The newest issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited is out, complete with my article on Negative Space or what I like to think of as “the spaces in between.”  I promised a download of the leaf and vine motif from the feature quilt, Little Brown Bird, which I’ll share in another post.  For a full discussion of negative space, you can buy a copy of the magazine here, but here is a quick recap.  Think of a chair with slats on the back:

The spaces between the spindles on the back are “negative space.”  The chair itself is the “positive” image.  Likewise, the spaces between the legs and rungs are negative (or “in between”) space.

For the article, I created some examples based on the principles of Notan.  The definitive book is Notan:  The dark-light principle of design by Bothwell and Mayfield.  The Yin/Yang symbol is the class example of positive and negative space.  Each teardrop shape is identical to the other, but one is dark and one is light.  The two are perfectly balanced, and the proportions of the small circle within the teardrop, the shape of the large end of the teardrop, and the entire circle are all geometrically related:

Here is the vine motif I developed:

If you like this motif, I’ve prepared a PDF which you may download for your personal use.  Since it is under copyright, please don’t sell it or use it in classes you might teach (without receiving my written OK first), or other nefarious stuff… please DO use it in your quilts, modify it, and have fun.   Also, this is my first time trying to create a down-loadable PDF, so I’m hoping it works!  To download the PDF version (with the black removed so it doesn’t eat up your ink), click here: leafandvinemotifpdf

Enjoy!

A while back, I shared a tiny tease from Little Brown Bird, a small wholecloth art quilt here.  Well, here is all 16×20 inches (or thereabouts) of it:

I made this quilt as an illustration for my Machine Quilting Unlimited article (July 2009 issue) on Negative space.  I developed the vine motif as part of the illustrative exercises, then decided to put it into use in the quilt.

The fabric is one of my hand-dyes, and is relatively monotone yellow-green.  I quilted it using five shades of green thread (Superior Threads’ 40-wt. polyester, with green Bottom Line — a fine 60-wt polyester — in the bobbin). The darkest shade of green is used in the bird, the next darkest for the straight lines and vine/leaf motif, and the lighter shades to shade/lighten the background.

Here is a detail of the bird:

And here is another of the leaf/vine motif:

If you visit my blog on June 16 (obviously it will not be “live” until the 16th!) blogpost, you can download a free PDF of the leaf/vine motif for use in your own quilting!

Woooohoooo!   It’s official:  the Coastal Quilters Chapter Banner has been juried in to the AQS show in Knoxville, TN.  Each of the three AQS shows (the others are the famous Paducah show and the new Des Moines show) have different categories and size requirements.  The Knoxville show is the only one for which a group quilt of this size is eligible…and we got in!

I am SO PROUD of the 18 women who did even better than their best on their contributions to this quilt!  For the full run-down, visit here (gallery page on my website) for details.  Now, to go get it packed up and see if Louisa can drop the package off when I’m away.  WOOHOOO!

Here is a detail photo, too….

Strong Women of the World, rise up, unite, and rejoice!

The Quilt Mavericks are this wonderful, supportive, loving caring group online;  I am fortunate to be a part of it.  Recently, one of our members shared something about her personal life for the first time ever (after living with a horror for 20 years) and asked us for strength and white light… you have to understand that Mav Power is a force to be reckoned with!   When all of us get together, we can conquer and save and love the world.

A number of the members in response shared similar tales of difficulties from their lives, and one of us (who was it?  OK.. it was Leslie!) said we should have  A Strong Women’s Day.  Once it was spoken, it came to be!   Let’s start a movement!

When I first heard Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon / A Prairie Home Broadcast 20-plus years ago, I chuckled at the humor in his closing:  “And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where the men are good looking, the women are strong, and all the children are above average.”  Of course, that was the point of his humor…. the play on conventional expectations that the man is strong, when in fact it is women who are the ones made of steel and love, who endure the trials of life and still love and care and cope and rejoice.

Fellow Mavs Leslie blogged about strong women, here, as did Deirdre, here and Margi, here, and Cindy here, and Julie here, and Margaret here.

I’d like to choose my friend Linda Wauchope as my strong woman this year.  She died more than a decade ago, but in her final months, she showed me courage beyond anything I have ever seen or touched in my life.  Liver cancer took her when her children were a bit younger than mine are now (mine are 11 and 15); she and her husband were building a new home that she never got to live in.  He accelerated his retirement plans so he could be home with her for the final months of her life.  Watching her waste away with each passing visit was offset by watching her strength of spirit endure to the very end.  After her memorial service at the reception at their old home, I noticed the calendar in the kitchen:  Linda had left notes of when to get the furnace serviced, when to renew this or that policy, annual chores to be done, on every month.

To this day, I often think of her, her irreverent, sassy sense of humor, and think “gee, Linda would get SUCH a kick out of this.”  So Linda, here’s to you my friend!  (The photo above is from about 1990 when we both lived with our husbands in Libreville, Gabon.  We were both US Foreign Service officers, but on leave without pay so our hubbies could pursue their careers.  Her husband was the Ambassador, mine the Deputy Chief of Mission (deputy Ambassador)…  long ago and far away.)

I wrote about Linda two years ago when my quilt, The Tree, was donated to and auctioned for cancer research.  The quilt was dedicated to three people in my life who suffered..and two who died from… cancer:  Linda, my brother Charlie, and Daddy.  The photos got moved out of order when we migrated the blog from blogger to my website, but that post is here.

A few days ago I shared part of The Frayed Edges May meeting, including the pages Kate and Kathy made for our “round robin book” exchange.  Today I thought I’d share the pages I made for Kate, Kathy and Deborah—Hannah’s is still on the drawing board (which means fully formed inside my mind, but not fully formed anywhere else!).

Kate’s theme changed from hands to hearts.  I am NOT much of a heart person, so I asked if we could sssttttrrreeettttccch (stretch) the concept…so the piece above is “The Heart(h) of the home,” since many say the hearth IS the heart of the home.  When we visit at Kate’s we eat in the kitchen/dining room, which has a good old fashioned wood stove and some comfy chairs.  The stove pictured here is Kate’s (or very close), the chair is the rocking chair and stool in my sewing room.   The fabric for the floor is one I made in my last Carol Soderlund workshop; I took some “dog” hand-dyed (some fabric I had previously dyed and was UGLY), overdyed and dye-sketched with the black.  It was perfect for a wood floor!

The reverse side of Kate’s page is a stretch for me… I don’t do much surface design (and for the most part am not wild about a lot of the “surface design” / “art cloth” pieces that I see, which often look like a mish-mosh).  But I wanted to see what I could do.  So I took a piece of nearly-solid leaf green fabric I had dyed some time ago ,sponged on some color/texture, and  created freezer paper stencils (and boy did they ever take time to cut…. I printed “I Heart Art” onto freezer paper… and it took at LEAST two HOURS to cut those letters out!) and stencilled I Heart Art onto the cloth.  I also cut stencils for hearts.  For some, I filled in the inside of the heart; for others I ironed the heart on and painted a halo/glow on the outside of the shape.

When Deborah last came to Maine last September we had a wonderful sleepover down near Kate’s house (blogpost here).  It was a GLORIOUS and rejuvenating getaway for us (and Kate’s mojitos were memorable!).  At that time, we exchanged journal covers; Kathy has been lusting after the one I made (Which Kate drew in our “grab it out of a pillowcase” method of exchange), so I made her a page with the seal in the kelp:

And one of my favorite sea creatures, the sea turtles–the background of this one, by the way, is one of my all time favorite batik prints, from Princess Mirah/Bali Fabrics:

When hubby and I were were young, well-employed and kidless (and pounds lighter in weight) we went to a resort on Saint John in the US Virgin Islands.  We would snorkel at least once a day, and I fell in love with the tropical fish, especially the parrotfish, and the turtles.  It was so soothing that when asked to visualize something calming for childbirth, I set myself snorkeling, imagining the gentle waves rocking me as I floated and paddled above the coral reefs.

Deborah’s pages were actually the first ones I did.  I was stumped for ideas, since the next pages in sequence were numbers 9 and 10.  So off to google!  Nine quickly brought up the nine planets (I refuse to de-planet-ify Pluto!), so I made the nine planets around the sun for page 9.

Deborah has done some wonderful work with illumination and published an article on her process in February/March 2009 issue of Quilting Arts this past year.  When Google reminded me that the Byzantine Empire was at its peak in the 10th century, I new I wanted to use the mosaics from the Byzantine churches.  A second google search yielded photos of Christ Imperator from Hagia Sofia.  Following instructions from Lesley Riley published in a Quilting Arts e-Newsletter (more info here), I applied fluid matte medium to Lutradur, which I then ran through the printer.

The coolest thing about using the lutradur instead of fabric was being able to made sharp fiddly “cuts” using the heat tool (I have a tool for cutting stencil plastic).  I placed the Lutradur on a piece of glass (an 8×10 piece from a frame, edges taped) and “cut” with the tool.  Initially, I wasn’t going to use the bits of wall and extra pieces, but when I went to move the areas surround Christ’s head and halo to the side, I loved the echo/shapes.  It reminded me of how parts of the mosaics have fallen away from the church domes leaving the plaster showing.

As with Kate’s piece, I cut stencils to “write” Byzantium, 10th c. AD on the 7×10 inch page.  Talk about FIDDLY!   I would gladly pay a small fortune to buy a thermofax so as not to have to cut stencils like this!  But…this may be one of my favorite pages that I have made.  I don’t know yet how I will incorporate

Here is a link to Deborah’s blogpost about my current pages for her book:  Deborah’s blogpost.

As you can tell, we have FUN!