Great news!   I’ve got a new article in Quilting Arts, in the August-September issue.  I’m dashing out the door momentarily to Maine Quilts (I helped with set-up on Weds., you may have seen a picture if you’re on FaceBook), and today I get to help with Appraisals for a couple hours.  Looking forward to learning!  BUT in the meantime, WOOOHOOOO, my article on “What a Difference the Background Makes” is in this issue:

The August-September Issue of Quilting Arts has my new article on choosing backgrounds.

Here’s the first two pages of the article (I blurred the text since QA has the copyright).  Issues should be on stands now or soon; if you live somewhere that you can’t get a paper copy, the issue is available by digital download from Quilting Arts/Interweave, here.

My new article on backgrounds. Thanks to my friend Pat D. for suggesting I propose this to QA! You rock, Pat!

I did up a second version of the quiltlet on the right, but gotta run so will share that in the next day or two.  If you’d like to see how I applied this process to a recent larger quilt, Mr. Wiggles Does the Circle Dance, check out this blogpost from earlier this summer.

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!

What a nice way to start the day!  Reading my morning email, sipping my cup, and there’s Quilting Daily from Quilting Arts editor Vivika DeNegre, so I click on it.  It’s about my forthcoming article on the difference a background makes!   You can see it here:

http://www.quiltingdaily.com/blogs/quilting-daily/archive/2013/06/13/choose-backgrounds-for-art-quilts.aspx

Thanks to my friend Pat D. (Waving across the US to Mill Valley, California!) who suggested I submit this article concept.  I’d been sharing with my small, wonderful, essential-to-life online sketching group, trying to decide which background to use for my Tea with Milk quiltlet,

Tea with Milk, published in the recent Quilting Arts Coffee or Tea? Challenge. Of course the answer is tea! From the time I was in grade school, my Irish-American papa fixed me tea for breakfast. Still have my cuppa daily!

which was included in Quilting Arts a couple of issues ago. Pat thought my decision process would make a good article, so I submitted it and …WOOT!… Quilting Arts accepted it.  I’ll share the whole little quilt once the magazine is published.  Until then, here is “Tea with Milk” and an option or two when I made it.

Dark is good for contrast, but this lovely deep blue just looks kinda dead here.

Love the contrast, like a table when you are snug indoors in winter, but that’s not the feel I wanted for this quiltlet.

Love the contrast, but don’t like the vertical: looks like the items are going to slide off a table that has been tilted up!

Love the feel of this breezy aqua, but the cup gets lost along the edges. One option would have been to use this, but then darken the left edge of the cup with thread.

The yellow is so cheerful and “morning”, but the top edge of the white pitcher gets lost, and I didn’t want to darken it with thread. An alternative would be to outline with an ochre just a tiny bit to create an edge.

Getting closer. Good contrast with all three elements, but the value-change in the print distracts from the items.

On the set at Interweave in Loveland, Colorado, to film a Quilting Arts Workshop! (Who me?!!!!)

Can you believe it?  I’ve been to Loveland, Colorado, taped a Quilting Arts DVD Workshop, come home (exhausted but elated) and I can still barely believe it.  Yes, I have been “on the set” filming this week.   Due out in September as both a download and as an actual DVD (which is wonderful for us who live in the boonies with glacial internet), the working title is “Fused Collage and Thread-Coloring,”  a Quilting Arts Workshop from Interweave Press!

The project I used for the workshop is my Tomatoes, Basil and Garlic quilt (No. 1) [there will be 3 versions before I’m done], but the workshop is to teach you how to use your own photo to make an art quilt:

Tomatoes, Basil and Garlic, No. 1, the start of what I will call my Quilting the Good Life series!

My trip to the airport was an omen–a good one–for how the trip was about to go.  I mean, look at the beginnings of sunrise as I crossed the driveway to the garage!

4:25 a.m., Tuesday: leaving for the airport in Owl’s Head (near Rockland, maine) just before dawn

It got even more dramatic just over the ridge heading to the coast, at the intersection of Route 105 (the Camden Road) and High Street in Hope:

Can you believe that sky? Makes me want to get to the dye pots!

The route in was equally stunning. Here, mist rising off the Megunticook River in Camden.

And ten minutes down the coast in Rockland:

And the sunrise over Rockland Harbor, en route to our little airport at Owl’s Head.

I flew Cape Air (maximum of 9 passengers) to Boston, then JetBlue (for the first but not the last time!) to Denver, where I caught the shuttle to Loveland directly to the Interweave studio where I met Helen Gregory and the filming crew.  There we set up my materials, hung the quilts, and went over my plans for filming the next day.  Congrats to Helen on her promotion to Vice President for Content, Interweave and Martha Pullen,  and upcoming move to Colorado!

My DVD will have five segments, so five trays to lay out my supplies which I prepped at home.

And boy did I prep.  I had about a month (shorter than usual I think) between my contract and filming date, so I pretty much did nothing but make step-outs, more step-outs, refine, video (to get used to talking to a camera and to time myself), cut/edit, cut/edit/shorten more, etc.  For a month.  Non-stop.

Make-up, first thing Wednesday!

Interweave has a make-up artist come do you up for camera, as there are special products that make you look right on camera under all those bright lights.  I shoulda shot a picture of me sitting at the table looking at the room…it was FULL of big tripods, cameras, and cables and cords EVERYWHERE.  Miraculously, I did not trip and break anything or anyone!

Reviewing my notes before getting changed for taping.

THANK YOU JANOME-America and Patty WInkelman of Quilter’s Stash in WIndsor, Colorado, for arranging a Janome 8900–the machine I sew on at home–to use along with a Janome sewing table. I’d never used the table and we were all impressed at how sturdy and stable and heavy it is. Of course the 8900 sewed flawlessly!

Then it was time to get changed and start taping.  Then we mostly forgot to take still pictures!  But here are some….

Me on the left, Helen Greghory in the green top, and I think that is Laura (webinars guru) on the right, hidden mostly by one of the cameras. We were getting ready for the concluding segment I can tell by what is on the table.

At the end, I asked to have apicture of four of us: L to R, Laura E. (webinars and more), Helen Gregory (new VP for Content), me, and Lauren our camerawoman extraordinaire. Camera dude Nick was taking the photo, and camera dude Garrett had already run off to another “gotta be there” job. Those lights were bright, but sure make things visible and looking good.

I never saw this view, but either Helen or Lauren kindly took this photo for me, which shows the jib camera shot of the table with my project and quilts on it:

The jib/overhead camera view. If you look in the center just above the right corner of the screen view, you can see the overhead camera.  Also notice in the backgorund it looks like the quilts are on an angle.  They are–that is to offset the perspective angle that happens with the big camera lenses.  Fascinating!

Then it was time to go home.  Early.

Before I arrived, Colorado hit 80 degrees (F). Wednesday, it SNOWED. When I left the hotel at 3:58 a.m. for the shuttle to the Denver Airport, it looked like this! Then by today it was supposed to be back in the 60s–that’s more insane than our weather!

I’ll spare you the tedium of a crowded plane from Denver to Philadelphia, a smaller more crowded plane from Philly to Boston, the utter hopelessness of Logan Airport (UGH UGH UGH), but flying home on Cape Air is always fun.  As we approach the mid-coast, first I’ll spot the Camden Hills:

There are two landmarks visible from the sky from a distance. I was in the seat behind the co-pilot’s seat (which is usually filled with a passenger). The first are the Camden Hills: Battie, Megunticcok, Maidencliff.

Then

The second landmark is the big white tower at Dragon Cement, visible dead ahead in the middle of this photo. I realized on this trip how massively huge the quarry is for this company.

As you near Dragon Cement, we turn right and head for Owl’s Head (Knox County, RKD) airport.  The lights of home!

LOVE being able to snap out all windows of these small planes.  Landing strip is visible just to the right of the bar up the center of the windshield.

Travel was the usual crowded insanity and waiting, but I was home 16 hours later to son, hubby, cats and dog.  Two of the seven are here:

Doggie love is GOOD!

In the past month, I’ve not only prepped this, but THREE articles (more on them when they are close to being published), have a quilt to make in a week, another article to write, then teaching in North Carolina in June and southern California in July, then a quilt to make by August 5.  Then I can collapse a few weeks before school begins (how will Eli be a SOPHOMORE already?) and fall teaching in Massachusetts and at International Quilt Festival in Houston.   So I HOPE to blog more often, but at this rate can’t promise.  I have so much to catch you all up on, pictures from teaching in Florida, Vermont, and Mass….but must be mom, wife, and author first. Stay tuned!

Hi all, I’m thrilled to share with you news that I’m included in a new book on art quilts will be out by the end of April:

You can pre-order this beautiful book , autographed, from www.marywkerr.com

Yep, I am among the lucky 51  contemporary quilt artists to be included in its 160 pages!  You can order autographed copies of the book from editor/author/curator Mary W. Kerr on her website here; scroll down just a bit and you’ll see the link to pre-order.

The “blurb” says:  “Accompanied by 270 color images, fifty-one quilters share their love of the craft and encourage others in the field of textile art by offering design and technique tips. Design processes include color play, alternative fiber, threadwork, and embellishments. This book is a great resource for quilt lovers, textile collectors, and design students.”

Mary put out a call for submissions quite some time ago (publication is a lengthy process).  I am thrilled not only to be included, but to know that this book is people who may very well not be known to your or just coming to your attention–it’s a new generation.   I’ve admired the work of many of those included some for years and am so honored to be included in their company.   I can’t WAIT to see my copy!