An old/new project

Quite a number of years ago, before I taught at my first national-level show, I had a rare opportunity in about 2007.   Dianne Hire, author, teacher, quilter, artist, gardener, lives nearby me here in Maine.   Alas, she hurt her back–badly–just a wrong move picking up a light stick.   And she was scheduled to teach at her favorite retreat in just a few days.  She needed someone to drive her and help schlep all the teacher stuff.  Luckily for me, my name came up as one of two folks who might be able to help her.  The other person couldn’t do it, so I finally got to meet Dianne (we have a mutual friend but had never met) and in the one week of summer where I could take a break from Paul and the boys and go.  So I drove her to Paul Smith’s College (!!! Yep, can you believe it, a college with that name in upstate NY near Lake Placid) and got to sit in and take all her classes.   I began this project back then, but never finished it though I always liked it.

Another bit of astounding good luck:  I’ve been affiliated with Janome America in their artists and teachers program for a decade now.  Can you believe it?  I can’t, but they seem to be happy with me and willing to keep me on.   I had never really wanted or liked the high end machines that do fancy embroidery software etc.  Then at International Quilt Festival in Houston last year I taught a class in a room with Janome’s new top of the line machine, the 15000.   WOWIE ZOWIE is it a BEAST!  And much easier to use with all sorts of cool features.   Even more astounding, Janome is lending me one!   Here it is, newly set up in my studio:

Albus Percival Wulfric Brian Dumbledore, because the Janome 15000 is of course the great White Wizard, the most powerful wizard ever

I decided to finish the quilt above (I won’t show the whole thing because Dianne is working on a book with the pattern) as my first project on the machine so I could get to learn the machine and make friends with it.  THEN I’ll move on to the Embroidery function learning curve!  Here are some close ups of the fantastic satin stitching I’ve achieved on this beauty!  I was able to taper (adjust) the width of the stitch as I stitched to get smooth thicks and thins in the satin stitched line.  WOOT!

Satin stitched, quilted, then the applique was outlined to make it pop. The large motif in the center is stitched in the ditch, but the motifs in on the right aren’t yet outlined.  It really makes a difference!

And my border design.  Here, the motifs on the right are outlined, the ones on the left are not.  The ones on the left kinda ripple.  By outlining, you really define and refine the shape.  Getting the tension just perfect was a bit fiddly.  I have found that the more complicated the machine, the more delicate they are in their settings.  Once you get them set, they are perfection, but you really need to understand your machine, be patient, and get to learn and know the way the machine works.  So often I hear students say “my machine won’t do that.”  Most of the time, I regret to say, it is operator error–not taking the time to learn and be patient.  So I am telling myself just that and hoping for LOTS of time in the near future to get to do that learning!

MASSIVE thanks to Janome America for their continuing generosity with me.   I hope to be able to give back to them and make some awesome, award-worthy quilts on this beauteous wizard of a machine!

Hi all!  I can’t believe I haven’t had time to blog about this yet, but I have been published again!   This time in the new book Quilt Essential:  a Visual Directory of Contemporary Patterns, Fabrics and Color by Erin Burke Harris, part of C&T’s “Stash Books” series.  If you are new to quilting and want an overview book, this one is a good one.  It has a very “Quilt Modern” feel to it:  fresh, airy, not fussy, and covers a lot of basics.

The cover of Quilt Essential

I was thrilled when I was invited to submit some quilts for consideration, and even more thrilled when I received a copy and learned I was in the book three times!

My Haleakala Sunrise quilts ( pattern available here in my shop and also at Pacific Rim Quilt Company, a great resource for Hawaiian and applique patterns) are both featured on the opening pages for the Hawaiian Quilts Section (mine are the blue-yellow and red-green).

The book is divided into four major sections:

• 1.  Fabrics:  covers types of fabrics, yardage and measuring, and caring for fabrics.
• 2.  Colors:  color theory, and matching fabrics and colors.
• 3.  Designs:  Shapes, quilt blocks, block layouts and settings, styles and arrangements, sashing and borders, embellishment.
• 4.  Assembling:  piecing, quilt sandwiching, quilting methods, bindings.

The book includes profiles of well-known quilters as well as works by other quilters (including me!).  Here’s a couple more photos:

My Koi quilt is in the Pictorial Quilt section (detail, bottom left, where I’m thrilled to share a page with Lura Schwartz Smith-no relation).

A big detail shot of The Tide is Hire, my pieced, appliqued and beaded quilt which is in the International Quilt Festival Collection (!!!!).

If you know of anyone who is beginning their quilt journey or just wants a good single overview book with a fresh feel to it, this book would be just the thing!  Thank you Erin for including me!

Time for another catch-up post, about my Decorative Stitch Applique class on Friday at Quilt Festival.   I’m on a yahoo group for Janome 6600-7700-8900 owners, and a discussion cropped up about using the decorative stitches and I realized I had yet to post this information, so here goes!

The Funky Chicken, from Sarah’s Decorative Stitch Applique class in Houston.  Right click to enlarge image.  I’ve stacked (grouped) stitches on this one.  For example, the checkerboard (in yellow upper left) is two passes of a satin stitch that has two columns of small alternating squares.  To the lower right of the green square, a scroll stitch is bracketed with scallops.  The center square is appliqued, stitched with the “V” stapes, then outlined with a bold straight stitch.  Done on a Janome 8900.

Ya know how we all have these fancy machines that do a bazillion things, and pretty much 98 percent of the time (or more) all we do is use the straight stitch and sometimes the zigzag?   Well, when I wrote my book, Threadwork Unraveled, I included a section to teach folks how to play with their fancy stitches. This is the project in the book and the regular class project.

Decorative Stitch sampler for my Decorative Stitch Class.

I teach that section as a class which was offered this year at Quilt Festival.  This year I came up with a couple new projects as class options for students. Most of the students did the usual tossed leaves project for this class, but one loved my Funky Chicken.   Here she is early in the day, filling the background with fun stitch combinations in fun colors:

This student used the same colors as my sample. We were luckily in the Janome classroom with the FABULOUS 15000 machines. I’ve never been a fan of computer-screen sewing machine models, as I prefer visual knobs and buttons. Well, let me tell that has changed! I have severe sewing machine lust for one of these babies! And they have even more (!!!) stitches than the already fabulous 8900!

Other students put their own spin on the leaves:

A student is making sample blocks with decorative stitches.  This is a great way to test out pattern combinations–here she has a practice square to toss out and her “real” piece on the left.  If you have a practice square, that means you don’t have to pick out the stitches if you don’t like them!

Close up of decorative stitching on an aspen leaf.

This student tried a very bold, wide multi-stitch zigzag.  You can see this is her practice bit–see how she has tested the appearance of various stitches in the strip on the right?

I made a smaller (about 9 inches square) quiltlet with the sampler leaf and the background stitching. If you right click on this image, you can see more detail. Notice how I layered up stitches to applique the green patch and how I used a decorative stitch on the binding. On the latter, I used matching thread to machine stitch down the binding, then went over that with a decorative stitch.

And a happy student with her nearly-done funky chicken:

Thank you, Barb Brown of Colorado, for taking my class! I love your chicken!

The day ended with one of my favorite things at Festival:  FRIENDS!  This evening was the Dinner@8 artists.  Jamie Fingal and Leslie Tucker Jenison curate an exhibit each year for several years now, and I am thrilled to have been both invited to submit pieces and accepted in the exhibit!   My orca quilt, seen in earlier blogposts on Festival 2013, was in this year’s Exquisite Moment exhibit.  Here a bunch of us who were at Festival enjoy dinner and friendship and art!

One of the two tables of folks in the Dinner@8 exhibit. Leslie is at the head of the table, next to Diane Rusin Doran (in pink), Susan Brubaker Knapp (glasses) and Lyric Kinard

And too much fun not to include, Susan and I taking pictures of each other taking pictures!

We’re celebrating the release of my video workshop with one final GRAND finale including this DVD and the loot below!

WOW!  What a wonderful tour of art and the world we’ve been on with both the September/October and November/December bloghops and giveaways!  Thank you so much to Quilting Arts and Interweave for sponsoring this with DVDs and downloads, Mistyfuse for their wonderful products that I use to make my art, and Havel‘s for great scissors.  And ENORMOUS thank yous to my intrepid reviewers who helped make this bloghop possible:  Jamie, Deborah, Vicki, Leslie, Terry, Gloria, Diane, Marie, Brenda, Jaye, Susan, Daphne and Lisa:  THANK YOU!

The December Grand Prize Giveaway includes Two packages of Mistyfuse, a package of Transdoodle (all thanks to Mistyfuse), a Bag of scissors, snips and seam ripper from Havel’s PLUS non-stick scissors, the October issue of Quilting Arts with my article on What a Difference a Background Makes, and the 2010-11 Quilting Arts Gifts issue with my project and many other still wonderful gift ideas!

Yep–if you would like a chance to win

• A copy of the DVD!
• A selection of products from MistyFuse! I show you how I use these products in the Video workshop.
• A huge donation from Havel’s Scissors including a generous giftbag that includes long scissors, short scissors, snips, seam ripper, AND the non-stick scissors too!
• And a copy of Quilting Arts Gifts magazine from 2010-11, with a project by me! and a copy of the October Quilting Arts magazine with my article on what a difference the background Makes.

all in time for a nice long winter (or summer depending on your location in the world), here’s what you need to know and do:

• Leave me a comment and tell me something about the bloghopper-reviewer  whose work most influenced you in this bloghop–the work of one of the reviewers.  I’ll include links to all their blogs at the end of this post.
• On December 10th, I’ll select a winner. Please leave comments by 8 a.m. East Coast US time.
• I will pay flat rate shipping within the US.  If you live outside the US, you may enter IF you are willing to help me with the added cost of shipping outside the US. (Probably between $10-15)

So let the fun begin!   Comment away, and return to visit one of these fine artists (or ALL OF THEM!) and enjoy their art and thank them for participating.

And remember, you can always order the DVD from me (here) or a download or DVD directly from Quilting Arts/Interweave, here.

Jamie, Deborah, Vicki, Leslie, Terry, Gloria, Diane, Marie, Brenda, Jaye, Susan, Daphne and Lisa:  THANK YOU!

Jamie Fingal      http://jamiefingaldesigns.blogspot.com/
Deborah Boschert    http://deborahsjournal.blogspot.com/
Vicki Welsh    http://vickiwelsh.typepad.com/
Leslie Jenison  http://leslietuckerjenison.blogspot.com/
Terry Grant   http://andsewitgoes.blogspot.com/
Gloria Hansen    http://www.gloriahansen.com/weblog/
Diane Perin Hock    http://goingtopieces.blogspot.com/
Marie Johansen   http://www.musingcrowdesigns.com/
Brenda Gael Smith   http://serendipitypatchwork.com.au/blog/
Jaye Lapachet    http://artquiltmaker.com/blog/
Susan Brubaker Knapp   http://wwwbluemoonriver.blogspot.com/
Daphne Greig   http://daphnegreig.blogspot.com/
Lisa Walton    http://www.fibreinspirations.blogspot.com/

Pink Lilies by Sarah Ann Smith (c) 2013

It’s done!   I’ll be sharing this quilt on Thursday afternoon at International Quilt Festival (Houston) at the Open Studios from 4-6 and then talking about it more at the Saturday Sampler from 10-Noon.   I hope you’ll be there!   Here’s a detail photo:

Detail of Pink Lilies by Sarah Ann Smith

Thanks for the comments to my in-progress post.   Good point, Jan, that having folks fuse their own works way better logistically than me doing a printed photo version–that would have to be for a single class I think, or perhaps as part of a multi-day workshop.   But honestly, I like the idea of folks doing their own thing a lot better–no cookie-cutter-quilting in my classes!