Thanks to Bill Reker, the Traveling Exhibit Coordinator, for forwarding these images of the SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibit Food for Thought on display in Australia, and thanks to the person who sent him the pictures.  The exhibit was on display in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne.  The AQC, Australian Quilt Convention (Conference?) is held in a building of breathtaking beauty.  I’ve decided that whenever I finally in this life ever get to Australia, I have to go during AQC just so I can see this building!

My “tomatoes” quilt, Insalata, on display at the AQC. LOVE that it is facing the center in a prime spot, and love the black walls on which the works are displayed.

Here’s another shot of the overall exhibit:

Don’t you just want to BE in this space? Insalata and other works in the Food for Thought exhibit are visible at the far end.

And one more…some day I really must get to Australia and New Zealand!

The best shots, for me, of my quilts when traveling are “neighborhood” shots–not just *my* quilt, since I already know what it looks like, but ones that show the context. Even better, when someone likes my work enough to get up and look at it closely–like the lady taking a detail photo! Woot!

Well, in late November my laptop started acting bizarre.  That led to getting ridiculously behind in EVERYTHING.  Add in the holidays and the beginning of Eli’s wrestling season and, well, it has been weeks since I surfaced here.  The good news is I have been VERY busy and productive, so now it’s time to start sharing.  And since “enter shows” season begins, I have drafted up a new, freebie PDF on how to make a hanging sleeve properly.  You can download the Hanging Sleeve–PDF, and it is also listed in the “Tutorials” section of my Resources page which is here.

A quick peek at my new PDF on How to Make a Hanging Sleeve–click on the link above to download the complete instructions.

Guilds, shows and shops have my permission to download and reproduce this handout as long as it is downloaded in its entirety, nothing is changed, and credit is given to me with a link to my website.  In other words, something like “How to Make a Hanging Sleeve by Sarah Ann Smith, www.SarahAnnSmith.com.”    And I’m pretty sure it will in the not distant future be available on the SAQA website, as well.   I’ll update this post if/when that happens.

Given the way my life goes, I can’t promise I’ll be back soon, but I sure hope to try!

Wanna come play with me?  It is time to look forward after a very busy winter and spring! I’ll be teaching at Vermont Quilt Festival at the end of June.  I’m so looking forward to it…pretty much my three most popular classes and a new one.   Balinese Garden teaches you decorative machine applique in your choice of pillow top, small quilt or table runner.   Fussy-Fiddly is about how to use those  (not really) challenging threads successfully; we’ve got so many wonderful thread choices available to us now, so let’s USE them!   Birch Pond Seasons teaches you skills and techniques to make not only this “north country” pattern, but go on to work on your  own designs.  Finally, Sunday’s half-day class, Easy Peasy Inside Out Bags, is about making quick and easy, lovely bags:  any size you want, easy zipper installation and addicting like potato chips–bet you can’t make just one!  I sure couldn’t–I keep making (and giving) them!

Here are my classes:
115    Balinese Garden                                                                    Thursday, June 25
218    Tame Fiddly Fussy Threads for Machine Quilting        Friday, June 26
314    Birch Pond Season                                                               Saturday, June 27
410    Easy-Peasy Inside Out Bag                                                Sunday, June 28

To sign up, click on this link:  http://www.vqf.org/all_classes_view.php .  Once there, look just below the purple “Basic Sewing Supply List” for “view by instructor.”  Use the dropdown list to select Sarah Ann Smith, and it will pop up information on all these classes.   Also, I’m happy to answer emails with questions!

Balinese Garden Table Runner–Class is Thursday June 25.  As always, I encourage students to cut loose, be creative, and make the project their own.

115    Balinese Garden  Thurs June 25

Here are four versions of my tossed leaves. You learn to make a freezer paper stencil and paint on cloth. While the paint dries, learn key tips to success with metallic, holographic, heavy and shiny threads, then free-motion quilt your piece.

Here’s a closer view:

The original quiltlet which happens to be on the cover of my book!

218    Tame Fiddly Fussy Threads for Machine Quilting        Fri June 26

Learn all sorts of fun tricks for making free-form fabric collage quick and easy

And the autumn view. I encourage students to personalize their quilts. Bring a photo of your favorite mountain and make it the featured hill. Make it any season you want! Be creative!

314    Birch Pond Season        Sat June 27

These bags are so easy and fun to make. They are wonderful to use (in all sorts of sizes), to give as gifts, and can even be turned into iPad or notebook covers.

If you watch Quilting Arts TV, these may look familiar, as they are on one of my episodes in season 1400 AND were in the 2014 Quilting Arts gifts magazine.

410    Easy-Peasy Inside Out Bag  Sun June 28

For all my classes, you can check here on my “Classes” page for more information and PDFs of the supply lists, or look on my “Resources” page for the downloads.  I’d love to have you in class!

SWOON! This year was the 40th anniversary (the ruby anniversary) of the International Quilt Festival, and the 35th Anniversary of the (wholesale, to the trade) International Quilt Market.

This year absolutely was the biggest and best Festival I’ve seen, with true exhibits (not just husband’s lounge and charitable booths) all the way to the far wall.   And at the main doors, this display inspired by the phenomenal red and white exhibit in New York city a couple years ago.

One of the best things this year didn’t happen to me, but to Barb Black.  Barb greets all the teachers in the Teacher’s Room when you arrive, gives you your schedule, room assignments, paperwork, marching orders, goodie bag, solves problems and is just generally wonderful to us.   Well, Barb made a red and white quilt.   And HER QUILT was selected to be the theme quilt for this year’s show, on the entrance signage, banners in downtown Houston, on the show bag, and on display front and center right as you walked in.  I could SWEAR I took photos, but I can’t find them, so you’ll just have to enjoy her quilt on my bag (and I KNOW I took pics from the back side to see the quilting!).  I tell you, there were teachers all over the planet whooping it up because “OUR Barb” was on the bag!

Barb Black’s beautiful red and white quilt on the 40th Anniversary International Quilt Festival show bag. GO BARB!

And just for fun, here’s a peek into the teacher’s room.  The whole back wall is FILLED with boxes the teachers ship from all over the world to the Teacher’s Room with kit supplies, things to sell, handouts, you name it.  The area is organized alphabetically, so the first thing you do after checking in with  Barb is go find your boxes!

Teacher boxes…my stuff was at the far end.  I can tell this is early in the week because the boxes are still shut!

On Monday, I taught my intro class Let’s Machine Quilt.

The students were stupendous. Here are some samples of the work the students did in class, and most professed to be rank beginners. I thought they did a great job!

Here’s the class hard at work, with my samples up on the foam core boards at the front.

More student work–you really can write your own name!

And yet another sample.

This year I wasn’t in a Janome room, but was in Bernina instead (no idea why). We had a WONDERFUL Bernina helper, the nice lady in the tray hair and dark top at showing how to thread the machine.

This is a fun exercise…quilting along a line and the other one no one ever believes will work, but does: “driving” through the intersections.

On Tuesday, I gave an 11 am lecture, How Did She do That?  This talk is essentially a digital trunk show with some live quilts, telling folks “how I did that.”  I love giving it, and change it up at pretty much each venue.   Since Tuesday is the day AFTER Market ends and the day before Festival begins, most folks are traveling or in classes during that time so the crowd was small, but it went well.  Since my talk was the middle of the day, I couldn’t head out to museum-hop or shop in Houston, so I attended Pam Holliday’s lecture, which was just before mine.

Pam Holliday’s quilt of her cat

And this GLORIOUS quilt based on Pam’s photography (she’s an amazing photographer, too). Shot taken during her lecture.

And of course you run into friends:

With Luana Rubin of eQuilter, whom I first met at Festival in 2003!  Luana always looks so lovely!

I discovered that I needed something for my Wednesday class, so after my talk I walked up to a RiteAid a half mile or so away.  On the way back I spotted this and had to take a picture:

Inspiration is everywhere….got any idea what it is?

A wall inside an office-building!

The lobby–the grain,m the texture of the stone reminded me of the froth on waves.

Next post will cover my Birch Pond Seasons class, which I’ll be teaching next at Maine Quilts 2015 here in Maine !

So my road to the hot place is clearly better paved today than it was when I last wrote that I was going to get to this post before Thanksgiving.  Sigh.  I’ll just say I cooked instead and the pie and gravy (not eaten together) were REALLY good.  But at long last here’s my post about International Quilt Market, a trade show open to quilt industry professionals.

Eli, Cross Country 2013 in the Dinner@8 exhibit Reflections

I only had about 90 minutes on Sunday afternoon and the same on Monday during the lunch break from the class I was teaching to visit International Quilt Market.   It is aimed primarily at shops who come to see what’s new and order inventory for their stores for the coming season from the various independent designers, fabric companies, notions manufacturers and wholesalers.  But other industry professionals (teachers, longarmers, authors, press) are allowed to attend, also.  There are many booths at Market that do not stay for Festival, so it’s a great time to network if you work in the industry as I do.

On the way in, I dashed through the exhibits (fewer people, easier to get from here to there quickly) and spotted my quilt of Eli running around the corner in the Reflections exhibit.   Jamie re-hung the exhibit so the quilts were in a better color-flow order for Festival (more pics in a future post), but I got this picture.   The theme was Reflections, and I vowed for once I would NOT be literal!  Instead, I chose to make this portrait of Eli, four years (and the same age) after I did the portrait of Joshua playing guitar.   I see reflected in him my father’s and brothers’ shoulders, brother Charlie’s forehead, Paul’s (hubby) athletic ability, my eyes and sense of color and taste.   Can you tell I’m proud of all my guys?

And I also spotted this…Two of Us , in the Inspired by the Beatles exhibit!

Two of Us, my quilt, is on the right. For the exhibit we were to make a square quilt (I think it was 24 inches?) with the title of a Beatles song but, due to copyright issues, no lyrics on it. I chose to make an anniversary quilt for Paul (then promptly told him he had to give it back to be in several exhibits, the life of a quilter’s husband!) with hand-drawn and collaged images in the center and a scrapbook style frame pf photos from the time I met him in west Africa, through our wedding and life overseas, the birth of our children, life in Maine,  to mother’s day in 2013. 

Then I made it to the floor of Quilt Market.   On the way to meet someone, I passed this booth and had to stop.  I fell in LOVE with these fabrics and quilts from the RiverWoods collection by Troy.  Hope they will be available locally or online!

Now isn’t THIS an eye-grabbing display featuring fabulous fabrics?

And

The fabric samples. Yes, I’ll take a yard of each!  Actually, I’d take a BOLT of that mango and pink!

A close up of one of those quilts:

That glorious color!

They also had this lovely sample in quieter colors…I’d love a bed quilt like that!

Blues beautiful sea blues

I’m taking a bit of a teaching sabbatical from Aug 2015 to late June 2016 to be home for every day of Eli’s senior year.  Maybe I can make some new bed quilts!

Booths to enjoy

One thing about digital cameras, you can take pics as you whiz by.  This booth was, I believe, part of the Westminster fabrics area (they print the Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics)…love the carpet, the kimono, the riot of color!

Then you see things I for one wouldn’t think to do…like black and white (by Jennifer Sampou) but that are fab!  That storm at sea is one of my favorite traditional patterns, and love this contemporary take on it.

But color wins out….I managed to pass by Jamie Fingal’s booth promoting her new line of fabric just after the closing bell rang…Jamie had already made it out, but I snapped a pic anyway!

Jamie Fingal’s latest line of fabric features pinks, greens, oranges….. LOVE IT!  I’ll tae a yard of most of these, too.

Tula Pink had a colorful booth.   Check out the fantastic Union Flag quilt on the left, the stylized alphabet quilt on the wall in the corner (above the pinked up Bernina on the table), and that arched doorway quilt on the right wall.   Maybe I need to make a Union Flag pillow for my living room chair to commemorate Eli’s and my trip this past summer!

And last booth pic,

What a profusion of pattern and texture.  I am pretty sure these are  Parson Gray and Amy Butler.  I just want to sit in room with those ottomans and funky old wood bits!

And no trip to Houston would be complete without at least a couple dinners at Ninfa’s on Navigation!  We can get lots of good ethnic foods in Maine, but alas Mexican is not among them, so I indulge in Houston:

My favorite dinner of taco, tamale, and enchilada with refritos and rice. And when the teaching is done, add a margarita or mojito! I started eating then remember the photo, so the tamale is already eaten!

Back soon (I hope) with more good stuff from Houston and England.