With the ladies of the Gold Coast Quilters of Boca Raton. I was so busy I think this was the only photo I got that day!  Because my Nourish quilt and the machine appliqued Haleakala Sunrise are touring with the 500 Traditional Quilts exhibit put on by Quilts Inc (the wonderful folks that bring you International Quilt Festival in Houston and other  locales), I made two new, pillow size Taro blocks.  This one will fit a 26″ Euro Square pillow.

So there’s a reason why I haven’t been blogging much–I’ve been too busy!   First I had another kerfuffle with the person who made the apparently derivative copies of my A Sense of Place art quilts (blogpost a couple of posts below this one in early March).  She sicked an attorney on ME (!!!) for saying that she appeared to have clearly copied my work!  She made all sorts of demands, only one of which I agreed to:  I removed the letter she wrote to me from my original post.  I had to spend two full days, right before the trip to Florida, dealing with this nonsense because they wanted a reply within  8 days–days when I would be away teaching!   Sheesh!  Anyway,  I refused all requests other than the one above, such as I refused to retract my assertions that her works were derivative, refused to request the removal of the discussion of copyright from both of the closed art quilt groups on which I mentioned it (without EVER mentioning her by name or identifying her site!), refused to retract my requests to Etsy and Pinterest to remove her apparently derivative works.   I wrote the attorney a LONG letter, starting with images of my works, a photocopy of a widely distributed book in which one was published (500 Art Quilts), and basically said “can you see what the problem is?  Can this end now?”  So…no reply to date from either of them so hopefully she will go away and learn  her lesson.  And I can get on with FUN STUFF!  Like Florida.

The trip began with a flight delay leaving Maine (after getting to the airport at 5:20 am):  the previous day there had been yet another snowstorm that messed up travel up and down the  Eastern seaboard.  There was no problem, however, because I had a four HOUR layover in Boston which, thanks to delays on United, turned into a six hour layover.  Luckily, I was easily re-booked onto a later connecting flight and only got in about 90 minutes late, and didn’t have to teach or lecture until the following evening.  AND my luggage showed up!

I had down time the first day–we had me come down a day early just in case, as it turns out we needed, there were weather delays. That meant I had several hours on Tuesday to tootle around Boca Raton. So I went to an area called Mizner Park after my gracious hostess gave me a quick driving tour of downtown Boca.  Thank you Marlys and Chris for taking me around!

This was one of the most bizarre things I’ve seen…yes, that is a ROLLS ROYCE Pick-up truck.  One has to ask WHY?  The guy wandering buy seems as confused as I was!

So I saw this pick-up truck and figured I’d never seen anything like it. It looked to be a Rolls, but do they make pick-ups?

Here’s a shot of the front–yes, that’s the winged lady on the front with the RR. One has to ask WHY? I googled, and no, they don’t really make them, but people “convert” them. WHY?

After months and months (literally) of single digit and below zero air temps and colder wind chill, it was lovely to sit in the air in shirtsleeves!

I’m also taking an online photography course with Ricky Tims, so I was on the lookout for “texture” photos, and loved these palm fronds:

No idea why the (C) didn’t show on this image, but it’s mine!

The first day I had a light supper with the guild board at QuiltStitches in Boca Raton (FB link here) owned by Johanna Felderbaum.  It’s a great shop–stop in if you are in the area!  She has a great range of fabrics.  Waving hullo!   That evening I gave my “How did she do that?” lecture, followed by Hawaiian Applique the next day.  Then on Thursday, I flew from there (well, Fort Lauderdale airport) to Orlando where I was booked with the Ladies of the Lakes Guild in Lakeland, near Orlando.   More on that in a few days!

The Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA)’s newest touring exhibit of art quilts debuts this month at the National Quilt Museum in Paducah, Kentucky, just in time for the annual AQS Quilt Show in Paducah.  I’m thrilled to be among the 34 artists in this exhibit, and equally thrilled with the exhibit catalog (which just happens to be available for sale here on the SAQA website–thank you to Deidre Adams for doing such a great job on it.)  More information about the exhibit is here on the SAQA website.

The new Food for Thought catalog from Studio Art Quilt Associates. Available to order here.

My pages in the catalog. Great layout and design on the pages–love the enormous detail photo on the left. The booklet is about 8.5 inches square.  Click to view larger.

When visiting my mother we would often go to a restaurant called Insalata, housed in a building that had been a bank when I was a child. The chef/owner met the challenge of the enormous ceilings by commissioning oversized artwork of fruits and vegetables scaled to fit the soaring walls. I loved the persimmons, especially, and remembered it as I made another quilt in my tomatoes series.   As I worked on these salad ingredients, I recalled the flavors of our food and the company of my mother and her friends as we lunched there.

Insalata, (c) Sarah Ann Smith 2014.  For sale.  40 x 42.5 inches.

My first tomato quilts became the basis of my Quilting Arts/Interweave video workshop which teaches my collage process.  As Helen Gregory, VP of content for F+W said, the title may be the longest ever:  Art Quilt Design from Photo to Threadwork, with Fabric Collage and Machine Quilting (link here, also available as a download here).  But as she also said, there is just so much in it!  Here’s one of the early tomato quilts:

Insalata is made of Artist dyed and painted fabrics, commercial batiks, poly-wool blend batting, textile paint, Mistyfuse, crisp interfacing, Superior Threads 40-wt poly and 60-wt poly thread, raffia.  Techniques include dyeing and painting fabric. Fused collage. Intensely machine quilted.

The exhibit will travel to Great Britain (England and Ireland) next year, and additional venues thereafter. Sure hope I get to see it in the cloth somewhere!

To coincide with the debut of the Food for Thought Exhibit ( blogpost coming soon), Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) has published an online slideshow of the exhibit!   The exhibit opens a multi-year run at the National Quilt Museum in  Paducah, Kentucky, and runs from April 10 to July 8.

Insalata, (c) 2014 Sarah Ann Smith. Premieres next week at the Food for Thought exhibit at the National Quilt Museum, Paducah, Kentucky, USA.

If you love the slideshow, you can also buy the catalog, which is beautifully done.  I’ll blog about that later this month!

As many of my loyal readers know, I sew on a Janome.  I have been incredibly fortunate to be a part of their artists and teachers loan program for an embarrassingly, blissfully long time.  THANK YOU, JANOME AMERICA (and yes, I’m shouting!)  As part of this program, I gladly and happily make things which they can use, whether it is a banner for their booth (and also used in their adverts!), a project used online, asking to teach in Janome classrooms at big shows, you  name it.  This season, I have been using a (gasp, gulp!) top of the line 15000 embroidery and quilting machine.  Links for a free tutorial on this caddy are at the end of this post.

Embroidered Caddy for Janome America. The sewing machine is a built-in design on the top of the line Janome 15000.  Right Click to see larger.  Thanks to Jean S.  I know now this design was created by Jill Buckley, who has fun stuff on her blog here.  Nice to meet you Jill!

Embroidery you say?   Well, I never would have thought that *I* would fall in love with machine embroidery–the pre-programmed kind, but I have.   I’ve got a project for fall that will be awesome using one of Lonni Rossi’s designs built into the machine.  But for spring, I have made that lovely little tote!  It is 4×8 inches (footprint), 5 inches tall.   I used two embroidery designs that are included on the machine along with the initials that are one of several included alphabets (see photo below for the other side).

One of the things that most surprised me is how easy the interface is with the software.  I’m not very patient with that sort of computer-ish stuff (and after all, these machines are really computers that sew).  This was SO EASY to size, position, all of it.  Even *I* could do it using the manual–no classes needed!  And utterly cool:  there is an iPad app that allows you to do stuff elsewhere in the house. With the iPad and your 15000 sharing your wifi network, you can view the progress of the stitch-out so you know if you need to go to your sewing machine and change thread colors or insert a full bobbin.  Totally cool!

FREE TUTORIAL!

Best of all, this project has just been featured on Janome’s blog where you can find a link to free instructions!   Today you can see my project here as a featured project.  Scroll down their blog to April 1 for a blogpost  on it.  Or go straight to the project, here.  At the bottom of that post is a link to download a PDF of my full instructions.

Here’s a view of the other side and the end:

Side two: the Heart is also an included design, the font is called “Galant” and is also included on the machine. It was surprisingly easy to create the design on the machine. And if you happen to be my BFF living on SJI with the initials MZJ, yep–this is a sneak peek at part of your birthday present! Red is the theme this year…..Right click to see larger.

End view of the caddy. I used one of the built-in decorative stitches on the handle.

Thank you again, Janome, for years of support.  Your fabulous machines make it possible for me to do what I do!

In my last post, I told you about my new series of workshops.  Click here  (or scroll down) to read the previous post.  The first workshop, From Photo to Flower Collage, can be a one or two-day workshop.  This time, it will be two-days (click here for more information, there are just a couple spots left).  The second workshop, ThreadColoring the Flower (click here) is booked this time as a one-day class.

The Pink Water Lily from my ThreadColoring the Flower workshop.  www.SarahAnnSmith.com (c) 2015

The water lily photo for the workshop. Photo (c) SarahAnnSmith

The Close up of the wild Day Lily, also used in the workshop. (c) Sarah Ann Smith. PS: Sorry about all the watermarking and copyright notices–after the incident where someone created derivative copies of my work, I’m being even more diligent about marking stuff. So sad to have to do this!

Again, students begin with a choice of two images:  the pink water lily or the orange day lily.  This time, however, students choose in advance which flower, because I provide them with a photo printed onto cotton sateen (done at Spoonflower).  Why?  You know how you go to a workshop, and are lucky if you get the top done in time to begin quilting at the end of the day?  I wanted students to have the entire day to learn how to use and blend the thread so that they learn the process.  If they begin with the image already on the cloth, they can get straight to the thread-coloring without worrying about “messing up” the top on which they worked so hard.

Along with the approx.  11 x 14 inch photo-on-fabric, the kit includes five spools of Superior Threads 40-wt. trilobal polyester thread for quilting the flower (students need to provide their own greens or purchase additional–I wanted to keep the cost of the kit down by requiring only the threads needed for the flower), and stabilizer to help prevent distortion from the dense stitching.  We’ll talk about tension, needles, stabilizing for dense thread-work and more.  However, if students wish, after working a bit on the photo-on-fabric, they are welcome to switch over and start quilting their collaged flower (if they were in the Photo to Flower Collage workshop, of course).

Detail of the Pink Water Lily shows the dense stitching.

For my Water Lily quilt, I took a second photo, cut it up, and used it as a frame for the small quilt.  The Day Lily is simply quilted and aced, as are most of my art quilts, with no border.

Quilted DayLily.

I’m so psyched about the trip to North Carolina–I’ll get to meet internet friends who are taking the class, and spend THREE DAYS with some of them, plus visit Program Chair Debby Harwell, whom I met in a dyeing workshop with Carol Soderlund (at ProChem in Massachusetts) lo these many years ago.  This is gonna be a blast!  I can’t wait to share what the students do.  Now, I just need to figure out how to take photos and blog from my ipad!