(1).png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
.png){kind=small}
Champlain Valley Quilt Guild
How time flies when you are on the road and busy! This week I had the great fortune to travel to the Burlington, Vermont, area thanks to the Champlain Valley Quilt Guild to give a lecture on Journal Quilts and Journals for Quilters, then my Fine Finishes class (all about bindings, alternative edge finishes, and display options for smaller quilts). Alas, I was SO BUSY during the lecture and the class, that I TOTALLY forgot to take class pictures! So if anyone from the guild has a few to lend me, please let me know!
To get from Camden, Maine, to anywhere, requires a lot of 2-lane highways through beautiful, EMPTY space. Basically, in New England, all (large-ish) roads lead to Boston. That means anything that runs east-west is small, twisty-turny, and takes a long time. Even though it was only 300-325 miles one-way, it took over seven hours (including pit stops). Luckily, there were some gorgeous places en route. As I drove through the lakes district in sorta-south, western Maine, with the snow melting and the air warming, I passed this beautiful view
While at a rest stop in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, I was pulling back on to the road, looked to my right and immediately stepped on the brakes, grabbed the camera and lowered the window…. see the picture at the top, too!
Then, around a bend, I came across the White Mountain Lodge, which looks as if it must have been built in the late 1800s…. isn’t this gorgeous? And let me tell you, there isn’t much near it!
After my lecture on Tuesday evening, was show and tell. At least I had the wit to snap a picture of Andre’s gorgeous bird quilt, made from a pattern by a designer from Texas. LOVE IT!
My hostess in Vermont lives just across the road from Lake Champlain, and from their front rooms, you can see between the big homes across the street to the lake and the mountains in New York. After class on Wednesday, while the lasagna heated up in the oven, Janet, Claire (the two co-program chairs) and Claire’s son Noah (look for his unbelievable miniature quilt at the upcoming Vermont Quilt Festival! It is amazing!) and I went for a lovely walk on a causeway out into the lake. The day before I had thought, as I made my requisite donation to the local quilt shop (Yankee Pride, with a lovely and WAY too enticing selection of batiks), it occurred to me that one way to deal with beloved batiks that go out of print would be to make thermofax screens and print my own designs inspired by the batiks. So I took some pictures of the ready-to-leaf-out treetops with that in mind:
Plus, look at this COOL pattern in the granite….good quilt and screen and stamping inspiration:
On the way home, I dipped south a ways to Springfield, VT, where my on-line friend Jacquie Scuitto lives. Known on the quiltart list as the Quilt Muse for her poems on quilt and art and life, her home is about 2 hours south of Springfield but, thanks to those twisty-two-lane-roads, only added an hour to my trip home. I got a tour of her home and quilts, met a few of her quilty friends, and was treated to a homemade corn chowder before starting my trip home. Here’s a picture of Jacquie with her Second Day of Christmas (Two TURTLE doves) quilt,
and another (with her hiding) behind this fun variation on the traditional Drunkard’s Path quilt… I love the setting:
Jacquie came to visit me a while back when she, hubby Lou and brother Don had come to Maine for a family get-together (blogged about it here), and I’ll get to see her again this summer when her daughter and two granddaughters visit from Germany and travel through Camden…yeah!
April 13th, 2009 at 8:25 am
Sarah —
I wrote this before meeting with another email friend some years ago and it applies to you as well.
BONDING
I’m going to meet an e-mail friend,
We’ll have a chance to really gab —
In real time, face to face!
I think it’s going to be fab!
We can wave our hands and make faces
While an abstruse point we explain
And laughing together at the same time
Will be a joy and a gain.
Our parting will come all too swiftly,
There’ll be more we wanted to say
But we’ll have to do it by e-mail again
When my friend’s several states away.
The memories though will sustain us,
Make communications more real.
With voice and face to remember
It will help our friendship to seal.
April 13th, 2009 at 2:28 pm
Sarah,
Today I was watching Quilting Arts on PBS-TV and saw your tree quilt that was part of a journal arts display in Chicago. The series number is 302. When I saw the small quilt, I knew immediately it was you. You are famous.
Jane