Wowie zowie…. OK… I am so excited that I can’t believe it and had to share before I explode…….Art quilter makes good! I have two projects in Lark Books’ forthcoming book “Creative Quilting with Beads.” I was trying to track down how Quilt Divas, the local quilt shop in Rockland, Maine, can order it at wholesale (we’ll do a book signing and class), so I was on the phone with Lark’s customer service. While speaking to the rep, I remembered Amazon has had a lot of other list-members’ books online before publication date / available for pre-order, so I looked up this book……

MY PROJECT IS ON THE COVER!!!!! At least, the cover that is on the Amazon listing. We’ll hope that it stays the same… I can’t BELIEVE IT……. Me?????!!!!!!! I know that sometimes covers change, but still…… I’ll have to wait until publication to share my own pics of the notebooks and other projects from the Frayed Edges that are included (Lark has first publication rights, including even little old blogdom.)

Anyway, yes, I will have the book available for sale on my website when it is out mid-May-ish (release date is nominally May 6th, but we know those dates slide in both directions). I won’t be able to come close to offering the price Amazon can (it’ll be list price), but I can offer signatures! Eight of the 25 projects are by my mini-group the Frayed Edges, so thought I’d ask them to sign a bunch of copies so folks can have signatures from Kate Cutko, Kathy Daniels and me. (Of the five of us, 4 have projects in the book…3 of the 4 of us with projects in this book; Hannah was right in the middle of selling her house, moving and traveling to adopt a daughter in China at submission deadline, so obviously she was a bit too busy for book projects!) WOOOOHOOOO!

This project is a notebook cover…. I did two versions. This one fits a composition notebook, so it is vertical orientation. The other one is also pomegranates but with lime green and yellow for the table and wall and fits a 6×9 ish (whatever the standard size is) sketchbook / journal with a horizontal format. I chose those two items since they are standard size here in the US and readily available, but it would be easy-peasy to adapt the pattern to other shapes/sizes.

Anyway, I just HAD to share….now I can’t wait more than ever to see the finished book!

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

Can you tell I love snow? And taking pictures… here, some more winter inspiration, starting with the tree in the cemetary (not that you can tell with all that snow), Mt. Battie in the background:

Here’s the Village Green:

And the Harbor, from in front of the library:

I love the “dinosaur ridges” on the tree branches (near our house):

The reflections in the not-yet-frozen run-off creek near the house:

Eli playing in the snow with ‘Widgeon:

and Joshua playing in the snow, too:

And the snow at least a foot deep blanketing my studio over the garage:

The snow-bound creek (which will freeze over before too long):

And the laden pine boughs alongside the driveway:

I’m on a quest…. there is a line drawing I remember (which I saw about 30+ years ago) that is a seated nude woman, and consists of two lines–I had thought it was by Picasso (it was reproduced as a poster sold on college campuses….). I asked on the quilt art list and got many “close” suggestions, but none that is the one I remember. The suggestions folks gave will help me illustrate my point in my class (that it is possible to convey a whole lot of meaning in just a few simple lines), but now that I can’t find the danged thing that is battering around inside my brain, and I’m plagued with a desire to figure out WHO did it, and see an image. It looked something like this:

I had thought it was by Picasso, but having spent a whole lot of time at the Online Picasso Project (here) I have decided that was probably not who did it… whoever drew the one I remember probably liked women more than Picasso did.

Here are some Picasso drawings that are close, but obviously not a female nude:

The closest is “Femme,” but it’s not quite the same thing, and I’m SURE I remember a seated woman…..I’ve scoured the Picasso online project from 1955 to 1973 with no luck….:

Terry Grant, Pamela Allen and a few others suggested Matisse, and this is also close but not quite (and obviously fulfills the purpose for the photo in my class):

Here are a few other Matisse that would work equally well:

and

If anyone, however, has a clue as to who did the two-line seated nude, please do drop me a note or suggestion for searching!

A bit over a year ago, I was dumbfounded and elated when Larkin Van Horn invited me to participte in an art quilt show she is curating to be titled “It’s Good to be Green.” All quilts are to be 18×45 inches, and please, no Kermit the frogs, she said. Almost instantly I had an idea to do a quilt about the water spirits that inhabit the streams and lakes. My first thought was the ruselka from Russian mythology, but after doing a bit of research, learned they aren’t such nice creatures, so I amended that to Naiads.

The show will open in March (In Tillamook, Oregon, I think), and we’ve been asked not to share the finished products until after the show opens. Best of all, Larkin will be producing a CD catalog of the show so you can all go see it, even if just “virtually.” However, Larkin did say it would be OK to share pictures of in progress, so here you go. This first picture is of a very rough sketch for the overall piece (the left white paper—use medical exam table paper!), some sketches for the naiads, batting cut a bit larger than finished size in the center with an extra bit of batting on the left for the tree, and on the right, possible fabrics for the background:

It’s kind of interesting since I initially thought the entire quilt would be green…green ladies (remember the “green naked ladies” from my Tree Spirits 2 quilt?), green hair, green water, green sky. But after having made Windows of Hope for my Journal quilt this year, I felt the need to add color! I also decided not to crop out the sides of my design wall…I’m always curious bout other people’s studios, so thought this would be “honesty in blogging”…teeheee… lots of stuff gets stuck up there!

A while ago, artist and art quilter Thelma Smith surprised me with a box of manna from heaven, aka hand-dyed fabrics! I was so thrilled! This glorious piece had a perfect spot for the banks of the river (that’s the part that is missing), but before I cut it further, I wanted to take a photo. Isn’t this a glorious piece of cloth? Thanks Thelma!!!!!

I got the background together, fused to the batting; the stuff pinned to the lower right and left are sheers that will go on top of the water, which is made from the fabrics I worked on during the dye workshop with Carol Soderlund (check my blog entries for October 2007):

I’ll post about the naiad figures in my next entry on this piece….