We had a great meeting today, but really missed having Deborah…so we called her and put her on speaker phone! Previously, we met at Deborah’s house because she had Benjamin at home and he (and mom) were most comfortable with him in his home surroundings, with familiar computer games, toys and such like. Now that (boo hoo, again) Deborah has de-camped to the wilds of Dallas, we will be rotating meeting locations. I got lucky–we had it at my house first! No 3 hours of driving (even though I love the get-away days)! AND, as always, having guests forced us to *really* clean house and tidy, so our house is nice for once!

Hannah is new to the group (Deborah met her shortly before she moved, and introduced us all–thank you!), and we urged her to bring her “stuff”. She is very much a mixed media artist, and newer at the art quilting thing–this is going to be great for all of us. She brought all sorts of totally cool collage pieces and fabrics which she basically created from scratch….silk screening, stamping, surface design. So we decided NEXT month, we’re meeting at her house and gonna play with silk screening! Welcome to the group, Hannah!

Here’s a picture of her (gee…I hope this is OK…..I didn’t ask her if I could share a picture of her…well, I’ll ask after I hit “publish” and if it’s not I’ll delete…) with a fantastic piece of cloth she dyed.

This next picture is a piece of fabric she made that is so cool we all told her not to do a dang thing more except maybe add a border, layer it up and quilt it, and possible add a few beads or doo-dads…..the color in this photo somehow seems lighter, brighter and not as rich as the original…which is definitely better than the photo!

Wish I had taken a picture of her collage about “Home”…way cool. And she found some great, LARGE foam alphabet stamps at Target for all fo $9…guess what I’m looking for the next time I’m in Bangor (the Target nearest to me..about 80 minutes away)….

Here’s Hannah (on the floor), Kathy (center) and Kate on our new sofa in the morning….

I took a picture of us at lunch, but haven’t figured out the “backlighting” on my new camera, so we’ll have to check Kathy D’s blog for pictures of our repast. I fixed minestrone, Hannah made beer bread, Kathy brought coffee cake (still warm when she arrived!), and Kate brought pineapple….don’t know how she found a ripe on in Maine, but she did…I never can! YUMMM. Oh yeah…and in honor of Deborah, I dug out the latter maker (no counter space in our kitchen here) and we had lattes. Here’s a picture of the coffee table with detritus during the morning:

DEBORAH BOSCHERT–STOP reading here until you get your envelope!

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Those of you who surf into Kathy’s blog, Studio in the Woods, know that she just (as in less than 72 hours ago!) returned from a trip to Ireland (we want MORE PHOTOS, please!). Sweet thing that she is, she not only brought us each a goodie from the Emerald Isle, she picked colors special for each of us, mine being my favorite pool aqua blue. Inside the little bag, was another surprise, an envelope Kathy made with little treats. There weren’t any fabric stores in Ireland that she could find, but she did find the one bead store, and found little green beads with shamrocks on them. Then she went to a beach that had no sand, but instead was made of bits of coral. She brought some with her and shared…how totally cool is that…these little bits of branchy white coral…PERFECT for embellishing! Thank you thank you thank you!

I forgot that I wanted to add Stephanie Sersich’s website in my previous post. She’s the lady (from Portland, Maine, no less) who invented this technique and teaches both Bracelet and Necklace classes. She travels the US to teach, so we’re lucky that she is here in Maine and teaches at the Beadin’ Path regularly. Her glass beads are to die for!

It was supposed to be a bracelet. I don’t DO bracelets…they make me crazy, banging and flapping and generally being a nuisance and getting in the way. Here’s a picture of what I had at the end of a 4 hour class….considering how long it takes to put together a quilt, I felt this was moving at lightning speed!

But Hilary Ervin, a member of Art Quilts Maine, had been making these incredible bracelets during or bi-monthly AQM meetings. And I kept thinking about them…..so finally I asked. And then Deborah Boschert figured out that the lady who taught the class was teaching at The Beadin Path in Freeport (also home to LL Bean). The teacher is Stephanie Sersich—see the post for March 20th for the hotlink to her website. So I signed up right away, despite the cost because (tippety tap) I had just sold my Brooks and Branches piece at the Ducktrap Bay Trading Company and decided I deserved just a bit of a splurge!

Having looked at Hilary’s bracelets, I figured it wouldn’t be that hard to modify it (there I go changing things) into a necklace. I bought some lucite / vintage lucite beads and things via the Beadin’ Path website, and figured I’d buy anything else I needed the morning before the class (the store is almost 2 hours away, so didn’t want to spend 4 hours and a lot of gas money just to buy beads). I will not confess how much I spent on beads. Let’s just say it’s a good thing two more small pieces sold (quite unexpectedly…I wasn’t anticipating any sales until summer—yeah!) last month, to help cover my indulgences.

Here’s a picture of the whole thing:

And a close up of the fancy part:

And, believe it or not, finally a picture of me wearing the necklace, which you can barely see because I’m holding my wonderful new digital camera, the Panasonic DMC-FZ30!

for having fun at the conception end of things….. We did our annual parental pennance this past Sunday, which just happened to be Eli’s actual 8th birthday! Sunday, you say? Aren’t most kids parties on Saturday? Yes, my friends, they are. But Eli had karate in the morning, overlapping Joshua’s wrestling meet which ran until between 2 and 3, and we couldn’t face the idea of then coming home to a house full of boy-kids full of sugar from 3-5. So, it was a party on Sunday!

Here’s Eli, first thing Sunday morning, tearing into the most recent upsurge in Lego stock values thanks to his generous Aunt Joyce and Uncle TJ and his parents. This was supplemented later in the day by his friends. There is no such thing, it appears, as too many legos, particularly of the Bionicle / Exoforce variety (personally, Mom prefers the Harry Potter sets, especially the original Hagrid’s hut…. but I digress).

We scheduled the party to begin at 1:30 to permit his best friends, twins Ben and Kyle (who also happen to be very LOUD) to attend after a church / first communion class. Still….have you ever heard of a kid turning down pizza? Neither have we. And if you feed then, they tear around and shout a bit (but not a lot) less. Then, Paul and Joshua–bless them!–took the six 2nd graders outside for a good game of catch, before cake and presents.

Eli is currently learning about Africa and African animals, so he did the drawing of a giraffe and African trees at Sunset, which I scanned into the computer and turned into the birthday party invitations. He then asked for a cake with African animals–giraffes or elephant–at sunset. Presto…this is the part of kids’ parties that are FUN….getting creative with the cake! I love playing with food coloring! After the party, all four of us…even the boys….retreated blissfully to separate, quiet rooms until dinner.

Eli is a joy and a wonder. And it’s a lot more fun to celebrate his birthday than go through labor again LOL!

Terry Grant, of And Sew It Goes, asked how others have dealt with small works. After I typed my reply, I though it might make a good post here and then I could illustrate it, too! I have:

Hung them on a small dowel or slat, like I did with my Straight and Narrow piece (10 inches wide by 50 something long), Brooks and Branches (sold):

stretched cloth over stretcher bars, then stitched the quilt to the cloth

Painted a “gallery wrap” canvas (the ones with the staples on the back, not the sides) to continue the colors / theme of the quiltlet, then stitched the quilt to the canvas ..here are several: Moonlight (sold), Hot August Night–Plum, Man, and Red Summer Roses,

Purchased 1/4″ thick plexiglass cut to size, *very carefully* drilled small holes for hanging and stitching on, and stitched the piece to float on top of the plexi. This photo is of the quilt only….the picture of it on plexi is awful. The plexiglas extends about 3 inches on all sides. The mint color you see is a Photoshop background color so it blends onto my web page.

Fused fabric to timtex that works with the piece for Red Sea Nautilus (sold) and stitched the piece to that.

Mounted pieces to black foam core (stitched) and framed them in inexpensive silver frames (did that with the At Anchor postcards).

It depends on the pieces….If I were to wrap stretcher bars again, I’d probably choose a heavy weight fabric as you did, or do muslin, then batting, then cloth…I don’t like the way the black cotton wraps over the bars…looks lumpy.

I really like the plexi, but it words better with a contemporary or abstract style, which I don’t do too often.

For the gallery wrap canvases, I (sigh) prefer the look of the 2″-ish deep canvases, not the regular depth, and cost twice as much as the “regular” ones.

So what do the rest of you do?