To cap a wonderful bloghop, I would first and foremost like to thank the amazing artists and bloggers who made this possible:  Jamie Fingal, Deborah Boschert, Vicki Welsh, Leslie Tucker Jenison, Terry Grant, Gloria Hansen and Diane Perin Hock.  To all of you who left comments, THANK YOU!  And to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s Scissors, thank you for your generous donations that make this grand prize possible!  Here is one more chance to win, and read to the bottom for a bit more news!  Please note, this giveaway is for those residing in the United States only due to postage costs.  However, if you live outside the US and win and are willing to share postage costs, you can enter also. Leave comments before 8 a.m. Eastern Time, October 10th.  I’ll do the drawing that morning and post/contact the winner.DRUM ROLL please:  the Winner is number 42, Gail Myrhodosky!  I’ve emailed you, Gail, to get your snail mail address.  This giveaway is now over, but I’ll do one more in mid November–come back on November 10th—well, come back before then please, but for more on the Holiday giveaway, visit here on November 10th.

There is now a video clip available on YouTube which you can watch here or over on YouTube, here.

The grand prize is grand indeed:

Huge thanks to Quilting Arts/Interweave, Mistyfuse and Havel’s for their generous donations to this bloghop!

• A copy of the DVD!
• A selection of products from MistyFuse! I show you how I use these products in the Video workshop.
• A huge donation from Havel’s Scissors including a generous giftbag that includes long scissors, short scissors, snips, seam ripper, AND the non-stick scissors too!
• And a copy of Quilting Arts Gifts magazine from this year, with a project by me!

Here’s a photo of the stencilled ornaments project I did; I will also be demonstrating this project at the Christmas Delights Sampler (Class 765, and it still has openings…sign up at Festival!) from 2 to 5 Saturday afternoon at International Quilt Festival!

My project in the Quilting Arts Gifts 2013-14 issue is Stenciled Ornaments.

If you’d like to win this GRAND PRIZE, please leave me a comment and tell me something you learned these past two weeks from one of the blogs you visited on the bloghop!    And if you can’t wait, or don’t win, do remember you can order my DVD from me here or the download (or DVD) from Interweave, here.  Leave comments before 8 a.m. Eastern Time, October 10th.  I’ll do the drawing that morning and post/contact the winner.

NOTE:  this giveaway is for those residing in the United States due to postage costs.  However, if you live outside the US and win and are willing to share postage costs, you can enter also.

And….. just when you thought the bloghop was over, NOPE!  I’m doing a SECOND bloghop in early-to-mid-November to kick off the holiday season.  So on November 10th, make sure you come back (well, come back and read my blogposts before then, but you know what I mean) to join the second and final round of fun!

Teeheee…can you tell I’m excited?  My Video workshop, Art Quilt Design from Photo to Threadwork (with Fabric Collage and Machine Quilting) is now available as a digital download on the Interweave Store here (both regular AND [!!!!] High def) and available for pre-order here on my website and on the interweave site.  If you pre-order your DVD from me, shipping is free from now through September 24th (and a modest $3 after that).

Now available!!!!

I haven’t downloaded the video here at home yet, but I think I am at least as excited about this as about the entire DVD:

The Closing Credits…son Joshua is there, too! I had so much fun playing his music on my iPhone to get psyched before and celebrate after taping, too!

Yep, JOSHUA’s MUSIC, written, performed and recorded by my firstborn son, runs during the closing credits!!!!   You can hear the entire song on SoundCloud, here.  (Note:  link coming soon…gotta listen to the video to hear which song they chose but too eager to get this posted to wait for the download to finish–will update on the 11th.)

And as always, THANK YOU to Janome America.  They have sponsored me with a sewing machine through their Artist and Teacher program for a VERY long time, and I am incredibly grateful for their generosity and support.  I’m also thrilled that the dealer in Colorado,  Quilter’s Stash of Windsor, Colorado, was able to arrange for me to sew on an 8900–as I do at home–on the DVD set.  It made taping so much easier to be sewing on a familiar machine!

To celebrate, I will be having a bloghop giveaway in about ten days (September 2013) and another one in November 2013, just in time for the holidays.   Stay tuned for more on the bloghop and giveaways!  Now I’m gonna go float up in the clouds somewhere!

Hi all!  I’m happy to report that if you want, you can now sign up for my September 5th Web Seminar on the Mechanics of Machine Quilting with Interweave/Quilting Arts!

Learn how to get ready to machine quilt with Sarah Ann Smith. Set up your space and materials so they help (and don’t hinder) you!

Here is the link:
To buy it in the store: http://www.interweavestore.com/mechanics-of-machine-quilting

And here’s what QA/IW says about the live Web Seminar:

• Preparing your workstation and tools for an effective quilting session
• Which needles and thread are best for specific projects
• Proper sewing machine tension
• How to baste a quilt in order to get smooth, even layers
• Practicing good ergonomics so you’re comfortable while you’re quilting
• Making sure your vision is in good standing to accurately see your projects and workstation
• And more!

Practice makes perfect, and machine quilting is no exception. Sarah will not only run you through the elements of this process, but she will also encourage you to be comfortable with your beginner status. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to learn machine quilting techniques from the start!

Don’t worry if you can’t tune in on the 5th!  The Seminar is recorded and you can listen in at any time at your convenience.  To learn about how this works (you’ll need an internet connection for your computer or tablet), visit the hotlink above.

There will be more links and information in the coming days.  There is already something on FaceBook!
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/QuiltingDaily
Twitter: https://twitter.com/QuiltingDaily
Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/quiltingdaily/

And I’ve added a link to my  Pinterest boards–I’d love it if you’d follow me!

All of the boards are here:  http://pinterest.com/sarahannsmithq/boards/

and the one just for teaching and publications:

http://pinterest.com/sarahannsmithq/sarahs-teaching-and-publications/

Remember back when the world looked like this? Yes, that was a bit over 3 months ago–hard to believe in the torrid heatwave right now!

Well long ago and many degrees cooler than now (about 75 degrees cooler to be precise), I began work on a piece for a juried exhibit / book, and I’m thrilled to say that my piece was accepted.  Mary W. Kerr, author of Cutting Edge Art Quilts (see my book announcement blogpost here), came up with another great idea for an exhibit:   “Dare to Dance, An Artist’s Interpretation of Joy.”  It worked so well, she sent out an invitation to make a quilt 18 x 30 inches for possible inclusion in a book on that theme.  Immediately I KNEW what my image would be… but it would just need to get squeezed into a very busy time period when I was also writing three articles, doing new artwork for the articles, AND prepping and filming my Quilting Arts DVD (post about that here).

The image:  Mr. Wiggles a.k.a Pigwidgeon a.k.a. our pug!   See every time he gets hungry, he puts his feeties up on your leg.  When you look down at that sweet pug mug and ask, “Are you hungry?” he immediately hops, then drops onto all four feet and begins The Circle Dance.  Always counter clockwise.  Several times.  Accompanied by a hop or three.  Then he scootches around behind me (after I’ve creaked my knees into standing) and nudges me into the kitchen by pushing at the back of my calves with his sweet smooshed-in face, just to make sure I know where to go!

I’m excited to see my article on backgrounds come out in an upcoming Quilting Arts issue (blogpost about that here), and this is yet another example of how backgrounds make a difference.  But first, I needed to get a photo to use as my model for his wiggly body:

First I had to capture the correct curve of his body. This too MANY photos because they were mostly blurred because he was moving too fast!

Then we needed to get the “putting down the dish” thing:

First attempt at putting down the dish. Decided the proportions and bowl at the top didn’t work.

So….

So this time I managed to take a photo with my left hand only to get the proper perspective, which would then be at the bottom of the quilt.

Once I had my working photos, I fuse-collaged the dog, the bowl and my hand, and my slippers.  Next:  choosing a background.   Hmmm.   Let us just say I tried MANY colors.  If a color contrasted with the warm tones, the blues/purples blended in.  If the color contrasted with the purple and blues, the pug got lost.   Some prints were blah.  Some were too visually busy.

The red contrasts well with everything, but was a bit much for me. I know this will hang in our home, but it was just too much red.

So how about blue? Egads, NO!

So then I tried blue. Definitely not this one. Nice batik, but not here–washed out AND busy. Blech!

So off to try my favorite turquoises.  Hmmm.  Not so much.

OK, but not great. The dog and my arm stand out well, as do the dark slippers, but the food dish kinda mooshes into the background.

Tried another turquoise, with more visual texture. This was NOT an improvement. OK, moving on….

OK, so yellow and orange won’t work for obvious reasons, don’t want browns, red doesn’t work, neither does blue or turquoise.  Don’t want that much purple.  That leaves (drum roll) green.  So how does that work?

Definitely better. However, this fabric looks much better in the photo than it did in person. It is a “fractured ice” type of pattern, and it looked pretty flat and dead in person, but the color was definitely working for me with pug, arm, dish and feet!

Here’s another green. Again, the “print” of the batik is a bit flat, and perhaps it is a bit too briht, but like the red strips on the side. For quite a while I planned on vertical stripes of red.

I really liked this print, but the yellow of the sunflower petals was a bit disctracting.

The solution? PAINT! A thin (very thinned) wash of blue paint knocked back the contrast a bit. Just enough visual “life,” not too contrasty, not too flat. The Goldilocks choice: Just Right!

Then comes the quilting.  A couple of times I have tried this method, and I like it–not all the time, but often.

Here you can see the back: I do the thread-coloring (aka thread-painting) with a batting behind the figure as a stabilizer. Once done, I trim away the excess (not trimmed on the pug). Notice the fabric on the left, unpainted, with the painted background…just a bit of difference on the yellow petals.

Can you say “LOVE MY JANOME”? This is the 8900–every time I think they can’t make a machine better, and yet they do. LOVE quilting on this baby (I call him Gandalf because of the silver front, and it has to be a guy because he’s so big!).

Tomorrow, the completed quilt!

By the time I got to making the two small pieces, I had ONE week left, and lots of other stuff to do during that week.  Can you say work fast?  Under pressure?  SHeesh!  I really hope life slows down, because I can’t take too much more of this!

One of the architetural photos I took and used for the small pieces

The other of the architetural photos I took and used for the small pieces

These two photos were the ones whose lines shadows most inspired me.  I love the interplay between straight lines and the curved, the grid of stone and the undulating shapes, the blue sky and the white stone, and the shadows.  I love how the architect used bands/lines of (metal?) whatever to create de facto louvers to shield the galleries and interior spaces from the bright sunlight, and how those bands create striped shadows on the pillars and walls.

Here are the two smaller pieces, with batting and backing sticking out, and their sketches/tracings above.

Due to lack of time, I quilted both small pieces at once… I’d thread up on say ivory, quilt those areas, switch to cream and repeat, then to tan, etc. on both quilts, working my way to the dark of the windows and the sky and, finally the facings!

But I still wasn’t happy with the shadows from the table and chairs, so I went back to the now not-quite-done central piece.  In the next photo you can see the two pencils plus the paintbrush.

I still wasn't happy with the shadows (or lack thereof) on the main piece, which was ostensibly finished. Guess not. So I took out my Inktense by Derwent pencils (the Payne's Gray and a neutral gray) and took a deep breath

This picture shows the table shadows partially done....

Using the pencils was a bit of a "thriller" moment: I used two colors of gray to get the shade I wanted. The lighter gray on the bottom is where I have colored over the gray quilting threads with the pencil (see black arrow marks on the photo). You can then dampen the pencil marks to create an ink and intensify the color. However, I didn't want the color to bleed into the sunny stripes that came through the slats of the table. So I took out the hair dryer! I used a damp paintbrush in my right hand to moisten the ink, and the hair dryer in my left hand to dry as I painted/wet the pencil-ink. I had very little bleeding into the sunny stripe as a result, and what I did have doesn't really impact the image much at all. PHEW...time for a nice glass of wine after that... I could have totally ruined the whole, finished thing...with just days to go before hanging the show!

The quilt was getting better and I was disliking it less.  But it still wasn’t quite right to me.  There was too much blue at the top.  So for the show I “cropped” it by folding the top to the back… I’ll decide how much to trim off the top and re-do the facing and hanging sleeve after the show comes down.  So here is a question for those of you who have slogged through these blogposts:  how much should I remove from the top?  Here are three VERY similar versions:

So I do I leave it alone (far left), crop a little (center) or crop a bit more (right)? Photo is clickable to see it larger...

So do I leave it alone with lots of blue, crop a tiny bit, or crop a little bit more?  The photo on the far left is as made.  The way it is hanging is about where I photoshopped it in the center photo, and the one on the right is close to square (think symmetry with the proportions of the two small pieces).  So do I crop?  How much?

And just to remind you…here are the three pieces done and in the show:

Conversations by Sarah Ann Smith -- click to see larger

And yes….I might maybe do another quilt or two… I mean, look at this water-maze-garden-hedge…  how cool is that?  and the cropped version below?

the green is hedge, the dark in between is water!, and beyond are plants on the "bowl" shaped slope in the gardens that surround this water feature.

I just LOVE this rhythm and repetition....