No, I have not died, fallen prey to a disease (other than possibly slothfulness where blogging is concerned) or any other horrid thing…just been really busy working, getting ready for Houston, teaching, meeting with my Frayed Edges friends and other sorts of good things.  Today, I thought I’d share some of what I got to see on my way home from teaching on Saturday the 18th…glorious! (PS..photos are clickable for a larger view)

This photo was taken from the driver’s seat, window down, in Hope, on Route 17.  Route 17 is a 2-lane highway (by-way) that runs from Rockland to Augusta and beyond.  I take Route 90 West to 17, then turn north/west to Augusta, the state capitor.  On the way home, at about 5, the sun was low in the sky and the air was golden……

Farther up the road, closer to Augusta,  the trees on my side of the road cast their shadows all the way across the road and into the open field bordered by these trees:

And a closer view:

And that hill from Hope down to west Rockport….

Bottom line:  if you take digital pictures, enter quilt shows, want to print photos onto fabric, want to print photos from your printer at home, want to design quilts on the computer, or learn to manipulate photos, or learn to use your photo editing software more effectively, want to know how to get the color in the photo to look like it does in real life, and THEN want the print to have the same colors…. BUY THIS BOOK!  This book will be an essential reference tool in my library, I can tell already.  It is not a sit down and drool over the pictures book, but it is a book you will use again and again and again!

The caveat up front: Gloria is the one person I wanted to design my website, and she and Derry did a fantabulous job.  That probably makes me slightly biased, but as anyone on  the QuiltArt e-list knows, Gloria’s knowledge (and generous sharing of that information) on the list are such that most of us have an e-mail folder entitled “good stuff from Gloria”!

The subtitle to this information-packed book is “the quilt maker’s must-have guide to images, files and more!”.  I couldn’t agree more….   for both MAC and PC uses, Digital Essentials is written by Gloria Hansen, who is not only an award-winning quilter (major ribbons at both AQS and Houston in the past year alone!), but also an award-winning website designer with her partner Derry Thompson of Gloderworks, and a top-notch photographer. In just browsing the book when it first arrived, I learned stuff, was impressed with how well laid-out the book is, and how Gloria makes a seemingly complex subject understandable.   Digital Essentials is published by the Electric Quilt Company, ISBN 1-893824-64-0.  The book is available by mid-September from Gloria here, from Amazon, or ask your local quilt shop to stock it!

At first I intended to review this book in one fell swoop.  But….. There is SO much in the book, and as always I am so pressed for time, that I thought I’d do a synopsis of what is in the book, then later on work my way through a couple of the chapters that teach things I really want to know, and share the results with you as I can get the time to do the work.

The book is in four major sections:

1. The Fundamentals
2. Working with Images
3. Saving for the Web
4. Reference

Start at the beginning:

Let’s say it right up front:  computer lingo and camera lingo can be really daunting.  But I realized it is the same situation quilters face when dealing with art terminology.   I tell students in my “If you can write your ABCs, You can Draw” class, folks are intimidated by the vocabulary of art:  composition, complementary colors, tangents, value.  But it is just words.  We can all learn what they mean.   When we started quilting we probably didn’t know Log Cabin meant a block, not a building, and Baltimore Album was a style of quilting form the mid 1800s, not a photo album about Maryland!

And that’s how Gloria begins:  by explaining what all those not-really-daunting words mean.  Best of all, she uses pictures and pictures of drop-down screens from commonly used picture software to illustrate.  The book’s layout and color-blocking help organize the text, making it easy for you to scan and find what you need, as well.

Especially helpful are the red ovals on the screen shots which help you know WHERE on your screen to look!

Getting the color right…from real life to captured image to computer screen to print out… is key.  In Chapter 5, Gloria breaks down what to do into a step-by-step process.  I can tell that this isn’t something I want to do late at night when my biorhythms are at their worst, but I can also tell that if I simply take it one step at a time, I can do this…and there is no way I could have figured it out on my own (well, at least in this century).

The next two sections — images and the web:

I’ve learned some of the things in these sections by doing, by using Gloria’s help to me individually and to the QuiltArt list over the past four years.  But already I have learned there are different ways to crop things that may make my life simpler and faster (more time to quilt, or sleep! is a good thing).  As I have time to work with the book, I’ll come back to these topics.

Resources:

OH how I LOVE a book with a good index…. this one is four FULL pages, which means I can find what I want quickly, instead of having to flip through many pages….

There is a Reference Guide with commonly asked questions…and the pages on which to find the answers!

There is a comparison of Photoshop, Photoshop Elements, and Paint Shop Pro, and also a glossary.  Let’s face it…we can read the definitions but they don’t always imprint (at least on my brain).  Having this mini-dictionary in the back is eminently helpful.

The last test:

I’ll challenge myself right here, in print.  I want to understand a few things.  Let’s see if I can find the answers in the book….

1.  What are layers and how can I use them?

2.  Can I manage to create a somewhat kaleidescopic image on my Mac laptop using Photoshop elements?

3.  How can I (easily?) watermark the photos I post to my website and blog?

4.  How do I get the colors of my photos to be the same as the actual cloth, so that entries accurately reflect the quilt?

5.  When I download photos from my camera to the laptop, why do they come out at 72 dpi and HUGE size (about 35×42 inches)?  I shoot at maximum resolution.  Can I adjust either the camera or the software so they display at 300 dpi and smaller size?

6.  What is Unsharp Mask????? And why do I need to use (or not use) it?

I’ll work through these questions over the next couple of months (I hope), and I’ll share my results.

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:

Just a short digression from the Paducah news…. SPRING HAS ARRIVED in Maine! Here’s proof: photos taken while walking the pug-wonderfulness (a.k.a. ‘Widgeon)….

First, the quintessential sign of spring in Maine, the fiddlehead fern. Don’t they look like a family, turned to each other for hugs?

Then, the beginnings of iris (I think that’s what they are) at a neighbor’s house. Wouldn’t that make a great abstract background for a quilt?

Rushing water:

And, at LAST, green on the trees! In two weeks, we should be about halfway leafed out!

Daffodils in the sun…. a couple years ago, our neighbor Dave did a major landscaping which I have dubbed the “neighborhood beautification project” since so many of us can see and enjoy results of his major expense. Then the yellow house where the road splits put in a HUGE load of small boulders as retaining wall so she could plant on the tiers… this is one of the treats (the coral bells are on their way out of the ground….)

And up the road a piece, more of the wild fiddleheads, these a bit more unfurled

–a couple days ago I saw an old guy on the side of the road…looked like he was picking fiddleheads which are often used in salads or sauteed….haven’t tried that yet… I like looking at them too much!

Near Fort Cronkhite, on the south end of the beach, is Point Bonita. The point juts out into the water forming a corner of sorts between the bottom of the headlands, which head east to the Golden Gate, and the northward turn of the coast which goes beyond Fort Cronkhite up the coast to Point Reyes and more. When they started to develop the Golden Gate National Recreation Area, they opened up parts of the headlands that had previously been forbidden territory housing missiles and (later) falling down bunkers. On the headlands, there is the Point Bonita lighthouse (trust me…it’s out there….also, these photos are click-able to become larger).

At a certain point, the road becomes a one-way, narrow, twisty, white-knuckle driving experience of breathtaking beauty with the sunlight nearly blinding you reflecting on the water. Luckily, there was no one behind me, so I was able to snap these photos through the windshield…with emergency brake ON! The first part of the one-way road is a VERY steep downhill; as you look over the hood of the car, all you see is the guard rail and the ocean beneath…the drop-off is SO steep that you couldn’t even see grasses!

And to offset the sheer magnificent beauty of this scene, was this sign near the roadway that crossed the lagoon: