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!

When I taught recently in Connecticut, my contact told me there was a great quilt shop…since I’m watching my pennies, I had thought I wouldn’t stop in so as to avoid temptation.  Hah!  And I’m so glad I did stop in…what a treasure of a shop!  Here’s a photo of what you see as you walk in the door of Sew Inspired!!!!

To backtrack a bit, the shop is located inside a small complex known as Fiddler’s Green, on the main drag in downtown Simsbury (well, I think it is the main drag!).  Here’s the entrance to the complex:

And the entrance to the store:

Once you get inside, it just gets better and better. The staff is friendly and helpful, and I had a great time talking to Viv  and Sandy.  Here is a close up of the glorious array of batiks:

And over on the left are Amy Butler, Kaffe Fassetts, notions, patterns, friendly staff, great lighting… in the back is a class room to die for:  great and adjustable chairs, the best lighting I’ve ever seen overhead, a big window for real daylight and a view of what is going on outside….

There is a good selection of notions and, better yet, art quilting supplies!

Then it continues, downstairs.  The shop opened 3 1/2 years ago in the lower level.  They’ve grown so much they expanded upstairs, and the lower area is now studio-for-rent space with 8×8 foot designs walls, a longarm (for rent also), a separate room for co-owner who does quilting-for-hire on her Gammill, and an office area.  They also have a die-cutting machine, again available for rent…..Can you say DREAM STORE?

The design wall area:

The for-rent longarm:

The store is also an authorized HandiQuilter dealer, and recently added a sit-down HQSixteen to the upstairs classroom….drool!

Clearly, I could not escape unscathed….here is my haul –and this was from two visits… I resisted the Goergia O’Keefe morning glory prints, an Alexander Henry that I lusted after when it was first printed 6 years ago… now that it is back out I had to indulge! Plus the three on the right are from Alewives Fabrics, in Damariscotta Mills, Maine (I’m teaching there in July, stopped to drop off patterns for sale, and had to add to the loot.)

Finally, I took my aching, throbbing feet (this was after the night lecture and the full day teaching) next door to the Japanese restaurant which had impeccable service and my favorite, Chicken Katsu, for dinner:

What more could you want…good fabric, good staff  (in both the store and the restaurant) and good food?  The store is just northwest of Hartford; if you’re anywhere in the vicinity, it is WELL worth a stop!

I request the pleasure of your company in a totally uninhibited, majorly deliriously insanely happy snoopy dance…… (cue the drums and trumpets):  MY BOOK COVER IS OUT!

Yes, folks…. it is really gonna happen!   The major editorial work is yet to be done, but the projected publication date is Fall 2009!

The book covers using thread by machine on the surface of the quilt, so it touches on applique, free-motion stitching (I can’t bring myself to call it embroidery) and quilting, plus lots of tips and tidbits and good stuff–choosing threads, understanding your machine’s tension and all that.  The book is also written so that both art and traditional quilters can use it and find inspiration and technique.

I was surprised at the quilts AQS selected for the cover, but understand why:  both of these teaching samples showcase the stitching, and the photography is simply outstanding.  (And the one on the left is in a class I’ll be teaching in Houston in October about using Fiddly, Fussy Threads!) And I really love the dangling thread on the “d” … after all, quilters come with threads attached!

Much closer to actual release date, I’ll have information here about how/when to order (yes, I will be selling it from my store page….but that’s still a few lifetimes away…like October or November).  Hmmm…timely for Christmas gift giving???? Heh heh…..and now, back to jumping and flailing wildly (and making my kids grateful I’m doing this inside the house and not  in public LOL!)…let’s CELEBRATE!