cheerful!

A more traditional and lovely take on the pattern--she used a lovely echo method of outlining the main flowers

This student used a landscape printed fabric with a beach, shore and ocean as her background, and it is lovely!

One delectable stash for using to decorate the quilt and make the vine

Another version, closer to the pattern

Jellyfish...same techniques totally different subject--yeah!

Another student wanted to use some Asian-inspired fabrics and do a moon / pond scene. She adapted my techniques to her design--way cool!

On Friday, I taught a favorite class to teach:  Quilting Design.  We had a grand time, I showed the ladies that they can indeed draw (!), and learned some easy-peasy ways to draft what might seem (but aren’t) complicated patterns.  In the afternoon we used the quilt tops they brought to brainstorm quilting designs, talking about hand versus machine, easy versus complicated, and so on.  That was SO MUCH FUN, but alas I was busy crawling on the floor showing how to use the clear overlay sheet to test-drive ideas and didn’t take any photos!  I really love teaching this class because students always walk away enthused and energized and realizing they can do their own designs.  Alas, it is rarely booked, and would be even better as a 1 1/2 or 2 day workshop.  So if anyone out there wants FUN…book this one!  It looks like I’ll be able to teach it as a 1 1/2 day workshop at Vermont Quilt Festival in 2012…hope to see you there!