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:

Have you ever wondered what a quilt show looks like before the quilts are hung?  I always had, and two years ago when I first volunteered to help hang the quilts, I got an inkling.  With permission from the powers that be at Maine Quilts, I took some photos during set-up this year for sharing on my blog.  Here,

The quilts have arrived.  Since quilts come in from the entire state, there are regional drop-off centers (most often quilt shops) where they are logged in as they arrive.  Entrants must fill out their forms and place their quilts in a pillowcase or cloth bag, then deliver their babies to the drop-off point the Saturday before the show opens.  A volunteer for each drop-off point then drives all the quilts to Augusta where the show is held at the Civic Center.  If, like me, you have “fussy” quilts that need special handling, you may ask for special permission to hand-deliver your quilt on the Wednesday before the show, when the quilts are hung.

This photo is looking down the center aisle toward the main entrance.  The juried quilts are on the left, the display section is on the right, and special exhibits are either in the first aisle or the last aisle or two (depending on how many special exhibits).  Fortunately, the Civic Center is adding black drapes.  The blue ones aren’t so bad but those faded burgundy..well…bleah! They suck the life out of some quilts…. Anyway, the juried quilts are hung first so they are up and done in time for judging on Thursday (the show previews on Thursday evening and opens for Friday, Saturday and Sunday).

Those wood slats are for hanging the quilts.  My dream is that someday the Civic Center will have ALL black drapes, then we can spray paint the used-for-years slats so they disappear against the drapes.  In the meantime, Paula was responsible for one of the best improvements in the hanging process this year, bagging hanging loops in pairs by quilt number–saved a TON of time and frustration.  Nancy Z. is responsible for the other great improvement…for quilts hung one above the other, the lower quilt had loops that were adjustable with toggles (you know those push-clamp-gizzies on the drawcords of parkas?).  This made leveling the quilts a breeze!  Thanks Paula and Nancy!!!!

Here’s the aisle that I helped hang, which included the art quilts in the juried section and the special exhibits from the Art Quilts Maine chapter.

Here are some ladies hanging a large quilt in the Display section…as you can see it takes teamwork to get the quilts up and level.  Someone several years ago designed a spreadsheet that is fantastic…each aisle has a layout of which quilts in order, their width, which size bar is needed, how many inches between the quilts and (another new and appreciated item) a 12 inch wooden ruler to measure the distance between quilts so you don’t reach the end of the row with too much or not enough room!

One of the best parts of hanging is getting a sneak peek at the quilts.  I got to hang my own Naiads, and it was in great company.

To the right is Mathea Daunheimer’s Rooflines quilt (which hoooray for her! got juried into Tactile Architecture in Houston at the big International Quilt Festival), plus another of Mathea’s pieces and two tigers from Rana O’Connor.  I’ll show you a close up of Rana’s two tigers in my next post, but wow!   I’m thrilled to have met her a couple years ago; she lives down near Portland and I wish our paths crossed occasionally….for now, just occasional e-mail.

I’ll be back with a post in a couple of days.  Thanks to the wonders of WordPress I can write my blogs BEFORE I head out the door, then they “publish” when I set the date.  That means I’ll have goodies for you while I’m off teaching at the Images quilt show / Lowell (Mass.) Quilt Festival.

Cheers, Sarah

If it is late June / early July in Maine, that means it is strawberry time!

That is 35 pounds of berries… less than last year. Since Joshua is now insisting on only school lunches, and not eating PB&J (peanut butter and jelly/jam sandwiches for those not living in the US…this is a staple of every school child’s diet… peanuts are also called groundnuts, or in French cacahuete or arachides and are ground into a spread) our annual strawberry jam consumption has dropped. Of these berries, we (ok, *I*) decided to indulge and keep about 5 pounds just to eat, eat, EAT! By the way, they are very good with vanilla ice cream and hot fudge sauce. But I digress. And have gained a pound. Ahem.

First I had to wash and hull (remove the stems) from the berries. Then they are supposed to be smashed. Well… in the past I have sliced. This year, I decided to try something a bit different…and faster! I took the Tupperware plastic cake carrier lid and turned it upside down to use as a bowl (do this for potluck salads a lot). Then I smooshed the berries in my exceptionally well-cleaned hands. Messy but effective, and way faster and simpler than slicing. Like fingerpainting with your food {grin}.

Next you start cooking the jam. I break the rules (what a shock!) and make a double batch. If you cook too large a batch the pectin available for home cooks doesn’t work properly; I like to use Pomona’s Universal Pectin (think there is a picture somewhere on the blog from last year or the year before). It is available in health food / organic stores and you can make low-sugar jam using barely half the sugar / sweetener required by regular (even ostensibly low-sugar) pectins.

One of my favorite jam tools is my mom’s old 1950s vintage potato masher (note the classy phenolic handle with stars… talk about RETRO vintage!). It smashes and stirs well, the handle stays cold, and due to the flat bottom (next picture) it stands upright in the pan!

Here’s what the chaos in the kitchen looks like mid-stream:

When the batch of jam is done, there is… if it is strawberry … a lot of foam (blech) on the top. One way (never told or shared in the cookbooks, passed along by word of mouth amongst jam-makers) to tame the foam is to add some dollops of butter…just little bits… around the edge:

Then you get to do the canning. This year I gave myself a doozie of a steam burn lifting the lid off the canning pot…it turned into a blister almost the size of a dime on my thumb…OUCH! Anyway, then you end up with lots of beautiful jam (where the fruit ALWAYS floats to the top during canning and you have to stir it when you open the jars):

When I lived on San Juan Island (Washington), I always volunteered at the country fair, and particularly enjoyed helping at the judges table for Food Preservation (canned fruits, veggies, meats/fish, beers, wines, vinegars, etc).  There I learned from the certified judges that you should always store your home-canned jams with the rings OFF.  That way, if the vacuum seal (created by heating the jam with the new lids in the hot water bath) breaks, the loose lid will be readily apparent.  This is important because if ANY air gets in, nasty stuff can happen, like invisible bacteria that makes you really sick can grow.  If the rings are on, then you don’t know if the lid is lose because you bumped it removing the ring, or because it has been loose a long time  and yucky stuff is growing.

And finally, the birds’ eye view of a day’s labor:

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.

Sometimes when you do a “chore” it becomes a pleasure. I love taking ‘Widgeon for walkies… like this photo I shared not too long ago, you can find inspiration anywhere:

When we reached the end of Sweetbriar (a nearby short road), I saw a flit of black and red… a pileated woodpecker! AND I happened to have my camera with me, and he alit on a tree for long enough to get this shot:

And then we turned the corner and the sunlight was glinting off the stone wall in the Fagan’s back yard:

Walkies are fun!