I promised I’d share more of the thermofax screens I have designed and that Fiber on a Whim is making and selling, so here they are.  You can order these online or buy them at International Quilt Festival and other shows where Fiber on a Whim has a booth.

Onions is one of my favorite designs. I used a small white onion to stamp, then fiddled with the print in photoshop to create this screen. It makes a fantastic background print or part of a  layered piece of complex cloth.

I’m teaching two mini Whimsy-Classes in the Fiber on a Whim booth on the show floor at Quilt Festival, and we’ll be using the onion screen for oen of the two small projects in the classes.  For more information on this, visit here.  There is no advance sign up–come to the booth and the first 8 in line 15 minutes before the classes get in.  The modest $10 fee covers the kit fee–I provide everything you need.

The screens are so new I don’t even have some of them yet!

Squiggles thermofax screen by Sarah Ann Smith at FiberonaWhim.com 

Woven, thermofax screen design. Sometimes you just want a bit of something. This is a full-size screen so you can print as much or as little of the screen as you like. With the somewhat irregular edges, it is easily overlapped.

One of FoaW’s best-selling thermofax screens is an old French ledger, so we thought we’d try an alphabet, hand-written by me in a brush pen. Again, a good background design, which is what I was going for with most of my designs.

Another vegetable–this time celery!

The dagger-drops screen is a smaller size because you can easily repeat it. It will be fun to play with this, alternating the direction of the print 90 degrees or at diagonals or every which way.

The Queen Anne’s lace is from a photo I took, modified in photoshop elements, then scaled into three sizes. We will use this in the mini Whimsy-Classes project you can see in this blogpost.

Another onion print, a full size (9×12 inch) screen, that I call Tossed Onions.

Grasses, a full size screen with two ends to use. Kristin of FoaW requested this one–I had ordered it earlier for one of my own projects.

And last but not least, another great background print design, corn! Yep, I sacrificed an ear of corn on the cob for the sake of art.

In a few days I’ll do a review of Lynn Krawczyk’s great new book, Intentional Printing.  It will give you TONS of ideas on how to use thermofax screens and other surface design techniques.  Stay tuned! Here’s a link to Lynn’s website in the meantime, and she’s a ton of fun and on Facebook here.

And just in case you don’t feel like scrolling to the top but want to see the website where the screens are sold, here’s the link one more time!  I can’t wait to go to Quilt Festival, but I’m also looking forward to returning to my studio and playing with paint and thermofax screens!

Hi all!  Just in time for the holidays (and adding to your wish list, giving, or–even better–taking off the list and into the “ordered” category), it is time to share a bit more about my book, ThreadWork Unraveled.

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I’ve had many orders, for which I humbly thank every single one of you!  I know you could buy it for less from Amazon, or without shipping from your local quilt shop, so I am so happy to be able to autograph a copy just for each of you!  Some folks have asked for more info, so I thought I’d share the Table of Contents (above), Index (below), and a couple pages from inside, as well as hotlinks to two wonderful reviews.  To see these photos larger, please click (or –to get it to open in a separate window or tab– right click if on a PC  or Command-click if on a Mac) to open it up larger.

My dearest friend, Marie Z. Johansen, blogged about my book and shared some pics here, and Dawn Goldsmith of Subversive Stitchers gave me another rave review here.  I have to say, I was stunned and thrilled at BOTH.  I didn’t know Dawn before, but had surfed in to her blog.  I was quite happy when she asked me earlier this week to guest blog on her spot, so I will be doing that…next week I hope!   Last but not least, there are a number of nice reviews (including from both Marie and Dawn) at Amazon…and yes, I totally understand if you need to save a few pennies and order from Amazon instead of from me.  Personally, I LOVE shopping at Amazon, tho it is hazardous… my pile of to-read books is precariously tall!

The book has three major sections:  the Basics, Applique, and Quilting.  Here’s the start of the Basics:

And from that section, the discussion of Marking Tools:

Here’s the start of the Applique section:

And how I do a test stitch-out to see which thread will look best, plus the start of the Machine Quilting section:

There are a number of projects which help you learn about your machine (tension settings sampler), plus some fun and lovely ones like Mountain Seasons:

If you’d like to see more pictures from inside the book, you can visit the AQS website for a Look Inside at some of the “eye candy” with quilts from guest artists, or visit the blogs I mentioned above—those are hotlinks.

If you have any questions about what else is in the book, just write and ask!  I sure hope you like it, Cheers, Sarah

At LONG Long last, the cases of books have arrived and I will begin shipping pre-orders, with the first orders being shipped first.  All items will be sent via US Postal Service (USPS) Priority Rate Flat Mail envelopes, both domestic and International–the equivalent first class mail.  Since this service is eminently reliable in the US, I won’t contact each of you individually; please DO let me know if there is a problem!   For international orders, the USPS tracking ends when the package leaves the US, so I will send each person living outside the US an e-mail to let them know the package is en route.  I hear that these envelopes take 1-2 weeks to be delivered to Canada, but not sure about Australia.  Someone let me know?  THANKS!

I had fun on two Fridays not long ago… I got to teach a very small class (of 3 students) at Quilt Divas in Rockland, Maine.  LONG time readers may remember that I was elated about this time last year to learn that my pomegranate notebook cover project, selected for a book by Lark Books, was on the cover of Creative Quilting With Beads. (by the way, only two copies left at my little store, but I have plenty of the beads available….they are hard to find so I bought a kilo!).

I hope the students had as much fun as I did.  Pam loves jewel tones and hand applique, so instead of doing the fusible applique thing, she did hers by hand.  Can you believe she had NEVER machine quilted before????  I can tell she’s gonna go gangbusters now!

Pam's cover, as she is beading

Judy also likes bright jewel tones, and had brought a range of batiks.  I think if this brown batik had been in stock (Judy bought it at least a year ago which, SOB, means it is likely not around anywhere) each of us would have bought a couple yards….

Judy's cover

I had a new idea, to piece the “table” area below the pomegranates, so Karen pieced up her bottom section. I love the summery colors (and we certainly need color…keep reading):

On the way to the final class, it had snowed yet again, so here is my little, old and bonked by reliable Subaru in front of the French and Brawn grocery that has been on the corner for over a century:

My green subaru on the corner

And the view down Main Street (PS…isn’t the building with the big round window in the roof cool?!):

Beautiful downtown Camden, Maine, Feb. 2009

On the way home, there was more beautiful snow on trees:

Even more trees and snow

Then I decided I had best dig out the trampoline.  Here is how much snow we got in the Wednesday/Thursday storm….that is my hand, and I wear ladies’ large gloves….that’s a lot of snow!

Lotsa snow...about four hand widths...on the trampoline

This past weekend I was fortunate to be able to present my trunk show / lecture “With a Dash of Color” to the Amoskeag Quilters Guild, based in/near Manchester, New Hampshire, and teach a machine quilting class on Saturday. Alas, I have very few pictures! The talk is one I have done many times before, but I always have fun and hope to turn on a few lightbulbs for folks. Basically, we all respond to color, but not all of us (me included!) have an intuitive grasp of color. There are a number of ways to put together a color scheme for a quilt, and that’s what I talk about using my quilts as examples. (read to the end for info on that bit above!)

The next day I taught a class on machine quilting and decorative threads, but snafu seemed to be the order of the day (did you all know the origin of the word snafu? I am told it dates to World War 2, or perhaps earlier, and stands for—uh, well, I’m going to clean up the language, but substitute the expletive verb that seems appropriate: Situation Normal All Fouled Up). When I arrived at the venue, the power was out to the entire building! And for a machine class. Fortunately for me and the students, the morning is mostly lecture and there was a good window, so we moved tables and sat by the only natural light and went through the basics. By the time I was nearly done, the power returned!

For the class I tried something new. I had an assortment of Superior Threads re-wound onto bobbins (a service Superior provides for teachers). As a result, I could offer a kit with ten “micro-spools” that included three bobbins of Bottom Line (60wt. poly), and one each of metallic, Glitter (a holographic thread), Brytes (30-wt cotton), King Tut (variegated 35 or 40 wt cotton, forget how heavy), MasterPiece (50wt cotton), Rainbows (variegated 40 wt poly) and a solid 40-wt poly. The kit runs $15, and is seems students were OK with that…the same as buying two spools of “fancy” thread. I offered a choice of either silver or gold–photo above (for the metallics baggie) and warm (pink/red), cool (blues) or earthtone (greens and browns)–photo below, so students could pick one color and one metallic. To my surprise, earth was the most popular! Don’t these threads look like a color feast?

Let me know what you would like in a thread sampler? I’d love to refine this kit!

It must have been a nerve-wracking day for program chair Cary Flanagan (who was in the class…visit her website at Something Sew Fine) and guild president Sue Ann Walker, who were trying on a Saturday morning to find an alternate location…to use immediately! Thanks to both for their efforts!

Above are the two sections of the class….it was held in the cafeteria of an office building. The good news is that the students had PLENTY of table space, but it meant for a bit of “projecting my voice” (i.e. being even louder than I usually am) and getting some exercise getting around to all 18 students. Still, I’ve heard it went well. As always, if there is anything I can improve, I always want to know because I can’t make it better if I don’t know it needs improving!

I met one of the students, Aline, on Friday evening and she told me about this miniature she is working on, which will FINISH at 7×7 inches. She brought in a quarter of it and let me photograph it…that’s what you see at the top of this post. Yes, that is inches on the ruler, Those itty bitty triangles of pink and green are half square triangles…smaller than a 1/4″ finished size. I took one look at it and said “you are FLIPPIN’ INSANE!” and I stand by it LOL! The tiny straight line is a “piece” 1/32 inch thick. I love looking at them, but I could never, EVER be that accurate! Beautifully done, Aline!