Woohooo…..  a while back my contact at Janome America (I am VERY fortunate to have a loaner Janome 6600 from them, thank you Janome-America for your support!) called to ask if she could interview me about thread.  It turns out she moonlights writing for The Quilter magazine….

I had thought I would be one of several people quoted in a longer article, as she had also spoken with Bob Purcell, co-owner with wife Heather, of Superior Threads (which also happen to be some of my favorite threads…I must, literally, have several hundred spools!).  Well… it ended up being a 2-page profile!

In the magazine’s machine quilting section are an interview with longarm master quilter Renae Haddadin, the profile of me,  an article (I’m guessing this one is also by my contact) on “choosing the Perfect Thread:  a Machine Quilter’s Product Guide” and one by Morna Golletz of the Professional Quilter Magazine on a machine quilting career.

Thanks A. for calling, asking me, and turning it into a whole article (and bless you for mentioning the book up front!)!

Because Martin Luther King was the clear leader for the middle school students in terms of inspiration, I decided to do something different and feature TWO views.   This also helps with the “what to do with the legs” thing….  what attracts us as humans is the face (and perhaps the upper body/torso)….  we want to see the features and expression on the faces.   A bunch of complete body shapes on a quilt would either look like a drawing class sketchbook page or a display of Barbie dolls.  By focusing on the faces and gestures for some of the figures, I can draw the viewer in.

As well, some photos and images become iconic.  The “I Have a Dream” speech at the March on Washington in 1963 is one of t hose images…who doesn’t instantly recognize King, his arm extended toward the mass of humanity crowding every open space on the Mall in Washington between the Lincoln Memorial, the location of the podium from which he spoke, to the Washington Monument in the distance.  So I added this view:

Years ago, I remember seeing a quilt of a baseball player with the stands in the distance.  The quilter (this was in the early 80s when prints were very “calico” and floral) had used a few small sprigged prints, with the size of the flowers/dots decreasing as you got higher up in the stands.  Remembering that, I used three different floral prints for the crowd, with the smallest dots ones near the base of the Wash. Monument, the larger ones in the front.  Then, because it looked like a field of flowers, I took flesh-toned paints to paint dots onto the print to represent the faces.

Here is how the piece looks so far…..two people down, four to go….

The second figure I tackled for Be Inspired (see original post dated July 11th) is Martin Luther King.  In polling of the four grades (5 through 8 ) King handily topped the list of inspiring figures from history, so he became the central figure on the first (of a projected three) “Americas” panels.

When dyeing the fabric for the earth/sea and sky backgrounds, I also did 2 1/2 yards of fabric in skin tones.  The patchy look on King’s face will smooth out once quilting in shades of browns and reds and some black is applied.  nyway, I’m thrilled that this actually LOOKS like King!

Here’s a picture of the full panel with Sacajawea and MLK:

Now back to tracing, transferring, cutting, fusing and making people.   I do wonder WHAT possessed me to volunteer to do a quilt with 39 or more people……….  (reminder to self:  next time smack self upside head and run the other way!).  Of course, the fact that things are working out has me happily amazed….

A few thousand years ago, the middle school principal here in Camden–Maria Libby–put out a call for artwork suggestions for the middle school (a little over a year ago it was).  Among other things, she needed something big for a long, LARGE wall in a hallway below the big gym in the 7th/8th grade end of the school.  My first idea, a seasonal series of panels about the area, was nixed as the kids had already painted something similar a few years before.  Then inspiration hit…what about panels of people who inspire the kids…people from across time, around the world, all disciplines!  So “Be Inspired” was born.  I’m still totally amazed that she loves the idea of textile art, especially on such a big scale…way cool!

This picture is the modest beginning:

I dyed the “earth/sea” fabric (about 12 yards! enough for all six large panels plus one smaller panel) as well as the sky fabric.  Each of the six panels will be 36 inches wide and about 50-56 inches long, with straight top, sides and undulating bottom edge.  The seventh panel goes over a door in the middle of the wall and will read “Be Inspired!”  or “Who Inspires You?”  Then on the door I’ll make a poster that is a “key” to all the figures and places depicted on the panels.  Overall, it will be 21 feet in length and about 4 1/2 feet tall!!!!

Next, after surveying the kids a year ago to find who inspires them most, Mrs. Libby and I selected a representative sampling of folks.  The rules were famous more than 20 years ago, no naughty folks.  In the end, we decided to make one exception:  to include Barack Obama, since as the first non-white President of the US, he will clearly be a historic figure; plus, his inclusion dates the construction of the quilt(s) to 2009 and forward, which is kinda cool.  By doing 20+ years ago, we avoided the sports or pop stars of the moment and confined it to truly historical figures.  Here’s the tentative list for all six panels:
Panel 1:

Asia and Africa:

1.  The Pyramid builders
2.  Mother Theresa
3.  Doctors (Medecins Sans Frontiers)
4.  Jane Goodall
5.  Gandhi
6.  Nelson Mandela
7.  Sir Edmund Hillary (might just do Everest w/ a small figure for that one)

Panels 2, 3 and 4:

The Americas

1.  Martin Luther King
2.  Abraham Lincoln
3.  Rosa Parks
4.  Jackie Robinson
5.  Harriet Tubman
6.  The astronauts
7.  John F. Kennedy
8.  Amelia Ehrhart (w/biplane for the Wright Bros)
9.  Thomas Jefferson
10.  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
11.  The Incas / Machu Picchu
12.  Sacajawea
13.  Lucas / Spielberg / represented by R2d2 and 3CPO if they agree
14.  ?? Lucille Ball (may be a licensing / $$ / copyright problem)
15.  Obama
16.  Teachers

Panels 5 and 6:

1.  The Beatles
2.  Albert Einstein
3.  Beethoven
4.  Anne Frank
5.  Leonardo da Vinci’s vitruvian man
6.  The Cave Paintings
7.  Engineers (bridges, ships buildings)–Eiffel Tower?
8.  The Spanish and Portuguese explorers–ships
9.  Jacques Cousteau and/or the Calypso
10.  Shakespeare

This first panel includes Sacajawea, Martin Luther King (the clear leader in voting by the kids), Jackie Robinson, Barack Obama, teachers, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  Chamberlain led the 20th Maine at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he and his troops played a pivotal role in the Union victory; he later became a governor and senator for Maine, president of Bowdoin college (in Brunswick, Maine).  So he’s our Maine representative…. Here’s the somewhat “iffy” looking beginning…with the tracings/drawings on paper, pinned to the background.  My first set of pin-ups were too small, so I enlarged them all on my all-in-one-printer until I thought they filled the quilt nicely.

At the top is the first person I made, Sacajawea.  There are no known images of her, so this is based on a sculpture (in Iowa? or was it Idaho?).  She looked a little lonely, so I added mountains.

The hard part is funding.  The school and schoolkids raised enough to cover about one panel (I’m paid, as well as material costs), but the local quilt guild, The Pine Tree Quilt Guild turned down my request for funding (apparently the fact that I’m to be paid is a problem, tho that wasn’t clear in the guidelines… I said I’d use the funds only for materials, but I guess it just didn’t fit the criteria…however, the sweet soul who chairs the panel deciding what fit felt so strongly about the project, she sent a PERSONAL check / donation!!!!!! Thank you!).  Anyway, I’m hoping that once this first piece is done, we’ll be able to generate interest and donations to cover the rest of the project.

Postings here will be scarce for a couple days, as I said I’d have this quilt DONE to enter in Maine Quilts…. it must be delivered on July 21, and as of this moment I am still making the fusible appliques.  EEEEEEK!  Gotta go quilt!

The ways of jurors for big quilt shows mystify me……this year I entered Koi:

and Fields of Gold:

In the annual World of Beauty contest at the International Quilt Festival in Houston. The good news is that after FIVE years of “sorry but….” letters (I got in the first time I applied and never since), I am in AGAIN!!!! HOORAY…

What baffles me is that I consider Koi, a 40×60-ish quilt, two sided, lots of good technique, great quilting, imposing, yet it was “declined” (OK…let’s be blunt: rejected! For the second year in a row!) and the lovely but small (about 16×20) Fields of Gold, which began as a 9×12 journal-type quilt as an illustration/project for my book, has been accepted! I will admit, I ADORE the wheat in the quilting (even if I did do it myself…), which is my favorite part of the quilt along with Lisa Walton’s fabric (visit her website Dyed and Gone to Heaven) which really made the piece. But still… whazzup?

At least Koi got in to Paducah (if my faltering memory serves me correctly) and then got featured to my great surprise in QuiltMania, in a photo spread on the AQS show. Weird. Don’t get me wrong… I’m thrilled the drought is over and that as I teach there for the first time this year, I will have a quilt in the juried show. Still, I’m happily baffled.

Maybe I’ll be able to use Koi as my teacher’s quilt LOL!

Addendum:  Suzanne Sanger and Terry Grant both had very astute observations (see the comments)….  that there have been other koi quilts by other people, but nothing like Fields of Gold…… I think they are on to something…..