This month was extra special:  Deborah came to visit from Texas!!!!!  So all five of us were together AND we got to have a sleepover AND we did a day workshop (on Monday) on Mandalas with Natasha Kempers-Cullen…Yippeee!  Here we are in the late afternoon…thanks to Kate’s hubby Andy for doing photographer duty…at one point he had five cameras dangling from neck and wrists!

Back row:  Sarah Smith, Kathy Daniels, Deborah Boschert

Seated in front:  Kate Cutko, Hannah Beattie

We were going to bunk over at Kate’s house like we did last year, but Kate had a brilliant idea that made it better for everyone (including her kids who had to get up and go to school Monday morning:  she asked her generous neighbors, who let lots of friends use their summer house, if we could too…so we did!  The house is at the very end of Browns Point, and juts into Merrymeeting Bay (isn’t that the most wonderful name?  Merrymeeting?  I love it….).  Kate showed us one of the secrets of the point…a bald eagle’s nest (look for the tangle of sticks on the branch at lower left):

As we gathered at the house, we took something to sip and something to munch on and went to sit under the trees, near the marsh and we heard this keening overhead.  We had apparently caused the two eagles some concern, so they took off from the nest, circled around the tip of the point, and settled in to some upper branches on a pine RIGHT OVER where we had our chairs!

Kathy’s birthday is at the end of August, so we celebrated and shared gifts…here’s Kath looking delighted at Kate’s gift:  rust-dyed fabrics, plus more fabric and some very rusty nails to do her own rust-dyeing….only art quilters can truly appreciate how wonderful LOL!

While we sat and talked, Hannah relaxed:

And Deborah helped Kate shuck some corn (which she picked from her garden THAT afternoon….YUM):

while I snapped pictures.

Deborah brought gifties as did Hannah…. but I was having so much fun relaxing at that point I forgot to take pictures…. you can see pics of the wonderful journal books Deborah made on her blog, here.

After our group photo, Kate took us to a spot where flotsam and jetsam…AND old shards of glass and pottery gather… Hannah found an old bottle (which of course I forgot to take a photo!).  This is a photo of the bay:

and walking down to the access path:

That’s Kate’s daughter on her back, a neighbor on the far right, and Kate’s son leading the troupe.

I’m always looking for patterns…for quilting, for design….so I got a nice shot of the water:

I’ll be back tomorrow with the evening fun, and the next day with our Mandala workshop!

During lunch break from class on that Friday, Jan and I went down to the show floor to see the quilts, and what ribbons I might have won …… teeeheee!   I got lucky this year, and received two first place blue ribbons and, drum roll please, my first ever Judges’ Choice from (usually traditional-loving) Lisa Erlandson (you’ll have to read to the bottom for more!)!  The first of my quilts that I ran across was Nourish; when I walked up all sorts of folks were looking at it closely (way cool!).

Here’s me doing the “Vanna White pose” and explaining to some viewers how I did it….

The next aisle had a wonderful exhibit called A Sense of Place, the annual Art Quilts Maine challenge for the year.  This year there were many entries (some years there are not so many!), and they were all wonderful, and some outstanding.  Of course I loved Kathy and Kate’s!   Kathy’s features her signature bright colors and many beads….as always not one too many, not one too few:

This detail shows more of her fine work:

Kate outdid herself this year.  She went to Italy earlier this year, and was so inspired by Cinque Terra.  She took her time with this quilt (as an overextended mom, we all tend to rush!) and it shows in the quality of design and workmanship.  This may be the best machine quilting she’s done… I totally love the piece:

Anne Walker, the President (aka Queen) of AQM, made this stunning aerial view…. her work is always tops—I wouldn’t mind owning a piece like this one!  The blue binding on the bottom is inspired!:

Across the aisle, the Coastal Quilters challenge hung on the ugly burgundy drapes.  Inspired by the Frayed Edges 5×5 grid (seen here in an older blogpost, and here and here), the chapter chose a photo by Jan’s husband and photographer Dwight P. called Ropes and Buoys.  The challenge was to make a 10x 10 inch quilt using any technique.   Many went for realistic colors….weathered wood and rope and a bright buoy, but some of us went hog wild!

Mine are the two close-ups….last one on the 4th row, first one on the 5th row.

I LOVED that some went traditional in their interpretation, and that others went totally wild.  What is astonishing is that some of the most traditional quilters who had never EVER made an art quilt did some of the most AMAZING piece….major kudos to Karen Martin and Leigh Smith for not only attempting the challenge, but excelling!

This quilt was a round robin made by Roxanne Wells, Rebeccah Hokkanen, Susan Barry and Gail Galloway-Nicholson.   Despite serious medical challenges to them and / or their spouses for at least three of them, they did a wonderful job.  Alas, I somehow only got the picture of this one (not all four) of their challenge quilts.  Of course they are, all 4 of them, part of my awesome local Coastal Quilters chapter.  I’m so glad I’m here! What luck to find so many kindred souls.

As promised, here is Rana O’Connor’s tiger….he is totally, completely amazing.  The tiger himself is ALL THREAD….and then appliqued onto the surface, which is a single batik. Everything else you see is thread–the snake, the tree, everything.  Can you tell she loves thread as much as I do?  Not surprisingly, he took a well-earned blue ribbon!  The quilt is fairly small, maybe 14 inches tall?

Here are several quilts (and sorry, I’m too lazy and rushed to run upstairs and find the show brochure to add who made them… if you know tell me and I’ll update the post, which I’ll try to do later anyway) that I really liked…. first this awesome green NY Beauty:

And this very Maine-ish quilt, complete with loose-flapping flags:

No blog about the show would be complete without one of Jeanne-Marie Robinson’s quilts (she’s also in Coastal Quilters…grin!).  Almost always her quilts feature animals, and most often are brightly colored.  This one is softer, yet is one of my favorites….the handwork (all hand applique and quilting, and lots of embroidery) is stunning:

This charming little quilt was made of one of those fabrics you’d think would turn out, well, a bit tacky, but it SO works, and the beading is just perfect.  I want to track down the maker (I have the info in my notes somewhere) and ask her if I may use it in my lecture on beading on quilts:

Last but not least, here I am doing another “Vanna” showing off my Judges’ choice ribbon for Naiads:

Hunh? you say?

Well, it started last fall when fellow Frayed Edge Kate Cutko wanted to make floor cloths to sell at a holiday craft bazaar. Rhea Daiute at Alewives Fabrics in Damariscotta Mills had some on display last year at Maine Quilts (the annual show of the Pine Tree Quilt Guild) and sold out on her kits! And On Board Fabrics in Edgecomb, where Kate used to work, carries the canvas in varying widths. So, on our Frayed Edges field trip to the Botanical Gardens (see here1, here2, here3 and here4 for those posts).

Unlike me, Kate actually got things done. Here is a picture of one cloth she began and another (the green) Painted canvas underneath ready for the fabric–wouldn’t that mango one be glorious as a kitchen runner?

Kathy made several as Christmas gifts (why the heck don’t I have PHOTOS of their finished ones???????)… while surfing around for links to Alewives and my blogposts, I discovered Rhea has a blog, and she even blogged about a floorcloth workshop, here. Well, I figured the last thing we need in our house (with, at the time, two boys, two dogs one of whom was 150+ pounds and hairy, and four cats) was one more thing to get dirty on the floor……BUT, I was wishing for some wipe-down placemats as the boys are still kinda sloppy.

So…… floorcloth becomes 8 placemats! I used the leftover paint from painting my fabric shelves (remember these?) as the base color, then picked a selection of my favorite Caribbean-ish batiks for my squares. Oh…by the way, I had to ask Kate to help me remember, but you paint the canvas first, THEN glue (if you do it the other way, we learned the hard way, the edges ripple).

Then there were some little leftover bits of canvas…can’t let those go to waste… Bingo! Coasters for the drippy, sweaty iced-tea glasses of summer:

So far, after having used THREE coats of polyurethane (semi-gloss) on them, the wiping up is working! The hard part was keeping (and failing) the floating cat hairs out of the stuff as it dried, so a few random bits of Thumper, Tyger, Hannah and Zeus appear to have become part of the mats…. Anyway, I figure wiping mats (but not submerging them) to clean can’t be much more wear and tear than a floorcloth! And some day, I may actually make a floorcloth! Rhea and Alewives Fabrics will apparently be selling more kits at Maine Quilts, so stop by the booth early..they’re sure to sell out again!  They also have this cool Non-skid stuff to paint on the backs so you don’t break your neck with the cloth skittering across the floor… check it out!

This past Saturday, Kate, Kathy and I met at Quilt Divas from 10-12 for a book signing which the owners, Debbie and Doris, arranged for Creative Quilting with Beads. The three of us and Frayed Edge in exile Deborah had eight projects in the book! (I stayed until 1, since I had goofed on the day and scheduled it for the same day as the local quilt guild chapter meeting…so I stayed until some friends could come down and buy books…then we had a blast and went out to lunch).

That’s Kathy, who always looks happy, always looks nice, and is just plain fun! I’m SO looking forward to the next year or two when she MOVES down this way! Anyway, Debbie and Doris set up a nice table and display just as you entered the store. Kathy is holding her project which (drum roll please!) they chose as the FIRST project for the book! WOOT! Deborah sent up her triptych that is in the book, my blue and orange piece is on the same display, and Kate had already packed up her two pieces that were in the book (she had a meeting and had to boogie on time, before I remembered to take pictures!).

While there, Kate was kind enough to let me photograph her journal, since I’m going to develop a new lecture on Journal quilts. I decided the lecture should be about journals too…how you can use a notebook to record ideas and stuff for later use. Kate’s camera died on a recent trip to Italy (I’d have perished on the spot!), SO she sketched instead. Man is she GOOD! Just look at this drawing, which she colored later with watercolors, of beach peas in bloom in a jar….

I was so inspired when Kate first shared these with us… she told us about some watercolors she had bought … made in Russia. Surfing around the internet and then Dick Blick (an online and real art supply store) I found them…. Yarka from St. Petersburg. And I found the $$ my mom had given me for Christmas (and which I had carefully tucked away so as not to lose it, and therefore which wasn’t to be found for six months….) and SPLURGED! I had been wanting some watercolors, and nice, rich, deep colored ones, not insipid student-cheapo grade….. and the price on these was not to be believed (or skipped)…

Here’s the Dick Blick page. Of course, have I DONE anything with them since they arrived a week ago? Nope… maybe this weekend? Anyway, I’m hoping that in time my journals will be as colorful and maybe even a tenth as wonderful as Kathy’s and Kate’s…..I’m so lucky to be surrounded by such talent!

After visiting Natasha Kemper-Cullen‘s studio (see earlier post), Kate, Kathy, Hannah and daughter Nina and I headed to a beach on Orr’s Island (at least I think that’s where we were…..). We drove down route 24 through Harpswell until we reached here:

Kate had brought some cloths to spread on the damp sand, and we munched away:

For once, I remembered to do a stand-in for Deborah (our dear friend in exile in the wilds of the Dallas metropolis) who always used to remember to take photos of our lunches. We each brought something to share… we had initially planned to meet at Hannah’s house where she was going to fix a salad, but we changed our plans to picnic, so she treated us to lunch-on-the-run from the local grocery. Here’s what I picked:

Now wouldn’t that make a glorious quilt?

After eating, we trolled the beach for beach glass and pottery shards.  I did OK finding the glass, but didn’t really know what I was looking for with the pottery…. but Hannah gave me her findings, saying she had MORE than enough at home…so here is my “booty”, displayed on a piece of fabric I  monoprinted (with dye) and overdyed last fall in Carol Soderlund’s workshop (pop Soderlund into the search box on the upper left sidebar if you want to check out those blogposts)… anyway, the fabric seemed perfect….

On the way home I actually had time to dawdle on the way, so thinking of Deborah I stopped in at Smitten in downtown (!) Wiscasset. Deborah just LOVED this store and the sign. I have to admit…Wiscasset really is a beautiful little town:

The for-the-oh-so-chic home items in this store are lovely and expensive, so I enjoy the visual treat. Then I moved up the street a few doors to Rock Paper Scissors, which is a great name for a store also, and not so coincidentally, owned by the same someone (I think).
I love the stuff in this store…the paper, the pens, the ribbon….. but they SERIOUSLY need to work on customer etiquette. When I walked in the clerk was on the phone. I browsed. She got off the phone, but didn’t say a thing. I browsed some more, and spent some serious time considering some ribbons. She never said hello or may I help you find something, not a thing. I browsed more, headed toward the door. I left. She never ONCE said hello, good-bye, thank you, let me know if can I help you, NOTHING. So as much as I love the contents of the store, I’m getting over it. I’ve been in there a few times, and every time it is the same. Not a way to win repeat customers!

Then I drove home to kids, family, work and all that stuff that makes life worthwhile.