Today is the next to last day of school, and Eli asked me to go with him on his second grade class trip aboard the Heron, a schooner which calls Rockport Harbor home. The trip was rain-delayed (it has been a season worthy of Noah), but we got to go out today despite gray skies and 2-3 foot swells outside the harbor.

We motored away from the dock, then at the entrance / exit to the harbor, stopped to raise the sails. I took these two photos (the one at the start of the post and the one immediately following) before and as two of the sails were raised. Because of the bluster and chop, they only raised these two:

On the way out of the harbor into Penobscot Bay, we passed Indian Island, and the de-comissioned Indian Island light (taken out of service in the 1930s, and now private property–the owners are apparently summer folks). What a gorgeous spot! Maybe someday I’ll win a lottery and live in a lighthouse!

Despite the choppy waters, and the cold breeze (I was wearing a t-shirt, polartec, and gore-tex jacket snapped shut) which made it decidedly chilly, especially for kids dressed in shorts and just a shirt, it was glorious to be out on the water. The imp with the dimples on the far right (aka my son) clearly failed in his attempt to avoid being photographed!

We saw an osprey’s nest on a derelict boat in the harbor (that pile of sticks on the bow):

And a bald eagle in a tree (trust me, it was there…even with my super zoom though couldn’t get a photo worth posting). And seals on the rocks….brown shapes indistinguishable from the rock until they moved! And, my first ever sighting of Eider ducks. Now, if I could find my Peterson’s Birds of the Eastern US, I could add another bird to my pathetic “life list” of birds seen.

The Camden Hills are well-known hereabouts, and the state of Maine is known as “Vacationland” for a reason… folks from Boston and other muggy points along the Eastern seabord have been coming up here for well over a century to escape to blissful summer weather (we get a few nasty days each summer, but then the weather improves and we’re back to heavenly). Here is a view of “the hills”…. Mount Battie and Mount Megunticook in the distance. These are clearly mountains that surrendered to the superior force of the glaciers umpteen thousand years ago:

By the time we turned around to head home, two girls had huddled under a blankie for warmth.

In the meantime, I was mesmerized by the water, and actually managed to get a decent shot (and numerous not-so-decent ones) despite the movement of the boat and the water and my hands).

Then it was snack time…smiles returned, heads popped out, and even those who weren’t in love with being on the water smiled. The imp is mine–the one in the center of the boat, red sleeve, yellow life vest, talking to the girls:

And of course as soon as the food came out, a seagull–the ultimate scavenger?–decided to join us:

The lighthouse looked just as good on the return trip as on the way out.

And finally, back to Rockport Harbor:

Sometimes you need to get really, really persnickity when marking a quilt…it needs to be absolutely precise. The lettering on my nativity quilt is a case in point. I wanted the lettering to be the same font and the letterhead / logo for my school:

I asked someone in the the school’s alumni and development office, who told me the exact font (there were actually three, two of which I had on my computer–yeah!). I played with those until I had the look and size I wanted (font size was 208!), then printed them out on paper. First, I trimmed the paper to 7/8″ under the bottom line of the printing so I could line it up with the inner border.

Then I realized I needed to have done that on the top for the writing on the bottom border (the part that says 1906 Christmas Tableaux 2006), which was already trimmed shorter than that. Oops. So I just measured 7/8 inch above the smaller letters and eyeballed it to have the same “breathing room” between the lettering and the green plaid inner border.

Next step: Saral Transfer paper. Place a section of the transfer paper under the printed lettering (or design…whatever you are using). Using a stylus (a pen like thing with a small round metal ball on the end–a dead ballpoint pen, knitting needle or dull pencil work equally well) or a somewhat dull pencil, trace the design. In this case, I outlined the letters and numbers.

When you remove the printing / pattern template and transfer paper, it looks like this…dusty! However, the transfer medium stays in place better than chalk, but less well than quilter’s pencils. You can eliminate some stray dust by placing the transfer paper so that the extra bits are out the top instead of under your arm / wrist / writing hand. Then you don’t get transfer from your hand and arm moving across the paper. I like the Saral Transfer paper because I don’t have to fuss with making a zillion templates (or cutting stencils) to trace around which I would have to do to use the quilt marking pencils (to dangle whatever part of grammar that is), I can look at it right side up, trace on top and move on to the stitching.

Then, to the sewing machine! At arms’ length, or less, like when sitting at the machine, I was getting pretty critical of my stitching, thinking I’d need to pick out at least some of the letters (the “o”s and “0” — letter “O” and zero — especially). But once I got the stitching done, the thread tails pulled to the back, it looked pretty good, so think I’ll just leave it be. I’m also really relieved that the gold metallic thread and writing didn’t overpower the center of the quilt; instead, the outline works just right I think. It says what I want, but without being too in-your-face or detracting from the quilt. I hope.

I also managed to do the “logo” “d”… I wasn’t sure I could manage that really fiddly bit in the center. I think I held my breath until the whole thing was done… the center part is maybe 1×1 inch or less…really small! If you right click on the photo, a larger view should open in another window.

And for a brief detour from marking quilts….

Although I usually dislike (intensely) self-help books, I know many folks gain a lot from them. I finally decided I’d take a close look at The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, the choreographer. What a wonder! This book is FULL of wonderful things for the artist. A quotation I read on Sunday resonated especially:

“Without passion, all the skill in the world won’t lift you above craft. Without skill, all the passion in the world will leave you eager but floundering. Combining the two is the essence of the creative life.” (p. 173)

That’s IT in a nutshell!

There are times when you actually have to mark a quilt top. One example is the lettering on the top and bottom borders of my nativity quilt (the next post). Another is an intermediate amount of fussiness: marking general guidelines.

I took a series of photos showing how I use the Chaco-Liner (from Clover) marking tools. They have a couple variations…a slimline one, and now a pen-style one. I’d like to try the pen-style, but these work wonderfully. In the first photo, you can see my white Chaco Liner in the top right of the photo with the cover removed.

In the first photo, I laid several of my circle templates on a piece of cloth.

In the second photo, I am using the white chaco-liner to outline one of the circles.

When I remove the plastic templates, you can see the lines easily. These DO dust off easily, so this is a method to use when you are going to quilt right away. If you fold up the top, the markings will smudge away.

On the left, in this photo, I just drew some curvy lines. On the nativity quilt, when I did the writing on the quilt, I simply marked lines to use (just as we use lined paper to keep our handwriting orderly) for the quilting.

Here are some of my favorite marking tools:

on the left are my blue and white Chaco-Liners. The refills on these are great…unscrew the cap. Unscrew the cap on the refill bottle and screw the bottle onto the chaco-liner and squeeze…. no way to spill! Even I can do it without making a mess!!!!

Top to bottom:

The tried-and-ture blue wash-out pens…great when you have a light background.

EZ marking pencil…all the ones that are kinda fat pencils with no paint are the same.

Roxanne’s quilter’s pencils (come in silver and white…this one is silver); soft lead but gets a sharp point, washes out nicely

Clover Chacopel chalk pencils … come in a set and I love them…soft chalk, sharpen to a sharp point, don’t dust off as easily as the chaco-liner, but still don’t require a full-immersion bath to remove…use the little brush that comes on the pencils!

So how do I mark my quilt tops? As LITTLE as possible! Marking ranks right up there in the fun index with basting and ripping out stitches. Ick! However, sometimes it is necessary.

I have developed a “vocabulary” of stitches that I use a lot that for the most part need little or no marking … some are common, some are just mine (and now shared with everyone who has taken my class or reads this post!), some are combinations gleaned from various machine quilters. My intro to machine quilting class sampler has a lot of them:

And I used a lot of these stitch patterns (and got good photos and they show well) in my first “Circular Paradox” quilt (there are a couple more in this series in my brain…maybe they’ll escape into the cloth this summer?):

For these patterns, I don’t mark at all, I just “go for it.” I look at the space available, where I want to end my stitching (so I can move on to the next area) and think how I will fill it, because I don’t want to “mop myself into a corner.” In circular paradox, I used the shapes of the fused applique pieces to define the areas:

Sometimes, I will want to add “echo” shapes. In this photo, you can see an arc in the top right done in a variegated red thread. I used a plastic circular template and my Chaco Liner chalk marking tool (made by Clover–here’s a link—this is at Hancock’s of Paducah..these are widely available, and your local quilt store can order them easily from their wholesaler). I prefer white or blue; the yellow sometimes can be tricky to get out. The chalk left by these tools dusts off easily, which means they are good for something you will quilt immediately. They don’t work at all for fiddly details or marks you need to stay put (more on that kind of marking in the next post…this series of posts keeps growing).

I will mark out an area or shape, then quilt it free-form, as I did here (even the “straight”–not quite–markings are done free-motion).

Other times, I will mark out an area like the mama and baby rabbit inside the coral/fuschia circle or the triskele (a Celtic image associated with woman) in the golden yellow “planet”. The mama and baby rabbit are from a wooden two-piece puzzle I bought in Japan (if you stick around until I post Marking the quilt, Part 4, you’ll see the puzzle). I simply laid the piece on the top, outlined it, and quilted.

For the triangle shape, I surfed Google Images and my favorite book for inspiration: Decorative Patterns of the Ancient World. I think they re-titled the book, because it is still from Dover (and therefore modestly priced) and available at Amazon. If I can’t find inspiration in this book, I need to go do something else!

And now I need to go to a meeting, so I’ll return and do Part 2 later…which involves fiddly marking!