We were a small group this time, what with Deborah in Texas and Hannah home with kids (end-of-school stuff), but we had a wonderful time!

One of the first things to greet us besides Kate (we were at her house this time), was this glorious bouquet of flowers, including a lupine which are now blooming with riotous abandon across the state:

As usual, I forgot to take a picture of lunch, but you know it was good when your friends have such wonderful smiles:

Kath and I had a good chuckle at first when we saw this:

It turns out it wasn’t (as I figured, like it would be at my house), a frazzled mom grabbing something that was knocked awry and putting it up wrong, but in fact Kate’s son’s deliberate take on art.

Kate shared with us her new chicken coop:

And we got to see her still-growing chickens…just think, your OWN fresh eggs!

Her house also happens to have an outdoor shower… wonderful for our summers.  Of course you know an artist lives here when there is  a lovely-colored drop cloth drying on the fence:

Given that it is summer and three of us here in Maine have kids, we’re likely (SOB) not to get together again until August, but finally THIS year we are going to have our dyeing fabric day in my back yard…I can’t wait!

What is an Alewife?  It’s a fish!   I’d never heard of them either until we moved to Maine.  I’d probably not ever heard of them until I discovered a gem of a quilt shop called Alewives Fabric and Gifts in Damariscotta Mills (about 45 minutes south of me).  Because they are set back a couple of miles from Route 1, and I’m always racing to somewhere, I’d never been there until my dear friend Kathy invited me along one day.  As I’ve said before, that store is a serious Visa accident waiting to happen!  (and I’ll be totally wicked and tell you that they now have batiks and Amy Butler and Kaffe Fassett and and and for sale online!)  But this is about the fish…and they run in early May (yes, I’m late writing this up!… I knew they were running because a month ago on a trip south I saw a roadside sign and truck selling smoked alewives!)

Kathy did this quilt of the Alewives, who return from the sea, travel up the Great Salt Bay and head upriver at Damariscotta Mills, telling me about the fish ladder. (Kathy blogged about the quilt, I think, but her blog doesn’t have a search box on it so couldn’t find a picture…sorry!)  A fish ladder?  yep…. as you approach the area, you see the area in the above photo.  You can tell the fish are running thanks to a generous supply of cormorants and seagulls lurking for an easy meal.

Then you see the pen used to harvest some of the fish, which are about 10 inches long I’d guess.  The fish are used for lobster trap bait and used to be used as a foodsource.  On the information plaques, it says that for over 200 years it has been a tradition to give widows alewives (salted and cured I’d think….).

The lower portion of the fish ladder…which is basically a stream 24 inches wide or less (about .65 metres) with rocky small falls, rivulets and pools progressing up the hill to the Mills pond and lake at the top of the run…..was wall-to-wall fish:

If you look carefully, you can see both the shadow of the railing (lower right) and all those dark curvy things are alewives.

The next three pictures are close-ups of the information sign.  If you click on the photo it should (?) open up larger so maybe you can read the text.

I was lucky that someone came to purchase some alewives while I was there.  The fish are plentiful, so there is no risk to the fish stocks in harvesting them, and the proceeds from the sales are used for renovations and upkeep of the fish ladder.

First, the guy who works there gets a helper, and they use a sturdy mesh frame attached to two long poles to herd/sweep the wall-to-wall fish into a pen. As you can see on the right, there is a lot of late-spring runoff water tumbling down!

Next:  you see the fish splashing up next to the screen/sweeper:

This shot shows a fair number of the soon-to-be-bait alewives:

Then, the workers crank the pen which tips up.  The fish slide down into the hopper:

Talk about a thundering roar as all those flopping fish thump and twitch their way down the metal ramp/tilt/whatever it is!

And then there are MORE:

Finally, they stop flopping, having spent too long in the air.  They are then scooped into a crate for the waiting lobsterman.

And that’s my fish tale for today!  I love living in a place where people have lived for over 200 years.  For those of you in Europe, it is no big deal, but in the US it means we are among the oldest European-origin communities around.  Cool.

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….