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.

Once again I have been fortunate to be invited to submit a piece for a show curated by Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison and even luckier to be included in “The Space Between.”  You can read more about the show itself here, at their Dinner at 8 blog.  I’m in some rather heady company, so thrilled that my quilt, Clothed in Color, made it in! The show will debut at the International Quilt Festival held this summer in Long Beach, then we hope it will travel to Houston as did its predecessor, Beneath the Surface.

Clothed in Color, 36x48 inches

Jamie and Leslie have asked each of the participants to answer a set of questions, and I have LOVED reading the responses, here.  I encourage you to go visit the Dinner at 8 blog and see how our answers are similar and different—when I read my friend Susan Brubaker Knapp’s I had to write and tell her I had NOT read hers before I wrote and submitted mine!  We’re like twins separated by geography!  Anyway….here are  the questions and answers.

1.  What do you call yourself – art wise?

Quilter.  Art quilter.  Textile artist.  Interrupted by life!

2.  How do you jump start your creativity when you are in a slump?

Don’t know that I’ve had a slump per se.  Usually I am just too busy with life interfering with art or too tired.  That means I have a surplus of ideas and never enough time, so I just pick whatever quilt is hollering most loudly inside my head and let that one out next.

3.  If money wasn’t an issue, what would you do with your art?

Make more!   Give some of it away… I would love to do a “quilt mural” project for the local middle school (first panel is done), the continuation of “Be Inspired, No. 1” into a series of six quilts with people and places from around the world.

4.  Do you keep a sketchbook, journal, etc.?

Yes.  I’m not as diligent as I would like—it’s that lack of time thing.  But I have learned how useful they can be, am constantly inspired by my friend Kathy Daniels’ journals, so am trying to develop my own better “noodling around” habits.

5.  Where can people see your other work this year?  shows, books, magazines, etc

My book (ThreadWork Unraveled), my blog (www.sarahannsmith.com/weblog) and website, in my classes, the 2010-11 Quilting Arts Gifts issue, and whatever shows I get in (as long as I remember to apply in time).

6.  Do you teach?  where?

Have paycheck will travel–yes, I definitely teach!  I prefer to teach places where I don’t have to fly—detest airports–will gladly drive 2-3 days each way instead!  But I’ve been all over, and would love to go more places even if it involves an airplane.  Australia or Hawaii anyone?  My current bookings are on my website at https://www.sarahannsmith.com/schedule.php.

7.  Is there a particular artist who had influenced you in your art life? and why?

Vincent Van Gogh:  COLOR!
Henri Matisse:  exuberance and line
Auguste Rodin:  passion and form
The artisans of the Sutton Hoo burial grounds (UK–in the British Museum): design and ornament
Edward Steichen:  The Family of Man book/exhibit; grew up poring over the photographs and still do
The 8th grade neighbor girl who made the apron for my Barbie when I was 6–that got me started with sewing!

8. Where or what show do you hope your work will be in someday?

IQA-Houston, again I hope…
And if I ever make work I think suitable, Visions and Quilts=Art=Quilts, or if I can afford shipping the UK’s Festival of quilts and the Tokyo show.

9.  Describe your studio workspace

In progress.  We moved in February 2011, so at the moment most of the boxes are unpacked, but I still need to paint the floor (I have a large semi-unfinished space in the basement) and get some closet doors made before I can really settle in.  Despite only having four small windows near the ceiling joists (space is semi-finished, we spray painted the joists and under-floor white so it would look more ceiling-like), I installed good lights with daylight bulbs so it is bright and cheery.  I’ll have a 22 foot closet made by putting up design-wall-panels-as-sliding-doors on one wall for the detritus of art and teaching (file cabinet, teaching items, books for sale, art supplies and stored quilts  inside–don’t like working with too much visual clutter).  I hope to have a reading area, and my beloved Hoosier will be my desk.  I may even get to add a sit-down mid-arm machine this year….

10.  What 3 tools could you not live without?

MistyFuse.  Is MF a tool?
My Janome 7700 sewing machine.
Digital camera!
[and if they had allowed a fourth, my computer…my lifeline to the art quilty world and friends!]

11.  What drives you to make the work that you do?

I can’t NOT make my quilts–it would be like asking me to stop loving my kids and hubby or do without oxygen.  Just can’t be done!  I love to make things with my hands…to make something from inside my head become real.  There are so many things I want to learn how to do in terms of creating the image, both conceiving it and then physically making it.

12.  How do you balance your life?

Balance?  does *any*one have balance? (Picture Sarah ready to teeter off a rope while tossing a thousand items up in the air.)  I seem to lurch from one urgent thing to another, hoping I haven’t forgotten something important.  I know the insanity will slow down eventually, but right now I just try to make sure the family gets everything they need, and that I can still make enough art to keep myself sane!

I look forward to seeing all the quilts in the exhibit and reading all the artist interviews!  Well done, Jamie and Leslie and artists!

P.S.:  Since this post is long, I’ll do another tomorrow with some detail shots of the quilting.

That’s both the weather and my ability to get our from under all the house stuff!   Gradually we are settling in, and most of the boxes are gone.  Most of the painting is done (except for the studio of course), and the lighting for the studio will be done after the painting. I can’t believe it’s a week since I blogged…ooops!  I have been finishing up all sorts of  house stuff, and converting my “With a Dash of Color” lecture from “hold up small samples at the front of a large room” to a digital presentation.  That has entailed taking photos of some of my earlier, traditional and contemporary style quilts, so I’ll share those before too long.  Betcha didn’t know I made all of ’em!

Until then, it is WET!  We’ve had quite a lot of snow, and for the past three days we’ve had days into the 40s, including one night that didn’t go below freezing.  The good news:  the driveway is no longer a skating rink/sled run.  The bad news, the driveway squelches and squishes it is so mushy!  And today it is pouring rain.

Camden Falls, March 7th, rain and snow runoff

When I took Eli to school, I decided to drive down to the harbor and, as expected, the Camden Falls were in full roar!

The upper falls were roaring!

You can see the driving rain if you look at the rocks on the bottom...those gray streaks!

Another look at the lower part of the falls

At the bottom hillside edge of the Camden cemetery, the road was flooded over—between melting snow, run off, soaked ground, and mounds of snow impeding the flow of water, it’s a bit of a mess out there today.

The water had nowhere to go on Route 105

They had a digger out to deal with moving the snow so the water had a chance of going away!

But the best bit…they’ve started to spray white primer on the ceiling joists, which will greatly improve the mood in the studio!

Spray painting the joists in the basement (aka studio ceiling) begins! WOOT!

So what was I doing, before the packing cyclone hit my studio?

I decided that if I didn’t make this piece right away, which is due for a juried invitational in mid-March, I would (a) explode with frustration and (b) it would  not get made.  The closing date for buying our new house is February 9th.  We are packing up pretty much EVERYTHING ourselves, so that is several weeks of work with all the c-r-a-junk (as my dear old Dad used to say) that is in this house.  The basement is downright SCARY. So I needed to move quickly, fuse-applique and quilt, or the piece wouldn’t get done before I absolutely HAD to start packing.

Since I am not allowed to share the finished piece, I thought I’d show you the drawing, blurred in the middle.  The finished quilt will be 36 inches wide by 48 inches tall, pretty good sized, with the theme The Spaces Between.  An e-mail conversation with one of the curators, in which she said “YOU are the one in between” (as in caught between the demands of being a daughter (mom has dementia so I do all her billpaying etc), a mom (obvious), wife, quilter, teacher, etc….).  BINGO!  Picture in my head instantaneously….

I decided to use only “color”—no beige, brown, black or white in this entire quilt.  I had, this past summer, had a seriously wonderful visa accident at Batiks Etcetera and Sew What Fabrics in Wytheville, Virginia.  They have awesome customer service–I first ran into them when teaching at Paducah in 2008.  If you want yardage of something in their boxes of half-yard or fat-quarter cuts, they take that sample back to the store and within 24 hours I think of returning from a show, the orders are starting to be shipped.   They have an entire room  packed three shelves high which means they have a good range of the hardest to find batiks, the light lights and deep darks.  So I spent nearly half a day’s wages there filling big  gaps in my stash.  I have never spent that much money on fabric in one go ever, but it was worth it.  They also…yeah!….(I am not responsible for Visa moments that you might have….) are online at www.batiks.com (easy to remember, eh?).

So I raided my supplemented stash and came up with this for the quilt:

lights/warms on the right, darks/cools and a few others on the left

Here’s another shot:

Aren't those gorgeous? And see all those pale-pales at the top--those came from Batiks Etcetera

And the to-be-used-later batiks in the darks:

Yummmm.....

I ended up not using as many of these as I anticipated.  The background changed from busy to simple because the focal point of the quilt kind of insisted on it…

It was fun playing with all that color in mid-winter!

These past few months have been more than amply filled with family and household responsibilities, and precious little time for creativity and art.  But I did eke out a few moments…over the course of two weeks! (these ought to have been done in a day or two..tells you what my days have been like) to make some mistletoe ornaments for my Frayed Edges Friends (we are, by the way, getting a rather lovely collection of ornaments we have swapped over the years).

Photographed at Kate's house, the Mistletoe ornament pattern is by Susan Brubaker Knapp, in the 2010-11 Quilting Arts Gifts magazine

When I received my author’s copy of Quilting Arts Gifts 2010-2011, I immediately paged through it to find my article, but on the way was immediately stopped by Susan Brubaker Knapp‘s wonderful mistletoe ornaments.  Susan and I have only met once “in the real,” in Houston (where else?), but have become friends via internet.  I was thrilled when I looked at the credit to see that these beauties were her pattern!

Of course, could I make it just like the pattern?  Not quite….. I used a slightly smaller pattern (I think now I like hers better–more room between the leaves…since I haven’t seen “live” mistletoe in decades tho, I wasn’t sure about the branching pattern on the leaves).

My leaves ready to cut out, and the big photo from QArts Gifts issue

Also, when I went to make these just before our Frayed Edges meeting, I realized I didn’t have either the 1 cm white wool balls Susan used OR the variegated light green floss OR anywhere to buy them locally AND not enough time to order stuff.  So what did I do?  I made it up!

I promptly thought of my polymer clay (neglected for a couple years in a box), and dug out my translucent and Pearl white Sculpey III (I think that was the kind) and made round white beads.  LOTS of them.  Think 7-8 for each sprig, with three sprigs per ornament, times four ornaments…… folded up some parchment paper into “Z” folds so the little pesky things wouldn’t roll in the tray while going into and out of the toaster oven. And since I couldn’t sew through wool beads with floss and make a lovely French Knot like Susan, I used green seed beads (a couple colors) as a “stop” to secure the beads to the stems.  I think Susan had quite a few more berries per ornament than I did, and if I had had time I would have made another bazillion beads, but not enough time!  Oh well!

Here's my "work station" on the dining table, with the polymer clay beads I made in the "Z" fold parchment, waiting to be sewn on to the ornaments. Wear a thimble!

Then I didn’t have lovely silk ribbon like Susan, or a place to buy any, or time to order, so I dug through my ribbons and tidbits box and found the plaid ribbon.  It’s not great quality ribbon, but it looks PERFECT.  I tied an overhand knot about halfway down to make a hanging loop.  Then I used some 1/8″ wide green satin double-faced ribbon (from JoAnns) to seriously tie together tightly the three branches of mistletoe and the plaid loop.  I made sure the knot of the loop was below the tightly-tied green ribbon so the loop wouldn’t pull up and out.

Here’s the three I gave away—mine had to wait until later to get finished, but it did make it onto the tree before Christmas!

3 mistletoe ornaments, and MANY polymer-bead-berries

And a close up:

On mine I tried painting the edges as I wasn’t certain about the white.  What a PAIN!   I finished my ornament that way but it was so fiddly getting the brush between the edges of the leaves that I decided to skip that.  And Kathy said she really liked the spark of white…good!   Also, I used a heavy 35-wt cotton thread–heavier than I usually use–for the quilting.  I had bought some of Superior Thread’s King Tut line (the Bullrushes color) for a class for kits, and had a bunch leftover.  It was perfect, used it top and bobbin!

Best of all was when Kate just gasped….she had bought a similar ornament at a craft fair for the Mother and SO wanted one for herself but was good with the budget and didn’t buy one.  So she got one anyway!

Thanks Susan for a really WONDERFUL ornament!