What a crazy week…has been 6 days since we met at Kate’s house, and I’m only getting to write about it now! We had a wonderful visit, though Nina (Hannah’s new daughter) had had a fever that night. So for the morning and lunch it was Kate, Kathy and me. After lunch, we went over the hill and through the woods to Brunswick, to Hannah’s temporary digs (900 square feet for two adults, four girls and a dog!) while they build their house (which is delayed starting due to sodden earth!).

We compared our projects for Lark Books…. hmmm…. backing up a second. To our utter astonishment and delight, one of the editors at Lark Books contacted each of us early in the year after having seen our work in the Winter 2006 issue of Quilting Arts Magazine to invite us (!!!!) to submit proposals for projects to be included in a book to be called Quilting with Beads (pub. date of May 2008 or so). Hannah, of course, in the midst of selling a house, moving and adopting in China (with three girls already at home) had to pass on the chance, but the rest of us submitted from one (Kathy) to four proposals…. Deborah has 3 for 3 in the book, Kate and I have two each, and Kathy has one. I(t never occurred to me they’d take more than one each…so we’re all working FAST! Due date for submissions is May 21 including patterning, in progress shots, etc.

Well, it appears I forgot to take pictures of Kathy’s and Kate’s. SHEESH, what is wrong with me? Well… Kathy has shared a sneak peek on her blog and you’ll have to trust me on how awesome Kate’s will be. I am so totally inspired by Kate’s use of unconventional items as beads (like porcupine quills, horn pipe, broken crockery…. am I enticing you?). We spent part of the morning scuffing up the horn pipe beads since they were a bit too bright and shiny, and soaking them in the coffee dregs to age them appropriately. Perfect!

The picture above is of the lunch debris… I forgot (Deborah…we need you to be here and remind us to take pictures of the BEFORE!) to take pics of the food, but here you see Kate’s awesome batik (which I shared in an earlier post about our meeting at Kathy’s house) doing tablecloth duty.

And I was totally taken by this seaglass fishie in Kate’s bathroom:

Here is a tease of my project…I’m not sure how much of the finished one I can share, so this is just a portion of it! OMG…I am such a DOLT… it appears I ALSO forgot to take pictures of the finished project in the yellow/lime colorway! So, you get to see a snippet of the lime/turquoise one….. sheesh. I think I need a vacation?

Then we trooped over to Hannah’s temporary abode. If she looks tired, it is because she is, having been up all night with a feverish Nina who is almost one! Here is Hannah, Ella and her new baby sister Nina (who was doing much better when we were there):

And here is Nina exploring her mom’s glorious bead and sequins haul from shopping in China:

Ooooh pretty!

Best of all, we had cake for Kate’s birthday (which I totally missed…sigh!), BUT Kathy remembered and made these treats…aren’t they beautiful?

Lisa Flowers Ross tagged me, so here goes:

1. When I was born in DC, at the time residents weren’t allowed to vote in Presidential elections since DC isn’t a state. Fortunately, the powers that be fixed that particular stupidity by the time I reached legal voting age.

2. I had lived on four continents by the time I turned six: Born in DC, so North America. (By the way, Daddy was in the Foreign Service but retired at age 60, the year after I was born, then went to work for an oil company, which is what got us around the world for the next 5 years). Moved to Madrid, Spain (Europe), when I was about 1 1/2 or so. Moved to Bangkok, Thailand, when I was 2 (I still remember my third birthday there!) (Asia). Moved to Buenos Aires, Argentina, when I was 4 (South America). Moved back to the US when I was 6, about a month after Kennedy was assassinated.

3. My sons were both born in Washington, but 3000 miles apart (DC and state). And four years apart.

4. Life without pets is not worth living. Well, it is, but life is immeasurably better with four footed furry things. My dad never let me have a cat, so as soon as I got out of college, guess what! Cassy joined my life (didn’t have a car so snuck her onto the DC Metro subway to get home from the shelter!) in 1979 and I have had cats and then dogs too ever since.

5. I drink tea. BLACK tea with milk. Not flavored “peach-black tea” or “pick-a-scent-infused”, but real, strong, Irish and British style tea. Not teabag tea. PROPER tea, made with loose leaves in a pot (and first you must “hot the pot”).

6. I am a book-o-holic. The worst thing about retirement is the inability to buy books at a whim. Since I’m earning some income now from my quilting (teaching and sales), things have definitely improved.

7. Ooops. I forgot seven….here it is. Ummmm…. I wish i’d had the guts to stand up to my parents and follow my interests into the humanities and arts in my 20s, instead of discovering life with art in my mid 40s (quilting came sooner, at age 30-ish, which is a form of art, the traditional quilting is in my book anyway), but Art! learning about and doing, color, design, line… I got a good SLR in my early 20s and took lots of good photos, and still use photography as a springboard. So I will encourage the young, and the old, and the in between, because it is never too late to follow passion!

Now….who will I tag? Lisa already tagged Deborah… Hmmmm…….can I make that “tag” a twofer? Sure, why not…I make up my own rules LOL!

1. Deborah Boschert
2. Kathy Daniels
3. Hannah Beattie
4. Lisa Walton
5. Caity in Towoomba
6. Rayna Gilman
7. YOU! If you want to be tagged, just add a comment and consider yourself tagged!

Joshua (oldest son) asked me to open Photo Booth, on my MacBook Pro, which is a camera built-in to the laptop that takes pictures of you sitting at your computer. I had the puppy on my lap, so we started clicking… I LOVE this photo!

I am wondering if I can tidy myself up (a rare event), and then get both Widgeon (puppy) and Thumper (slightly skittish cat) on my lap at the same time and take a photo good enough to go on the back of my book… I love this photo, and that’s rare…usually I DETEST photos of myself….

Today we have what were the final three contributions: Gail Galloway Nicholson’s schooner, based on my drawing of the Mary Grace, the oldest schooner in the Camden Harbor, and two pieces by Jeanne-Marie Robinson of Northport. Since I first wrote this blogpost, though, I’ve added varioius bits to the quilt..one block on the outside, bits on the center (that were empty and needed “something”, and to the top border. So you’ll have to hang on a bit longer for the final “pre-quilting” reveal, and then longer yet for the quilted version. I’ve also got a blog on the most recent Frayed Edges meeting this past Monday, and have been busier than a mad hatter quilting the banner……

The Mary Grace is the oldest of the schooners working out of Camden Harbor, where it has been taking tourists to sea since 1932! The mid-coast here is known as the Schooner Coast, and even the middle school sports teams are the Schooners. Thanks to the owner of the Mary Grace for permission to use his publicity photo of his beautiful ship for our quilt. Gail did another fantabulous job on this addition to the center panel.

Jeanne-Marie Robinson is an amazing and prolific art quilter. How she produces so much work…and so much of it by hand… in the 24 hours we get each day is beyond me, and it’s all fabulous. She designed these blocks and sent them to Maine from her winter home in Florida. She LOVES animals and all sorts of critters, so of course these are hers. The seagull is familiar to anyone who has ever visited a seacoast:

And the seal is Andre The Seal. There is a sculpture of him in Rockport Harbor at the park there (a great picnic spot by the way!), and here is a link to some information on the book written about him at DownEast Books. The book was made into a movie, and there is even a Wikipedia entry!

Rockport is a very small town immediately south of Camden. If you were visiting here and didn’t see the “welcome to” signs, you’d probably not realize you had gone from Camden into Rockport (or vice versa). With a population of about 3500, Rockport sits on the next small harbor south of Camden; overlooking the harbor is Center for Contemporary Art (we’re trying to educate them about art quilts, but it is along road), the Rockport Opera House, and a shipbuilder that build the replica of the Godspeed, one of the Jamestown ships. Matthea Dietz is a busy mom of a two-year old son with a couple of jobs, plus coaching ice skating and a bunch of other things (including speaking Chinese and other fascinating tidbits…would love to see her more but our lives are too crazy busy). She is relatively new to art quilting, but gamely took on the challenge of the Opera House, based on my pattern:

She did a phenomenal job…remember what I said about everyone doing better than their best?! Yep!

And Isabelle Davis made this sailboat greatly improving my simple sailboat sketch. There are SO many boaters here, especially in summer, I think you could just about walk across Rockport harbor just by hopping from deck to deck!