A few days ago, I couldn’t help myself…. it was too glorious not to just take pictures of the colors. When there are scarcely any bare branches left, when you start sneezing, and maple trees leave drifts of green fluff on the ground, spring has arrived in all its glory in Maine! When the tips of the forsythia start to go green, you know summer will be here in a month…

Even the parking lot by the police/fire station is glorious, with this tree in bloom:

Just LOOK at this!

That sky! Now that is SCREAMING BLUE!

Even the pavement is beautiful… look at the silhouettes of the budding leaves….

and the dandelions…. did you know the word comes from the French “Dents de leons” meaning (literally) “teeth of the lions”?

Spring is HERE!

It was a lovely Sunday! I got to sleep in late, then we had waffles. I love making a special breakfast on Sundays, so this time I got to pick the “what.” So I picked waffles (which tho it takes time since I make them from scratch, everyone likes so there is no grumping from the boys…well, Paul doesn’t like them but he doesn’t like anything before about 11 am so we’re not going there…). And I decided to try making them buttermilk blueberry waffles…. YUM! With butter, real maple syrup or the raspberry syrup the boys love… what a wonderful way to start the day!

Paul had a lovely bouquet of flowers for me, Joshua had trotted to town on Saturday with a donation from Paul’s wallet and a grin and returned with a bag, and Eli had a project he’d worked on for school (above). We went to see Mom and give her a nice plant, and she gave me a nice check (which is going into my iPod stereo dock stash), and then we had her over for supper, too. It was a lovely, quiet, at-home day… spring has sprung in Maine, and we loved it!

Eli’s class has been working on embroidery projects with a local fiber artist (how cool is that?). When in for his parent-teacher conference I browsed through the projects admiring several, one of which–unbeknownst to me–was Eli’s birch trees! Now THAT’s COOL!

Then, Joshua knows I love stuffed animals, so he bought me an orca since we used to see and hear them from our old house in Friday Harbor. He also loves guitar, and wants one with a Floyd Rose, which is a doo-hickie so that when one uses a whammy bar (this thing that makes a sort of sound distortion) the guitar doesn’t go out of tune. So, said orca’s name is Floyd Rose. That’s him in the photo above, on some fabrics I pulled to make a Journal quilt to enter in this eyar’s exhibit…. Floyd and my birch trees are up in my studio… I have, alas, VERY little vertical wall space tho lots of sloping ceiling. So, I’m looking for a good spot for the trees, and think I have them… stay tuned!

Inspired by my mini-group’s 5 x 5 challenge, which I blogged about here and in the photo above (right click to see it larger), my local quilt guild chapter decided to do a small art quilt challenge which will be displayed at Maine Quilts at the end of July! WOWIE zowie! To keep a little bit of the surprise, I won’t share Dwight P’s photo (used with his permission) on which the quilts were based–tho I will say it was of ropes and buoys.

I will share some of the results….for a group that hasn’t ventured much into art quilting for many of them, I thought this was 100 percent awesome! And the left side of the table:

Jan P., married to the photographer, played with the photo in her computer software, then created the cloth! Everything you see in Jan’s photo began as white.

Barb Melchiskey is an expert applique-er , and it appears she has a good eye for abstracting elements, too!

Mathea Daunheimer, if you can believe it, has only been quilting about two years (and already has a quilt juried in to the Tactile Architecture exhibit in Houston… YEAH MATHEA!), but has clearly done lots of things artistic. She used Tsukinenko inks to draw/paint her piece:

I’ll share my two pieces…two colorways of the sames cropped view of the photo with you in a later post, including HOW I did the “drawing.” Wish I had taken more close ups! Hope you can come to Augusta at the end of July for our show. Here’s a link to the Pine Tree Quilt Guild / Maine Quilts website.

WOOT! My for-sale copies of Creative Quilting with Beads have arrived, along with the beads to make the pomegranate project on the cover. If you are interested, please pop over to the store page on my website, here. I have yet to figure out the mysteries of paypal shipping options (where you enter your location and actually get that to talk to the shopping cart to calculate the correct amount), so there are FOUR options, two for delivery in the US and two for delivery outside the US, all using the Flat Rate Priority Mail envelopes. I can fit one book (barely) into each envelope; I can also squeeze one baggie of beads into the same envelope, so you can purchase just the book, OR the book PLUS the beads.  (PS–if you are in Canada, write to me first, I may be able to get a less expensive postage for you than int’l flat rate….)

I actually counted (!!!) how many beads on my covers: 291! This was slightly less than a tube of the hard-to-find red drop beads. I had intended to use size 8 seed beads, but when I found the drop beads I knew they were perfect. They are–get ready for a surprise now (not!)–drop shaped, but the hole is near the skinny end. When you take a stitch with them, the thread disappears down at the base and only the red bulbous end shows…so it looks just like a pomegranate seed! I then counted out 300 beads, which was just over 15 grams, so I upped the quantity per baggie to an even 16 grams. So how much is that? Funny you should ask… it is this much:

If you bead at the same density I did, you should have about 15-20 beads leftover… a nice margin I think.

Anyway, you can order autographed-by-me copies on my website and the beads too. Thanks for reading! And once I get Eli to soccer practice later this morning, I’ll take a photo of my alternate colorway and orientation. The version in the book is to cover a composition notebook. The alternate covers a 7″ tall x 10″ wide Canson watercolor notebook/sketchbook (standard size available at www.dickblick.com among other places). Hmmmm…… maybe I’ll offer and e-mail with the measurements etc. already done to those who order from me and ask for them… does that sound good?

Now…to pack up a bag of reading materials while at soccer practice… it is GLORIOUS spring here in Maine…green is blushing all the treetops and after yesterday’s rain the sky is screaming blue! Thermometer says we are up to 62 already and it is only 10:15 am!

PS…for an earlier browse through the book, see my earlier blogpost here.

My last quilting class in Paducah, and one of the most fun, was Nearly No Mark machine quilting. Marking a quilt top is up there in the (NOT) fun category with basting! But playing and doodling with your needle and thread IS fun! These designs are ones I use in art quilts all the time, but they can just as easily be used in contemporary and even some traditional quilts. I have come up with what I call my vocabulary of quilting stitches.

These are stitched out as fill patterns, but they could easily be enlarged and used for all-over quilting patterns for a lap quilt or snuggly. I shared my teacher samples a while back, but the pink sampler above is the one I like best so I’ll share it again!

Click on the thumbnail for a larger view (or right click on a PC, and on a mack apple-key + click, to open in another tab/window) with more details of the quilting.

Now lookit what my great students did, and how they translated my patterns into their own thing! This first photo is awesome because she has her hands in what I call the safe position… where you are unlikely to sew through your fingers (it hurts… I’ve done it and do NOT recommend it!) (PS–the following photos can all be viewed larger–click on the photo to resize and/or open in a new tab/window). This hand position also has the virtue of making a small, smooth “hooped” area for your quilting…cool!

I showed the students how to use your arm as an extended compass to make large arcs using your elbow as a pivot point. Many followed my example and made circles (using my high tech templates—yogurt and take-out lids) and arcs, then filled in the resulting spaces with the nearly-no-mark designs; in this one, I really like her variations on the spirals:

I want to find this thread… it is YLI and is heavier (cotton) than I usually use, but the colors are GLORIOUS and so “me!” The quilter lives in Florida, so I think the water colors are inspired by her home….

I think this student is comfortable and happy playing with free-motion, don’t you? (You can see a smidgen of my handout on the far right)

And another arc… I like the vine inside the arc and also switching up the fill on the mini-checkerboard:

One student took my “Southern California themed” piece:

and reworked it… I like her version better! Her thread contrast is way better than mine (I think I’m going to re-do the blue one… it needs it….)

I love that spiky sun that is just at the edge of the sewing table, and also how she used the loops to outline the circle:

And can you tell she loves to quilt… this lady must love playing with the quilting as much as I do! And poor thing…she was short, and tables were SO high… I have no idea how she managed to quilt so well in those circumstances… I love the merging of one pattern into the next:

I think one of the things I enjoyed most was watching the students take my designs and turn them into their own, modifying, improving, changing up, experimenting… WAY cool!