I’m taking another fantabulous drawing class with Val Webb (website here and class offerings here) this time Drawing Birds in Colored Pencil.  Our first lesson was timed sketches–supposed to be 8 minutes or so but some of mine were longer–in 2B pencil just to get down shapes and proportions.  The second exercise was starting with the colored pencils, this time a Dark Umber, doing an “underpainting” in a feather.  Once again, I am amazed that I’ve been able to do as well as I did; Val’s ability to give a few simple tips that lead to stunning results is why I keep going back for more classes from her (this is my third class).

I think I’m done…..photo of feather from Val upper left, my sketch on right

Here’s a photo from a bit earlier in the process

Just the first side sketched in, and a barest of outline on the upper side of the feather

And a detail:

Detail of feather, partially done

I’ll be back soon with a bit more info about the Web Seminar (see previous post, here) on or after Sept. 5, 2013.

Great news!   I’ve got a new article in Quilting Arts, in the August-September issue.  I’m dashing out the door momentarily to Maine Quilts (I helped with set-up on Weds., you may have seen a picture if you’re on FaceBook), and today I get to help with Appraisals for a couple hours.  Looking forward to learning!  BUT in the meantime, WOOOHOOOO, my article on “What a Difference the Background Makes” is in this issue:

The August-September Issue of Quilting Arts has my new article on choosing backgrounds.

Here’s the first two pages of the article (I blurred the text since QA has the copyright).  Issues should be on stands now or soon; if you live somewhere that you can’t get a paper copy, the issue is available by digital download from Quilting Arts/Interweave, here.

My new article on backgrounds. Thanks to my friend Pat D. for suggesting I propose this to QA! You rock, Pat!

I did up a second version of the quiltlet on the right, but gotta run so will share that in the next day or two.  If you’d like to see how I applied this process to a recent larger quilt, Mr. Wiggles Does the Circle Dance, check out this blogpost from earlier this summer.

Hi all!  During my busy spring, I managed to complete a watercoloring class.  I’ve been wanting to use a sketchbook more, and love coloring with watercolors.  When it came time to do a postcard swap earlier this year with a map theme, I had this crazy idea to map a Quilter’s Paradise.  Fitting it all into a 4×6 would be insane, so I decided to make a large painting (12 1/2 by 18 inches) which would scale down into 4×6 for the postcard swap and notecards, an 8 1/2 by 11 inch giclee print ($28 plus $5 priority mail in the US, shipping higher abroad), and a special order 11 x 14 inch print ($45 plus actual shipping costs which depend on whether you want it flat or rolled).  [See last paragraph about ordering inf0.] So here is  The Land of Quilty Delights:

Here is The Land of Quilty Delights, with my apologies for the  watermark. This watercolor is available as an archival quality giclee print from me at SarahAnnSmith.com/store .  Right click to see larger.  If you begin at Home Sweet Home (under the bluebird of happiness) and travel clockwise, you’ll follow a quilter’s journey, ending at The Last Stitch Ice Cream stand and/or the Cotton Boll Retail Therapy Spa–your choice!  Mine is ice cream with hot fudge, please!

I had SO MUCH FUN doing this!   The bluebird of happiness is flying over Home Sweet Home on Paradise Island (which the legend tells you is self cleaning and equipped with a chef).  The happy quilter then climbs Mount Joyous Inspiration, passes through Indecision Jungle, enters the valley of Creative Delight, and can visit the Life-Giving Forest (tree of life block with a cardinal in the tree).  Shining down from the upper right corner is our Compass rose: N = North/New Ideas, E = East/Exciting Choices, S = South/Sweet Friendships, W = Warmth and Love.  After all, isn’t that what it’s all about?

Our quilter sets sail from Port Anticipation and sails through the Rainbow Islands (which include Batting Island, complete with bat, Inspiration Island with drink service complete with little paper umbrella, and Full Bobbin Island).  The traveler then passes the Rocky Shoals of Too Much To Do (Chores, meals, work).  So why the alligator?  Well, in my first job in the Foreign Service my boss had a saying I love dearly:  When you are up to your a** (posterior) in alligators, it’s hard to remember the original goal was to drain the swamp.”  Sometimes you have years like that!

You sail past the colorful Patchwork Fields of Plenty, with some of my favorite quilt blocks, through the Storm at Sea only to encounter The Ripping Tides (seam ripper) before approaching The Isle of Applique with Satin Stitch Beach, Blanket Stitch Bay and Needleturn Cove.  Can you tell I had FUN?   In the upper left corner instead of Zephyrus, the god of the Gentle West Wind, we have instead Zephyra, the goddess of the Gentle West Wind and patroness of quilters, who wafts us with gentle feathery plumes.

Alas, before reaching the Bay of Completion, you must make it through the Dead Zone (a.k.a. the Basting Zone), an area where ships stagnate in becalmed waters.  But finally, you reach the Bay of Completion, and our happy quilter is celebrating at The Last Stitch Ice Cream and Spirit Restoration.  We could go straight home, but instead I’ll choose to enjoy the view of the Patchwork Fields of Plenty on the way to the Cotton Boll Retail Therapy Spa, complete with Grandmother’s Flower Garden.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this Quilters journey and the Land of Quilty Delights as much as I enjoyed making it!

Notecards are also available, 6 for $12 plus shipping.  All prints are sized to fit standard frames and mats (http://www.dickblick.com/ has a wide selection) and are shipped in a clear sleeve with acid-free foamcore plus an extra piece of cardboard to protect the print in transit.

This week my webhost is upgrading their server, so I can’t get these on to my Store page yet.  If you would like a print or notecards, please email me (here) and I’ll send you a PayPal invoice.  You don’t need a paypal account; you may safely use your major credit card.  For international orders, I can figure out exact postage (I will see if straight first class is less expensive than flat rate shipping which runs about $20 to anywhere in the world, but seems rather expensive to me).  If you have several friends who would like a print, contact me directly and if one of you pays for all of the items, I can ship them grouped to reduce cost for you.

On the set at Interweave in Loveland, Colorado, to film a Quilting Arts Workshop! (Who me?!!!!)

Can you believe it?  I’ve been to Loveland, Colorado, taped a Quilting Arts DVD Workshop, come home (exhausted but elated) and I can still barely believe it.  Yes, I have been “on the set” filming this week.   Due out in September as both a download and as an actual DVD (which is wonderful for us who live in the boonies with glacial internet), the working title is “Fused Collage and Thread-Coloring,”  a Quilting Arts Workshop from Interweave Press!

The project I used for the workshop is my Tomatoes, Basil and Garlic quilt (No. 1) [there will be 3 versions before I’m done], but the workshop is to teach you how to use your own photo to make an art quilt:

Tomatoes, Basil and Garlic, No. 1, the start of what I will call my Quilting the Good Life series!

My trip to the airport was an omen–a good one–for how the trip was about to go.  I mean, look at the beginnings of sunrise as I crossed the driveway to the garage!

4:25 a.m., Tuesday: leaving for the airport in Owl’s Head (near Rockland, maine) just before dawn

It got even more dramatic just over the ridge heading to the coast, at the intersection of Route 105 (the Camden Road) and High Street in Hope:

Can you believe that sky? Makes me want to get to the dye pots!

The route in was equally stunning. Here, mist rising off the Megunticook River in Camden.

And ten minutes down the coast in Rockland:

And the sunrise over Rockland Harbor, en route to our little airport at Owl’s Head.

I flew Cape Air (maximum of 9 passengers) to Boston, then JetBlue (for the first but not the last time!) to Denver, where I caught the shuttle to Loveland directly to the Interweave studio where I met Helen Gregory and the filming crew.  There we set up my materials, hung the quilts, and went over my plans for filming the next day.  Congrats to Helen on her promotion to Vice President for Content, Interweave and Martha Pullen,  and upcoming move to Colorado!

My DVD will have five segments, so five trays to lay out my supplies which I prepped at home.

And boy did I prep.  I had about a month (shorter than usual I think) between my contract and filming date, so I pretty much did nothing but make step-outs, more step-outs, refine, video (to get used to talking to a camera and to time myself), cut/edit, cut/edit/shorten more, etc.  For a month.  Non-stop.

Make-up, first thing Wednesday!

Interweave has a make-up artist come do you up for camera, as there are special products that make you look right on camera under all those bright lights.  I shoulda shot a picture of me sitting at the table looking at the room…it was FULL of big tripods, cameras, and cables and cords EVERYWHERE.  Miraculously, I did not trip and break anything or anyone!

Reviewing my notes before getting changed for taping.

THANK YOU JANOME-America and Patty WInkelman of Quilter’s Stash in WIndsor, Colorado, for arranging a Janome 8900–the machine I sew on at home–to use along with a Janome sewing table. I’d never used the table and we were all impressed at how sturdy and stable and heavy it is. Of course the 8900 sewed flawlessly!

Then it was time to get changed and start taping.  Then we mostly forgot to take still pictures!  But here are some….

Me on the left, Helen Greghory in the green top, and I think that is Laura (webinars guru) on the right, hidden mostly by one of the cameras. We were getting ready for the concluding segment I can tell by what is on the table.

At the end, I asked to have apicture of four of us: L to R, Laura E. (webinars and more), Helen Gregory (new VP for Content), me, and Lauren our camerawoman extraordinaire. Camera dude Nick was taking the photo, and camera dude Garrett had already run off to another “gotta be there” job. Those lights were bright, but sure make things visible and looking good.

I never saw this view, but either Helen or Lauren kindly took this photo for me, which shows the jib camera shot of the table with my project and quilts on it:

The jib/overhead camera view. If you look in the center just above the right corner of the screen view, you can see the overhead camera.  Also notice in the backgorund it looks like the quilts are on an angle.  They are–that is to offset the perspective angle that happens with the big camera lenses.  Fascinating!

Then it was time to go home.  Early.

Before I arrived, Colorado hit 80 degrees (F). Wednesday, it SNOWED. When I left the hotel at 3:58 a.m. for the shuttle to the Denver Airport, it looked like this! Then by today it was supposed to be back in the 60s–that’s more insane than our weather!

I’ll spare you the tedium of a crowded plane from Denver to Philadelphia, a smaller more crowded plane from Philly to Boston, the utter hopelessness of Logan Airport (UGH UGH UGH), but flying home on Cape Air is always fun.  As we approach the mid-coast, first I’ll spot the Camden Hills:

There are two landmarks visible from the sky from a distance. I was in the seat behind the co-pilot’s seat (which is usually filled with a passenger). The first are the Camden Hills: Battie, Megunticcok, Maidencliff.

Then

The second landmark is the big white tower at Dragon Cement, visible dead ahead in the middle of this photo. I realized on this trip how massively huge the quarry is for this company.

As you near Dragon Cement, we turn right and head for Owl’s Head (Knox County, RKD) airport.  The lights of home!

LOVE being able to snap out all windows of these small planes.  Landing strip is visible just to the right of the bar up the center of the windshield.

Travel was the usual crowded insanity and waiting, but I was home 16 hours later to son, hubby, cats and dog.  Two of the seven are here:

Doggie love is GOOD!

In the past month, I’ve not only prepped this, but THREE articles (more on them when they are close to being published), have a quilt to make in a week, another article to write, then teaching in North Carolina in June and southern California in July, then a quilt to make by August 5.  Then I can collapse a few weeks before school begins (how will Eli be a SOPHOMORE already?) and fall teaching in Massachusetts and at International Quilt Festival in Houston.   So I HOPE to blog more often, but at this rate can’t promise.  I have so much to catch you all up on, pictures from teaching in Florida, Vermont, and Mass….but must be mom, wife, and author first. Stay tuned!

I’d like to ask you to consider supporting a funding drive to complete a documentary on the Tentmakers of Chareh El-Khiamiah.  The fund drive is being held on Pozible (here) and they will accept any donation.  Even if you can donate only a few dollars, every bit helps.  Let’s get this documentary of textile art funded and made.  Today, Tuesday the 19th February, the total pledged is $13250, and 160 made a pledge – but they still need to reach their target of $20,00 by the end of February.   I hope you will find you can to support this important project with at least a small donation and by passing this on to some of your friends. Please feel free to link to this post and borrow from it to help support this project!
For more information, read on!

An Egyptian Tentmaker’s hanging in the collection of Alison Schwabe

Several years ago Jenny Bowker, a fabulous Australian art quilter and teacher, moved to Egypt while her husband served as the Australian Ambassador to Egypt.  While there, she came to know and love the land, and especially the Tentmakers.  In that culture, beautifully decorated tents were used for special events, but with the rise of machinery and the modern era, the art and craft of tentmaking was fading.  Jenny was so moved by this beautiful textile art, that she began to share it with the rest of the world.  I first read her posts on her blog and on the QuiltArt list.  Later, I attended a lecture at the International Quilt Festival in Houston where I sat with tears in my eyes as she shared the appliqued textiles they make and what she has done to bring pride and respect to their art.  She has since been able to bring a couple of the tentmakers and many men’s work (the tentmakers are men) to Australia, the United States and Europe where their works sold like hotcakes and impressed many.  The quilt above is one of two  in Australian quiltmaker Alison Schwabe’s collection (Alison’s website is here). Here is a detail photo:

Detail of the quilt at the top of this post.

And Alison’s other textile:

Egyptian tentmaker’s applique work, in the collection of Alison Schwabe

Detail photo

After the “Arab Spring” that began with demonstrations and protests in Dec. 2010 and continued through spring of 2011,  Jenny was involved with an exhibit in the UK; one of the tentmakers–having seen what is going on in our international quilt world from previous exhibits–had broken with the traditional imagery of their craft, and made a piece depicting the demonstrations in Cairo.  This was the first personal expression of this sort Jenny had ever seen, and I still get goosebumps remembering when Jenny posted to an internet list that the piece had been purchased by a Museum in England!  How utterly wonderful.

AQS then hosted the tentmakers for an exhibit here in the US and published a book about these pieces.

Alison and Jenny have written some detailed information which I will share here so you can follow the links.  Thanks Alison for allowing me to re-post your message!

From: alison schwabe al>
> Subject: The Tentmakers of Egypt – please read at least !
> Date: February 17, 2013 7:32:31 AM MST
>
> Dear Friends –
> You all know me as a textile and fabric artist – a quiltmaker, an art quilter – however you think of me, you know of my intense interest in things in fabric and thread. Because of this, I hope you will read and find interesting some of the material in this recent email from one of my close friends, prominent Australian textile artist and quiltmaker, Jenny Bowker.
> Jenny spent several years in Egypt where her husband Bob was Australia’s ambassador. When we visited in 2007 Jenny took as to several textile places (in addition to the pyramids, valley of the kings and other wonderful places around Cairo) and we found the time we spent in the Tentmakers' street in the old markets quite wonderful – its hard to describe the marvellous times and experiences there but, as just one indication we had to buy a suitcase to get what we bought there back here! If you are a Montevideo friend please remind me sometime you’re here that you’d like to see the magnificent 2m sq pieces of their art we have in bedrooms on the first floor…
> Jenny’s letter is frankly to explain and support the current appeal for funding to complete a quality full length documentary on this textile art with an ancient heritage stretching back over 800 years… but her words are far more authoritative and comprehensive than mine, and so I am copying her letter in full and sending it to you, hoping that by the time you’ve looked into some of the links, you too will feel able to pledge a small donation (or a large one, of course) to ensure this project goes to completion. To me, the importance of the project ranks up there with films I’ve seen on The Bayeux Tapestry, the quiltmaking of the Amish, the Overlord Embroidery and some of the many lacemaking and knitting traditions.
> I invite you to read what Jenny has written below, and if you are pressed for browsing time to follow links, I recomment the short videos and the pinterest images. And, please contact me if you want further details – I’ve been posting things about int on my facebook page and blog, but you may not be a FB friend or might not follow my blog ( but I hope you will sometime go there for more insights to what I do and what things influence me and my art)
> But, now over the Jenny Bowker., who wrote:
> “The Tentmakers are a group of men in Cairo who make spectacular applique. Nowadays most of what they make is intended for the walls of houses or on beds, but in Pharaonic, early Islamic, and Ottoman times it was intended for the inside walls of tents. With canvas behind it which formed the outside wall, the rich appliqué glowed with light on it, and was intended to amaze visitors to a leader’s tent. Did you know that Cairo was originally called Fustat – which means the big tent? In pharaonic times the tents were appliqued leather, now all the work is cotton.
>
> You can read more text about them here:
> http://www.jennybowker.com/tentmakers/
>
> You can see pictures of the work here:
>
> You can see a short video made by Bonnie McCaffrey for Luana Rubin here:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wHzWRui7Kjk
>
> And a longer one made by Bonnie as one of her wonderful vidcasts here:
> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=39zkCcQqWp0
>
> And if you go to my Pinterest board on the Tentmakers you will see a lot of current work – and some that is much older and also some of the truly old tents so you can see how they were used.
>
> http://pinterest.com/jennybowker1/tentmakers-of-cairo/
>
> I think almost the best if Kim Beamish’s Facebook page for the film as he is putting up constant new images, and there is a lot lot of historical input as well.
> https://www.facebook.com/CharehElKhiamiah
>
> The art has been slowly dying. Big pieces of cheap, badly registered, printed fabric made in China have poured into Cairo and people buy this rather that the real appliquéd pieces. On top of that disaster – tourism has stopped with unrest for the last two years. Without the work sold in to exhibitions that I have been arranging in other countries they would all be gone by now – instead – stitchers who left are coming back and young ones are learning again. I am thrilled with the progress we have made and very happy with the AQS (American Quilters Society sic )who committed to them for three years. But – it is still hardly documented at all. There is not one piece in the Cairo Museum or even in the Cairo textile museum. The best article I have ever found is in the Uncoverings magazine and there are no books. Older stitchers are dying and no history has been written.
>
> Kim Beamish is an Australian friend who – when I took him to visit the street on his third day in Cairo – picked up the baton I offered and ran with it. He is making a film about the Tentmakers in these difficult times. He has given most of five days a week for the last seven months – or more. He has paid his own way to shows in England, and has had to pay for three more that have not even happened yet in France and two in America. He has become part of the street and the men are used to him and his camera. He has two young children and a wife who works in the Australian Embassy in Cairo. They have to pay a nanny so that he is free to film. He is, like I was, a trailing spouse. He did not choose to live the ‘cocktail parties and bridge’ life, but has chosen to go out on a limb to tell a very moving and necessary story. I know that at the moment he is on the bones of his behind financially and simply cannot afford anything else.
>
> The movie will not be made without funding for the essentials – the long and boring stages when the filming is done and the hard work starts. Editing, top level translation and the rest has to be done by experts and paid for. Please help. Even a little bit from a lot of people will add up to a lot – that is what crowd funding means. The link is now open and working. If he does not get to his total he gets nothing. Kim will spend the month hovering over the site and biting his fingernails.
>
> The work is really special and the film is essential.
>
> http://pozible.com/tentmakers – this is the link to support the Film – The Tentmakers of Chareh el Khiamiah. If Kim Beamish does not get this money the film cannot be made. Even tiny donations will help and big donations will help more. Please.
>
> If you use PayPal it will ask you to preauthorise. It sounds odd but it simply means that when the total is reached the money will then be taken from people’s accounts so it has to be done this way. Kim gets nothing if he does not reach his total and that is the way that Pozible works. He is a bit worried at the moment as only about 29 have helped in three days.
>
> I am hoping a lot of people will have read this far and be willing now to help us. PLEASE send this on to as wide an audience as you can reach. The moment the total is reached the project will be assured. Until then it looks as if it might be dead in the water.
>
> Thank you
>
> Jenny ”
>