No…I have not followed Mama into the great beyond, but instead have been busier than ever (what else is new?).  I am seriously looking forward to some down time in August, but in the meantime had to

• help hang and launch our Frayed Edges mini-group show at the Camden Public Library (will blog about that in a day or two I hope),
• with my fellow Frayed Edges, be the program for the monthly Coastal Quilters meeting and do the artists’ reception at the library
• complete my piece for the local Coastal Quilters Chapter Challenge and then (as project coordinator)
• make some new black drapes and
• pin all the quilts, print the photos, make the tags, etc., in time to deliver next weekend for Maine Quilts (which happens the last weekend in July),
• get son Eli off to a 2-week trip to Australia (SOB… wish I were there but elated as he comes home tonight),
• help get Joshua ready to move into his first-ever-on-his-own apartment (with girlfriend) in town,
• take care of the settling of Mama’s affairs,
• prepare things for teaching in Nebraska at QuiltNebraska 2011 (including ordering supplies and shipping boxes to arrive in time) and
• attempt not to implode!

The Coastal Quilters Grocery Challenge...in a nutshell, pick a food or beverage product, use at least 4 colors and at least one element from the packaging as a motif in your 20.5 by 20.5 inch quilt (since someone will ask, mine is the blue one, top-right)

So as a teaser, I will share with you the photo of the two panels of The Grocery Challenge, an idea I dreamed up for the Coastal Quilters.  The photo above is of the twelve pieces…astonishingly all 12 of the folks who signed up got their quilts done (mine was one of the last few done…no surprise there).   Soon I’ll share more about each of the 12 quilts, the grocery products from which we drew inspiration, and how.   But before that I need to tell you about our group show.  I can’t believe (well….yes, I can) that I managed to not even post a single word here before the show opened on July 1.  So if you’re in or near Camden, Maine, come back here in a couple days or click here to see a bit more.

Hi all…. just a quick note to say thank you for the many, MANY kind notes I have received here, through Facebook and privately.  Your support and friendship mean so much to me.

The real world continues–on Friday when I got the word about Mama I was hanging our Frayed Edges mini-group show at the Camden Public Library.  I hope to have a blogpost invitation to come, including for the artists’ reception (all four of us will be here, even Deborah who now lives in Maryland!) and more… stay tuned….

And again, your warm hugs still envelop me and give me comfort.  Thank you doesn’t begin to encompass the gratitute and friendship I feel, but it’s all the words that I have.  So……..Thank you.

Folks often ask me where I get my ideas, and I invariably reply “everywhere.”  Design ideas are all around us…it is just a matter of learning to SEE them!  Here’s a good example.  I was walking in downtown Camden, and spotted this door:

And doorknob:

WOW…what incredible design work!  Take a motif like that and enlarge, revise, adapt…. that’s how you start!

Last post I shared about the Shaker Museum in Enfield where we stayed when I taught for the Northern Lights Quilt Guild.  Thanks so much for inviting me!  I could seriously see wanting to teach weeklong workshops where we start with an idea for a project, try out a few techniques in the mornings, and play with the pieces and design in the afternoon.  Finish with quilting and binding… that would be SO much fun!   But this time, we had a shorter time frame.  Our classroom was HUGE!  I’d guess it was 1/3 of the second floor.  The Shaker’s probably didn’t foresee me needing to darken the room to do a slide presentation, but the room actually has built-in, recessed shutters on all the windows which came in handy for my purposes, too!

One side of the room--the chairs are leftover from ladies gaythering near the projector and screen before they moved to the walls (and electrical outlets or natural light). Those green raised-panels you see next to the windows are actually the recessed shutters!

Looking across the room (which is set up for the lecture Friday evening)...VAST!

For the first day, I taught Applique 3 1/2 ways, and as usual was so busy I forgot to take photos.  The next day, however, Chris had her blocks out, so here they are…alas, her lovely satin stitching on the one block doesn’t show in my photo!

Chris's Gingko leaves

Then we moved on to free-motion quilting on Saturday.  Students experience levels varied from having done absolutely none to having done some but not entirely happy with what they did.  The key, of course is the dreaded P-word:  practice. But knowing a few tips and tricks, and most of all proper preparation, helps folks immensely.  Here are some photos of the samplers students did.  I use the sampler that is also in my book for teaching, but offer students the choice of using the block/grid format or  just going free-form in the freedom of open space.  Some students prefer the limited space of the block—it isn’t as intimidating to them as all that openness of an 18 inch (or thereabouts) quilt sandwich.  For others, the blocks are seriously claustrophobic, and they prefer to noodle around.  So I encourage them to do what makes things most comfortable….. and boy did these ladies go to town!

Free-motion play!

I love the way this one looks like braided leather. The student wasn't too wild about the feathers on the far right, I think because she was being critical of the shapes of the petals which weren't as smooth as she wanted. However, it is a great look with the thin feather plumes on a straight stem grouped like this. I think I'll have to find a way to use this...great for sashings and borders!

Red! I ask students to use a highly contrasting thread on top and a matching thread on the bottom. I know this is evil. We are so much more critical of readily visible mistakes, but it makes diagnosing tension problems SO much easier--you can actually see what is happening, then write notes onto the white fabric as a reminder of what you did to correct the issues. I'll take the piece and walk a few feet away, then turn it over to where the thread matches the back, and students are always surprised at how good their beginner work looks with just a few more feet distance and matching color!

Another red...I think she was having fun!

Another, done within the grid

And a blue one...

And one more in progress at the machine

Noone ever believes me when I say that it is easy to write with the sewing machine, but apart from one lady who didn't try (in another class long ago) every single student who has tried to write their name, CAN and does! Your hands know where to go...think how many rent and grocery checks you've signed in your life! Remember how hard it was back in first grade to make the shapes of the letters, and now you don't even think about it? That is muscle memory and practice. Ditto for quilting!

Sunday was a half-day session with a few parts of my Fine Finishes class, about edge finishes, bindings and display techniques.  The program chairs decided to focus on the basic and essential double-fold bias binding, which is the basis of so many other techniques, and piping.  I taught Susan K. Cleveland’s way of making piping using the Piping Hot Binding tool.  As so often is the case, it is a simple idea that is brilliant, with some of the best written directions ever.   I heartily recommend this tool–tho it may seem expensive for a piece of plexiglass, the instructions are SO worth every penny!   You can find it here at her website, Pieces be With You.  It was so much fun watching the ladies learn how to make the piping, use the tool, and then get totally jazzed about the possibilities of using the piping alone, in combination with other stuff (like inserted into the bias binding, alone, etc)!  And yep…I was so busy trying to cram the most into a half day that I didn’t take pictures!

Thanks again ladies for a wonderful weekend!

After Enfield, I drove south and lectured the next night for the Chelmsford (Massachusetts) Quilt Guild –and of course no pictures– but really enjoyed that visit, too. I had forgotten that I’d be teaching at a Quilters Gathering in NH, and some asked what classes I’d be teaching.  I didn’t know, but one lady kindly checked for me (she’s on the board) so I was able to share that, too.  I’ll have to put the classes I teach at shows onto my class listings…where I post where I’ll be teaching on the Classes page of this website.  Add that to the to-do list!  I’ll be back here soon with more of the stuff that has been keeping me from blogging…stay tuned!

A is for Apricot

One of the reasons I’ve been walkabout so long is that I was part of another Postmark’d Art postcard swap.  I had thought that due to the move and the general chaos that I would be really late, and thankfully the group said that’s OK…just get them eventually done.  Luckily, I was only about a week late.  This time I was in three groups swapping with five other women.  The themes I chose to participate in this time were  Fruit, Bridges and Buttons.  So the one above is obviously Fruit.  I’ll try to take photos in few weeks of the cards I received and share those, too.

My second effort was B is for Button, and I made a “button band” like on the front of a tailored shirt, then sewed the buttons to that.  All the buttons came from my stash, and one postcard (the one I kept…sorry ladies!) had vintage buttons from Mama’s button box.

B is for button

I wanted to continue the  “A is For, B is for” series with my bridges card, but B  was already taken.  And I wanted to do a picture of the stunningly lovely Penobscot Narrows bridge (click on the hotlink to see the Wikipedia article).  It is between Prospect and Verona Island (in the middle of the Penobscot River, with Bucksport on the north side), and is so completely unexpected in this relatively remote stretch of road.  It is Route 1, the old Atlantic Coast Highway, that runs north-south on the East Coast of the US (what folks used before the interstate  highway system), but it is still  pretty far out of the way…maybe  3 1/2 hours north of Portland, Maine, and 4 or so hours south of Canada.  But P for Penobscot or N for the Narrows seemed to be stretching things a bit, so I decided to let that idea go and keep it simple.

The quilting says Penobscot Narrows Bridge, Prospect, Maine.