Woooohooo!  (and OMG…two posts in one day?)  Doing the Snoopy Dance (despite the dank humidity and clammy temps here in usually balmy Maine):  Cookie?  PLEEEZE Cookie!, my portrait of our pug Pigwidgeon, got juried into the World of Beauty contest that is the heart of the IQA Quilt Festival in Houston this fall! (Click on picture for much larger view.)

In addition to this sweet pug mug, I’ll have the portrait of my son Joshua in the Beneath the Surface exhibit (thanks to MistyFuse our sponsor!), and two quilts in the special exhibit showing  quilts from Lark Books’ popular 5oo Art Quilts book.  WOOT!  Tippety tap, tippety tap…sounds like more celebrating…break out the ice cream!

On one of my internet groups, a friend from Scotland posted a link to this YouTube video.  It has been around a while, but I hadn’t seen it, and like it so much I too wanted to share.

She wrote:

The Palindrome Video

“This video reads the exact opposite backwards as forwards.

Not only does it read the opposite, the meaning is the exact opposite.

Confused ? I was … but just take 1 mnute 44 seconds to read and listen to this video.

It was submitted in a contest by a 20 year old student – the contest was called ‘U @ 50’

It won 2nd place and everyone in the room broke into spontaneous applause when they saw it.

Sometimes the simplest things are the most brilliant !”

And here is the link, and now I’m going to try to embed this in my blogpost:

Like Jan, I invite you to enjoy!

Well…I’m only 2+ months behind on some blogging!  I’ve been busy on the road teaching in Arizona, Massahusetts and Ohio (at the NQA show!), and then Knoxville (AQS), TN, in July!   But I am trying to get caught up and share some of the lovely things I saw while on our family vacation after teaching in Arizona for the statewide quilt guild. Here is what the Grand Canyon looked like when we arrived at the South Rim in late April:

Notice that dark cloud on the horizon, especially to the left…well, it moved fast!  The following sequence of photos was taken as we walked along the rim…took all of 40 minutes.  We went from overcast:

Notice the cheerful (sigh…) family…woefully underdressed for the weather we were about to encounter:

All I can say is THANK HEAVENS the boys got this glimpse…even the jaded teenager went “WHOA!!!!!!” on first looking over the railing/wall!

To mist moving into the canyon about (literally) two minutes later:

Then looking down into the canyon:

And watching the veils of mist and snow and rain and shafts of sunlight–it was actually pretty cool to see this, as opposed to screaming blue skies and sunshine typical of summer:

To rain:

To clouds down in the canyon:

And the markers explaining the stone layers that you see:

And drifting cloud wisps–you can see the snow gathering on the north rim:

Then the north rim disappeared:

To SNOW…a late spring snowstorm.

To WhiteOut:

On the drive back to Flagstaff, cars on the Interstate highway had slowed to 25 miles an hour the road conditions were so slippery!  So before we got on the road, we went into the big old inn for some hot food.  I loved the table setting:

Back during winter, I took an online course on Lino-cutting with Australian Dijanne Cevaal (her blog is here).  One Sunday while watching the Winter Olympics, I began carving this 12″ block–it took most of four hours to Oh-So-Carefully cut (and not slip) just the pebbly center, but it was SO worth the ache in my hands.  I just love the way this turned out:

You may be able to get more feel for the quilting from this angled shot:

The quilt was quilted, then wrapped onto artists’ stretcher bars (staple gunned to the back), then finished the back with a nice cloth cover.  Here’s a detail:

Hope you like it!

PS–Dijanne offers the course periodically.  If you are interested, surf over to her blog and ask when it is next scheduled.  OK…just checked, next session starts July 14, so am posting this earlier than I initially planned!  If you move fast, you can take the class soon!

Patsy Thompson is a quilter, author and DVD maven (with seemingly unlimited energy sources!) who loves quilted feathers…the more of them, the more intricate and hyperquilted, the better!  She recently shared her book Feather Adventures! with me:

The book is aptly subtitled:  The Machine Quilter’s Guide to Creating Stunning and Innovative Free Motion Feather Designs, and tantalizingly adds “Volume One”  (that’s hidden in the glare of the camera flash…sorry ’bout that).     The information in this book is good for machine quilters using both home and longarm (on a track) quilters…it’s all about design and building or creating your colorful feathers.

The book is organized into the following chapters:

1. The Basic Freeform Feather
2. Feathers with Stitched Spines
3. Start Thinking Outside the Box!
4. Hyperquilting!
5. Hyperquilting Special Effects
6. Epilogue

Patsy proceeds from an intro-level feather to increasingly complex variations on the theme, guiding you one step at a time.  The designs at the back at first might appear to be overwhelmingly complex, but as you follow Patsy’s clearly laid out process, you can see that these seemingly-complicated designs are a fairly simple, straightforward process.   As I was flipping through the book when it arrived, I had my first “smack-self-upside-head” moment:  use a flexible ruler to create the spine, then flip it over to mirror image the design OR simple move the curved ruler to repeat the motif.  DUH!   Why didn’t I think of that?  Thank you, Patsy!  (Read more about how on pages 14-15.)

As you read and play around with designs through the chapters, you can see how Patsy has used different variations to come up with feathers that while structurally the same look quite different.   It is up to you to decide how much is just right for your quilt!

The Stitched Spines are some of my favorite variations…. I can see using these ideas as a jumping off point for using feathers creatively in my quilting.  Even though I tend to make pictorial art quilts, I’ve already begun incorporating traditional quilting motifs.  In the quilt of my son playing his guitar (final post with finished quilt here) , I used several large feathered vines to quilt the background, and think with the inspiration of Patsy’s variations, I’ll be using them even more.

I really liked the curlicues in the photo above, too…. this particular wreath has traditional feathers on the outside, a decoratively stitched spine, and the curlicues on the inside…way cool!

Then Patsy goes over the top with a term I think she coined, Hyperquilting!  Although this might be a bit too much on many quilts (and would get lost on print fabric!), it is sure a fun idea, and may spark new ideas in how to use thread in your quilting beyond just feathers (yes, Patsy….. we all love feathers, but there are other things too!).  The only thing I wish for is more photos (of course?  what quilter doesn’t want more pictures?), especially of the entire quilt pictures.  The detail shots are perfect for achieving the aim of this book:  to teach us how.  But I’d love to see some inset photos that show the entire quilt to the edges so we can get the overall picture.   I’ll look forward to future volumes!

The book is available in a number of places, including from Patsy, here.  While you’re visiting her site, check out her blog…she has LOTS of great information there, too!