I seem to be congenitally incapable of making abstracts.  Using Kathy Schmidt’s Cell Block Blues pattern, from here Rule-Breaking Quilts book (see my post here reviewing the book), I started working on a quilt with a selection of ten blue and white fat quarters purchased at the AQS Tennessee show, where I was teaching. The picture above shows the beginnings…my first ten blocks, along with the recently returned (after a year away at shows) Field of Gold and the ribbon it won in Houston and a table-runner that needs to be quilted.

This AQS-Knoxville show was my last big away-teaching of the year, and I thought I’d treat myself to some fabric and totally unlike-me quilting, possibly as a project for another book.  I thought it would be fun to help support friend and fellow-author Kathryn Schmidt by using one of her  projects, and thought it would get a good stretch for me.  So what do I do with this fun, easy abstract?  I make it into more work (splicing in those bright colors) and into leaves—I just can’t seem to make something if I don’t relate it back to reality!  Anyway, I went to the Batiks by Design booth and made my own assortment of ten fat quarters and, amazingly enough, forgot to take a picture before I started slicing them up!   By the time I got the center of the quilt done, I was left with less than a fat eight total out of all ten!  Fortunately, I found them online and have ordered more for the borders and binding (that’s a wicked teaser!).  Most of the batik designs we see are from Bali, but these designs are from Java and are more like the old-time designs.

In Rule-Breaking Quilts, Kathy Schmidt teaches how to stack and slice, then swap, fabrics for an improvisationally pieced block. See my review of her book for more information and where to order!

Here I'm auditioning a bright yellow-hand-dyed that I intend to splice into the seams

In this photo, you can see that I've stitched the first side of the inserts. On the left of each block, the piece is ironed, on the right the seams are as-stitched.

The right hand side of the blue block assembled and pressed

and the yellow block in process; you'll note that the edges are uneven and will require smoothing out with the rotary cutter

Sometimes (often!) after sewing the first seam, I like to fine-tune the shape of the spliced-in color to match the next bit of batik

The yellow block with the "leaf veins" sewn, but the center stemline needs to be refined and re-shaped

The stemline has been trimmed and smoothed, and now I'm getting ready to cut the yellow for that inset

Same process, but for a light blue block; here I have already trimmed the wonky edges to create a smooth space for the center stemline

Blocks sewn but not yet pressed or squared up

Pressed blocks, looking a bit more presentable!

After I made my blocks I squared them up.  Most were able to come out to 8 inches cut, but a few were smaller.  As you’ll see when I get to showing you the way the quilt came together, this really didn’t matter as I filled in odd shaped rectangles with strips and rectangles of batik (talk about a LOT of partial-seaming…erg!  I NEVER seem to do anything easy, but I must say I’m pleased with the outcome so far….)

SAQA is the Studio Art Quilt Associates, a non-profit group to promote art quilting with members around the world.    There are regional groups, including one for New England.  Those of us in sparsely populated Maine –the state population is about 1.3 million, the same as San Antonio, Texas or San Diego, California!–live far enough from the majority of the regional group members in Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire and Vermont, that we don’t often get to the meetings.  So Sarah Carpenter, Beth Berman and Wen Redmond had an idea an made it happen:  SAQA-Maine retreat weekend in Searsport, Maine the weekend of Sept. 18th!

Beth VERY generously hosted much of the meeting in her home and new studio.  Other meetings were at the hotel just a mile or two up the road and a nearby church (the evening show and tell…alas it was part of the event I couldn’t attend). I forgot to take pictures of the first part which was meeting, at Beth’s house, or when the workshops began.  Various regional members offered to do demos or mini-workshops, and oh was it fun!  Valerie Poitier’s talk on perspective (my right brain was confuddled but I did get it eventually!), as was Wen Redmond’s demo on making thermofax screens and printing with them.  At least  I finally remembered to take the camera out during my mono-printing session with Margaret Sheehan.  I sure hope she comes back and does a two-day workshop near enough for me to take…talk about utter playtime! You can visit Margaret’s blog here and see some of the sheers featured below in the photo at the top…wow!

Here are the pics from that session:

Valerie Poitier looks stunning in Margaret Sheehan's sheer artcloth (also seen in the first photo of this blogpost)

Margaret S's red sheer mono-printed cloth---I LOVE that bird's nest design

And holding the red sheer up with the light from the open doorway behind...

I think this falls into the category of “Be Still my beating heart” and “I wanna do that NOW!”

Margaret explains some of the techniques used on this cloth

This piece of Margaret's shows how she used freezer paper resists when mono-printing

Yet another heavenly sheer--the synthetic sheers come from JoAnns mostly, the prom dress section, and obviously are vastly improved with paint

A different red sheer with sunswirls

Margaret showed us how to use heavy mil plastic drop-cloth, textile paint and common tools for surface design; notice the whisk.....

Transferring the mono-print (paint on plastic) onto the cloth is a tactile experience

In the upper left corner, Margaret pulls away the plastic with spiral she has just printed onto the cloth

The table I worked at! My stuff is on the near side and in the center

A closer look...here on my blue/green I used too much paint and lost definition. It is a learning process!

Even my paint tray was pretty!

one of my classmate's circle design...ooooh! I'm pretty sure she used an Afro/Hair pick for those marks

Drat I wish I could remember how she told me she made those marks....you can see this is addicting!

Again..I forget how shemade those purple marks, but I love them!

As you might gather, for a 2-hour session that was about an hour of demo and an hour hands-on, we the students really were inspired and went to town with our scraps.  Thanks SO MUCH to Margaret for sharing her time, technique and paints!   Next year we REALLY need to chip in to cover expenses for supplies…. Margaret, if you see this send me your snail mail address and I’ll either send you a fiver or a bit of hand-dyed as thanks!

Some days are just perfect, and this month’s Frayed Edges was just that.

Birthday cupcakes from Kathy

My birthday is around about now, and Kate and Kath were amazing!  We met at Kate’s home, a quintessential New England Cape home that is WELL over a hundred fifty years old if it is a day!  It has, of course, been updated, and the skylights and double-paned windows make is so sunny and homey! On the way down, I decided to go via route 24, which runs along the western bank of the Kennebec river, so I turned west onto Route 17 to head towards Augusta.  At that point I turned the GPS on to head to Kate’s home.  It told me to turn before I got to my usual spot, so I thought “Why not?”  OH MY GOODNESS!   The sad part is I was driving and couldn’t take pictures at the same time, but I think I drove through the most beautiful non-coastal part of Maine I have seen yet.  Autumn is just beginning, with flashes of scarlet and gold….small Maine towns, white steeples, babbling brooks, blueberry barrens glowing crimson and auburn and russet….oh my!

This was the table that greeted us:

Kathy arrived before I did, and Kate’s lovely autumn setting (notice her felted-sweater napkin rings, complete with acorns made with real acorn caps and felted wool balls?) was so welcoming!

Kate has these incredible hand-made dishes and silverware that she takes out for our special days.  I just love the cheerful sunflowers:

Kate's place setting...so lovely!

Then we filled them with a new squash and sausage soup, accompanied by salad and some awesome sourdough bread I bought at the Market Basket in Rockport (I really did NOT need to learn that their breads are SO good):

Those goodies you see on the left are birthday prezzies….  Kate UTTERLY indulged me with a Pashmina scarf/shawl in my all-time favorite turquoise/teal/aqua, and Kath bought hand-made chocolates given on a one-of-a-kind pottery spoon rest, accompanied by the adorable Egbert (  made by Kathy and christened on the spot).  What a perfect funny bird!

And here we are, beak-to-beak:

Sarah and Egbert, getting acquainted

He just makes me smile!  He is now on my dining table where I work at my laptop and keeps me in good humor!

We ate lunch a bit early so we could play with paint; a couple weekends earlier Kath and I had attended the SAQA-Maine weekend (more on that in a future post), and I shared a couple techniques I learned.

Playing with paint

What could be more perfect:  wonderful friends, food, art, friends, fabric and ideas and warmth, glorious Maine, friends…. I am so truly blessed!  As you can see…. the cupcakes were delectable with Kathy’s made-by-her ganache (talk about melt in your mouth heavenly):

A post or several ago, I shared my new class sampler for my Intro to Free-Motion Quilting and mentioned I had received some threads from Gilbreath Threads to try out.  I used the sampler as a way to test the threads:

From left to right:

• Gilbreath  Emerald green, cotton 30-wt, #253
• Gilbreath Yellow wool 12-wt
• Gilbreath hot pink silk (lying down) Seta Bozzolo 24-wt., #196
• Superior Threads 40-wt. poly, hot pink #820
• Superior Threads 40-wt poly, rainbows, green variegated #820
• Gilbreath orange/mango 40-wt Palio poly
• Gilbreath 40-wt ecru cotton, 2-ply, #025
• Gilbreath 50-wt white cotton, 2 ply, #000
• Superior 60-wt white poly (used in the bobbin), # 621
• Superior 60-wt  yellow poly (used to sew down the binding), #641
• in the back, two Gilbreath threads not used because the colors didn’t work for this piece: 60-wt purple cotton, 12-wt deep red cotton

I don’t think I’ve ever used that many different types and weights of thread in one piece, but I’m thinking this could be something to add to my arsenal of techniques! At the top you can see the completed, washed piece before the final line of stitching in the ditch on the binding.

I applied the binding to the back, wrapped it to the front (the front side is 1/8″ wider than the back, so the stitching to apply it is on the back of the quilt, not the binding), and stitched it down using a buttonhole stitch and Superior Threads’ Bottom Line thread, a very fine polyester that blends in and is unobtrusive:

The last step is to use the triple-stretch stitch (a bold straight stitch) in the ditch to outline and accent the binding with the hot pink poly from Superior.  See how it crisps up the edge in this photo which shows with and without the outline stitching?  It’s a design choice; both ways are good, just pick the version you like.

Here are close-ups of the quilting in this big-print class sample, which uses motifs from the Free-Motion Sampler (the magenta and lime quilted grid that is in the book) and my “More Machine Quilting” sampler which is featured on the cover of the book, the peach quilt:

It has been a LONG time since I’ve washed a quilt after quilting it, and was very happy to see how the fabric holes closed up around the stitches.  In this last photo, you can see where I added some stippling (ugh, but sometimes useful) around the ecru leaves after it had been washed.  The needle holes in the checkerboard have disappeared, but you can (faintly) see them around the leaves. The quilt is now dampened and back in the dryer to remove those needle-holes too.  Hmm…good learning piece:  Use thick threads in the bobbin!  Rinse and fluff in the dryer…. will have to try that with a very fused and densely quilted sampler and see what happens to the edges of the raw edge applique…. guess what my next class sample will be?

Hope you’ve enjoyed! Cheers, Sarah

Wow….Kathy gave US a major treat for her birthday!  Summers are difficult for the three of us who still come every month (Hannah is overwhelmed with family and her burgeoning business, see her blog here, and Deborah is now in Maryland, which is blissfully closer to Maine than was Texas):  Kathy has lots of family gatherings, Kate and I have kids underfoot.  So we are now skipping meeting in July, but reconvene in August.  The end of August is Kath’s birthday, and she happens to have a deal to use a waterfront cottage down the peninsula south of Damariscotta for a week.  This was a barter for a major quilt she made for a friend…I don’t know who got the better deal!

Here are a whole bunch of photos with captions…enjoy!

The owners found the old whale rib washed up on shore and added it to the front porch

We ate on a small patio off the living area...glorious!

The birthday girl snapped this photo for me (on left) with Kate (on right)

Bundt cake, berries and fresh whipped cream for dessert

the cabin, with the tail of my car on the left--Maine doesn't get any better than this!

sea glass wired to the dining table lamp shade

Lobster buoys that must have washed up, clustered under the pines

Kate’s Delectable Salad

Kathy made peanut-curry soup, I think the recipe is from Mrs. Cutko (kates MIL) --either that or from Kate's mom. It is SO GOOD!

Kate and I have been sidetracked by summer and kids, but Kathy actually had work to share. Here is her floss box..beautiful colors!

And a nearly finished bird of  from Kath:

And I have NO idea why the formatting changed.  I put the text into the same places, but clearly I am missing something!  Oh well…at least you get to share.  What a wonderful place to be:  in Maine, by the sea, with friends who make and love art and cloth and thread!  I am blessed.