Inspired by my mini-group’s 5 x 5 challenge, which I blogged about here and in the photo above (right click to see it larger), my local quilt guild chapter decided to do a small art quilt challenge which will be displayed at Maine Quilts at the end of July! WOWIE zowie! To keep a little bit of the surprise, I won’t share Dwight P’s photo (used with his permission) on which the quilts were based–tho I will say it was of ropes and buoys.

I will share some of the results….for a group that hasn’t ventured much into art quilting for many of them, I thought this was 100 percent awesome! And the left side of the table:

Jan P., married to the photographer, played with the photo in her computer software, then created the cloth! Everything you see in Jan’s photo began as white.

Barb Melchiskey is an expert applique-er , and it appears she has a good eye for abstracting elements, too!

Mathea Daunheimer, if you can believe it, has only been quilting about two years (and already has a quilt juried in to the Tactile Architecture exhibit in Houston… YEAH MATHEA!), but has clearly done lots of things artistic. She used Tsukinenko inks to draw/paint her piece:

I’ll share my two pieces…two colorways of the sames cropped view of the photo with you in a later post, including HOW I did the “drawing.” Wish I had taken more close ups! Hope you can come to Augusta at the end of July for our show. Here’s a link to the Pine Tree Quilt Guild / Maine Quilts website.

In three short months, I’ll be packing to head to my first MAJOR teaching venue: the AQS show in Paducah, Kentucky (it is amazing how quilters instantly know what you mean when you say Paducah, but mention it to the average soul on the street and you have to tell them it’s in Kentucky!). I will be teaching a whole bunch of things, including a class I had –until yesterday– never taught! EEEK! So the Coastal Quilters, my local guild chapter, came to the rescue. I offered to teach the class for free if they would be my guinea pigs…er…. ummm…. test-run for the class (picture above…but I blurred the faces because I forgot to ask each one for the OK to share pics)!

The class members were WONDERFUL, and I came away with several outstanding suggestions for improvements, learned that I needed to show how-to-steps on one project, and also decided I need to add one more exercise (meaning I have to delete something else) that pulls together everything we did in the class (and thanks to mulling it over with Roxanne by e-mail afterwards, have figured out how to do that!). All this is complicated by the fact that I function/teach better in a six hour format, and AQS prefers to offer 3 hour classes!

I started the class with a plug for a book that I consider nothing short of being able to work near miracles: The New Drawing on the Right Hand Side of the Brain and its companion workbook (in the picture), both by Betty Edwards–the two together cost less than US$ 24. I worked my way through the book with two friends, Linda C. and Lunnette H-H., when I lived on San Juan Island (before moving to Maine). We were all “OK” at drawing when we started (Lunnette was better than that, tho), but my gosh did I ever learn. Our before and after self-portraits showed dramatic improvement. I figure if *I* can learn on my own like that, anyone can. As a matter of fact, it was so useful I think I’ll do it again later this year. The titles above are hotlinked to the books at Amazon.com.

The class is called “If you can write your ABCs, You can draw”, and I started with a slide show… I need to improve the technical side of things, but as I showed more and more photos, all of a sudden I could see folks engage and start to “See.” As I told them, learning to draw is really about learning to SEE, then reproducing what you actually see (as opposed to what you think you see!). But, you don’t have to be Rembrandt…. you can use “aids.” some of these are the computer and your camera. To create “With These Hands,” I had my friend Marie take a few snaps of my hands…. I held them something like this:

Then I enlarged the photo on my computer, taped tracing paper to the screen (moving it as necessary) and traced the outlines and major contour lines (light, medium and dark areas). THEN I could transfer those lines to my cloth and create this:

One of the most fun exercises (and alas one which will be eliminated due to time constraints, at least from the 3 hour version of this class), was making paper snowflakes to learn to “draw” with scissors, and to look at the concept of negative space:

Then, a real keeper of an exercise is the “Expanded Square” from the book Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design by Marlys Mayfield and Dorr Bothwell (click on the title to see the book listed on Amazon–where it costs mere pennies…way worth it!). This exercise teaches you not only about negative space, but also about balance, rhythm, and possibilities of simple changes. In the book, the authors want you to use spendy black art paper to cut the shapes and glue it to white. Being thrifty (aka cheap) I had folks cut out of common white copy paper and glue it to black construction paper…it works! Here are Betty’s and Prudy’s being-glued examples:

And here are some of the class pieces:

I learned this week that a crafts center in Ripley, West Virginia, wants to hire me (?!!!!! WOOOOHOOO) to teach a 4-day workshop, so I think I’ll combine this class, my quilting design, a bit of machine quilting, and edge-finish classes into a “The top is done…what next?” class! Zippedy do DAH! In a couple days I’ll post my upcoming schedule of classes…. stay tuned! Cheers, Sarah the swamped

And now for more of our chapter banner blocks……

Our other co-president extraordinaire is Jan P., an emerging art quilter, mom of 3 very bright boys (Zach’s Destination Imagination team is headed to the NATIONAL competition! for which she is the coach…along with soccer team coach, baseball, etc……she’s busier than I am!). Jan lives in Lincolnville, so she volunteered to do two landmarks for her township: the Lobster Pound on Lincolnville Beach and the Islesboro Ferry.

The ferry isn’t fused to the center of the quilt yet…I just popped it here, near the dock at the south end of L-ville Beach, for the photo. Jan did ALL the work on the restaurant…great job!

As an aside, Jan’s husband is a fantastic photographer, and in October, she, he and I are going to have a joint art show at Zoot, the cool new coffee house in Camden (on Elm Street, across from the village green a few doors up from the Town Offices). Zoot has the best foam and espresso on the mid-coast, a wide selection of teas, and icnreasingly wonderful menu of foods, and has poetry readings and music on weekend evenings and all sorts of cool stuff. Stop and enjoy a latte, especially in October 2007 when we have our show!

Back to quilting…..Susan Coe’s second block is this totally awesome lobster trap. I gave her a simple line drawing pattern and she gave me this gem! I’m sorry I got the edges of the block turned under… it is so cool. It is 3-D with a real “frame” to the trap (plastic piping inside camo flannel) complete with seaweed and the usual gunk that comes up with the traps when they are hauled up. Note the lobster batik in the background for the water! Susan is a beginning quilter, but clearly a creative artist.