Late last year, Lisa Chipetine from the Studio Art Quilt Associates, invited me to participate in an online Quilt Critique session with Sandra Sider.  Never having been through a real critique session, I was nervous, but was so pleased to have been asked that I rustled up some courage and said yes, thank you!  Boy am I glad I did!   Since I didn’t have much in the way of new work (my time the past 24 months has been taken up with writing my manuscript and family crises, all now resolved).  So I offered up Koi and Naiads.  Since there is more going on in Naiads, Lisa suggested I use that one for the critique.  I will state up front that I was quite happy with this quilt as it was, and it had already won a Judges’ Choice (Lisa Erlandson) award at Maine Quilts last year and an Honorable Mention at the Lowell Quilt Festival show last summer, also.   Guess what:  it COULD be made better!

Here is the before,

Naiads, Original "complete" version, notice the ripple over the swimming figure

Here are the before and after, side by side:

Naiads, Revised full version

Naiads, Original "complete" version

Sandra spotted three things that could stand improvement, one of which I had already noticed.  What she mentioned first, however, is something that totally escaped me:  the seated figure on the left–her leg, the one in the water, was disproportionately long!  Even though I thought I had drawn carefully, Sandra was absolutely right.  So the water was rendered opaque, covering up the extra length since re-doing the figure would have been a horrid amount of work:

Naiads, original version, too-long leg

And after:

Naiads, Revised, leg "shortened" and center figure improved

Sandra also noted that I had done a very good job (thank you!) of making the water LOOK like water, which she said is hard to do in cloth.   Because of that she suggested that I shorten the willow branches on the right so that the feeling of rushing river water would be enhanced.  I didn’t want to cut them as short as she suggested (above the river bank), but I did shorten them so that only the longest branches reach the top of the river.  I agree… it looks better and more “flow-y”.

Finally, the naiad swimming in the middle.  I had not quilted over her center, because quilting on painted cloth (the figure) looks weird sometimes, and the other figures weren’t quilted, plus I wanted to preserve the illusion of transparent water washing over her body.  Alas, that meant a somewhat unsightly bubble.  Sandra (using a blur/cloning tool I think) showed in her doctored jpeg during the critique (more on the how of the online session in a minute) how the focal point of the three figures is enhance by covering the lower half to 2/3 of the swimming Naiad’s body.

I wanted to retain the illusion of water, where you can see the body through the water, but agreed this section dearly needed help, so I split the difference.  I covered her hip and middle with more of the same fabrics used for the river, but left her feet and a bit more of her torso revealed.   I think the overall effect is VASTLY improved! as shown in the “Revised” detail photo.

OK…so how does an online critique work?  Lisa’s description of the “webinar”, here, is the best, plus there is a YouTube type “video” here, but in a nutshell you need a phone (toll call), an internet connection, and to show up at the designated time.  The four or five participants in the one-hour session send jpegs to Sandra about 2 weeks ahead of time, giving her thinking and “Photoshopping” time.  The critiques occur in sequence, and “silent participants” can call in and listen but not engage in the conversation (it costs less to listen than be an active participant, a mere $5 per one-hour session for the silent one, and a modest $20 for active participant).

Sandra will show the before, ask the artist (unnamed) their goals, concerns, etc., then offer suggestions.  At this point, other critique participants may also chime in.  I can tell you that I learned as much from looking and listening and commenting on the other art quilts as from the review of my own.  I have a major project/commission coming up, and once I get detailed cartoons/sketches done and maybe some initial work on the first of six panels, will go back for a good critical eye before I get too far into construction.

The bottom line?  A very worthwhile and educational experience!

Hi all!  It is frustrating sometimes to be working, working, working, and feel like I can’t really share stuff yet!  In this instance, I finished writing my next article for Machine Quilting Unlimited (click here for more info on the magazine), which will be on negative space (basically, the spaces between….alas you’ll have to wait for the magazine to come out to learn more!).

For the magazine, I decided to use one of the exercises I illustrated to make a design which I then used as a quilting motif, and made a small wholecloth quilt.  The picture above is a detail photo….you’ll have to wait for the design, but I’ve decided to upload it to my blog/website as a free pdf for folks to download when the article is published in July…let’s hope that I can get the pdf thing to work!

Anyway, I totally love how this little quilt turned out and think I may enter it in an art quilt show this summer.

I also needed an alternative to the photo/illustration I intended to use in a different part of the article.  I had hoped that I could repeat an image from one article (in the April issue) to the next to illustrate my points…both to save on work, but mostly to show that the design principles I’m teaching  are all interrelated.  Alas, no go.  So I whipped out a new sample, and here’s another detail:

I really like this one… it would work well for traditional quilters, and art quilters can really soup it up….hope you like it!

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!

Ya know, from these photos you’d never know we did more than talk or eat!   We actually DID talk art and sewing, shared projects (and I could have SWORN I took a photos of Kathy’s latest bird quilt…ruffed grouse and her crabapple tree!), but nope…..   So you’ll just have to enjoy our togetherness!
Hannah and her daughter came… it is so much fun to see Nina grow from being an infant to a toddler and soon a little girl….

Kate hosted us at her  house, which is always wonderful.  We got to go see their own personal maple syrup source…with new-fangled plastic tap and bucket.  For those who aren’t from maple-syrup-regions, it takes 40 gallons of sap (which is clear like water and faintly sweet) to make 1 gallon of syrup (which darkens as it cooks):

The tap on the tree

and the bucket:

The bucket with sap dripping into it (normally covered to prevent bugs etc)

Here was lunch..see Deborah…I was thinking of you and actually remembered to take pictures of the wonderful Italian Wedding Soup Kate made, with homemade chicken/turkey meatballs:

And on the way home, a flock of wild turkey crossed the road and headed into the still-snowy woods:

To wrap up my Simsbury, Connecticut posts, I’d like to share some photographs I took within two blocks of my B&B.  I find inspiration everywhere, and take COPIOUS photos… I have over 14,000 on my computer (in the process of being moved to an external hard drive to free up space, plus the usual back-up CDs) from just the past four years or so!   The first are from the B&B where I stayed:

The remaining photos are from the old cemetary and around the area.  The first building is the chamber of commerce and library, and had great details in the windows.  The second, multicolored building is I don’t know what, but cool.

And that’s it folks!  Here’s the glorious sky as I walked back for my last night…

looks like something out of an oil painting!