It has been a while since I blogged about Coastal Quilters, our wonderful local chapter of the Pine Tree Quilt Guild.  Maine is lucky to have a great statewide guild, with something like 73 local chapters.  Our group runs from traditional to art, beginner to experienced.  This month we had a fun show and tell, including my lap quilt.

Eleanor Greenwood is relatively new to quilting, but clearly willing to try anything, and succeeds well.  She LOVES her grayhound, Louie, and is actively involved in rescue placements and supporting the organization.  She told us that he loves to sleep on his back; apparently this is quite common among the breed and is called “cockroaching” or “dead cockroach.”  I love it!  Anyway, she used a photo to hand PIECE (not applique!) this portrait of her pooch, “Jigsaw Louie”:

Great work!  If you’re interested in adopting one of these sweet dogs, visit www.greyhoundplacement.com, a 501c3 organization.

Joan Herrick is one of our traditional quilters (as well as an accomplished knitter).  Her work is meticulous…. I hope she never looks too closely at the pieced work I’ve done recently…my piecing is, well, let’s just say it’s nowhere NEAR as precise as I would like it to be, and even further away from hers!  In this photo, Joan is on the left, and another guild member (Patty C.) is on the right:

A new member, Paula Blanchard, shared some of her work with us.  In a class with Jude Spacks (an artist living in nearby Belfast, Maine) a while back, she did a fabric collage based on Edward Steichen’s photograph of Gloria Swanson, the silent film diva:

Here is her take in fabric…. I think Paula has a great future in art quilts!

And finally, my lap quilt, done.  The photo isn’t too precise, so one of these days I’ll take one that is sharper and share, but you can see now how I put it together.  Think when I’m done with writing blogposts, I’ll go cuddle under it…the back is creamy yellow minkee!  I’m on the right and Barb M., our tallest member who is always so willing to help is holding it up on the left…thanks Barb!

Goodness….. how time flies!   I can’t believe I have been so busy I’ve only had two posts in how long?????

Well the thing that went bump was me…yesterday…. I was printing out a photo for my younger son for his Social Studies homework, and it fell on the floor–this was up in my studio, the printer is up there and I was sitting on chair I use at the sewing machine.  I bent over to pick  up the photo and before I knew it, I was slamming my head into the corner of the fourposter bed,  and the chair pictured in this photo:  

was in TWO parts….base (still stable on the floor) and top!  Usually when the screws come loose (yes, this provided great mirth in my family, once they realized I was OK–I kept insisting it was the CHAIR that had loose screws…..I failed to convince them it was the ONLY thing that rattled), I can tell, the chair wobbles, and I get out the screwdriver.

Here’s a picture of the studio… you can see the lovely 200+ year old bed behind my worktable.  That tall post…the one with the SHARP corner…was the one that put the little cut in my head.

Basically, I’m fine, have a doozy of a bruise on the back of my leg from banging onto the front corner of the chair, and promptly returned to photo-printing and working on a sample for a “tester” workshop I’m offering to Coastal Quilters tomorrow.  I actually have photos ready to go for at least seven blogposts, and just haven’t had time to write.

One reason for my absence…I’m prepping kits and supplies for teaching in Houston.  The other main one:  my book has received its FINAL edits!     All in all, I am THRILLED!   Stay tuned… I’ve got more to share……now, back to prepping for tomorrow’s workshop.

OK…for the final installment of my Maine Quilts 2009 review, here are some quilts that I just thoroughly enjoyed.  I wish I had had enough time to snap a close-up of the labels to give proper credit to all the quilters!  Enjoy this last romp.  Next, I’ll give you some close-ups of the quilted version of Be Inspired…stay tuned!

Coastal Quilters (my local chapter) didn’t have as many quilts this year, but what we did have was wonderful…Mathea’s quilt of her husband and son was in an earlier post, and here is Louisa Enright’s glorious NY Beauty…she picked and chose from various patterns, drafted her own blocks, and designed the whole shebang…glorious!

The Coastal Quilters also had another fun, 10×10 inch Grab Bag challenge…you had to use EVERYthing (at least a little bit) of everything in your bag.  I suggested we also add a strip to show what we got so folks could understand where each of us began and where we ended up:

Another chapter, the Crazy Quilters, had a tea cozy challenge…think I can convince CQ to do that one year?

then, there are quilts I just plain liked.  One of the judges liked this one, too….and (oddly?) it had no regular ribbon, but DID receive (a well-deserved, I think) Judges’ Choice ribbon:

A Hawaiian style quilt that I loved:

And some fun other ones:

There didn’t seem to be as many art quilts this year in Maine Quilts, but I enjoyed the ones that were there!   From my friend Betty’s cat quilt (in the Cat’s Meow section—each year the show has a theme…last year was schooners, the year before lobsters, etc., this year the Maine Coon Cat):

To some of the quilts in the Art Quilts Maine section, there were some really wonderful ones.  AQM had a challenge:  black + white + one color… it was fun to see the results:

And down the aisle from my Be Inspired Quilt was Judy Anderson’s seals:

And Mathea Daunheimer’s quilt of her son and husband at the beach:

And some more quilts…alas I don’t know who made the lilies, but the tree is by Mary McFarland:

I’ll have one more post about the show in a few more days….

Last weekend was Maine Quilts, the annual show put on by the Pine Tree Quilt Guild (PTQG).  The judging this year was quite tough, with only five blue ribbons out of nearly 100 judged quilts.  Although I didn’t get much time to savor the show (the first day I took hubby, his first time ever going to a show with me…hoooray!…so I promised him we wouldn’t have to stay long—since it was torrential rain, it also ended up being crazy crowded, and the second day I got there late), I did have time to take pictures of the five blue ribbon quilts plus a couple of others.  (In theory, the photos should be clickable for a larger view.)

Here is the Best in Show quilt, a hand and machine appliqued quilt with a ton of quilting (Machine):

And the other blue ribbon winners, one of which also won a judges’ choice:

And of course, (blush, smile) mine:

I’ll have a couple more posts about the show… some of my favorites that I just snapped while breezing through, art quilts, and Jo Diggs’ special exhibit.  More soon!