I just love our little guild chapter here in the Camden region! As I’ve probably mentioned many times before, the Coastal Quilters are a chapter of the statewide Pine Tree Quilt Guild. This year we decided to have a test-run holiday bazaar during our regularly-scheduled Second-Saturday meeting. WOW!

It was packed for the first 90 minutes, and I actually make some money, sold a totebag, a small piece (At Anchor, mounted and framed), a pattern and some glass ornaments (of which I would like to sell more, rather than have them in my basement!). Next year we are thinking we should start at 9:30 or even 9, rather than 10!

As we approached lunchtime, the crowd eased up and we sat and ate and knit:

I am also in serious lust for this woman’s jacket–the plum and greens in the center.. I totally love love LOVE the colors!

My friend Betty and I shared a table, and (lucky me!) I snapped up one of her pieces before we opened. Now I have my very own Betty Johnson!

This photo shows the right side of the room with Betty (in navy blue in the center), Jan P. (big tote, burgundy top), and Polly Schuessler (blue top, on right), who had some glorious rag rugs. If my bathroom walls weren’t so awful to paint (wood siding) I’d have bought the white and lime and yellow rug and re-done the bathroom that weekend! Maybe if I have cash in summer and she still has the rug then……

.

We all decided it was worth doing, and worth doing again, perhaps with more advertising!

I’m not that great at drawing the human figure, but I guess I’m getting better. A while ago I bought some artists figurines (here, at Dick Blick). I posed the female into the positions I wanted for the naiads and sketched them. I then outlined the sketches with dark pen, taped them to a work surface, placed plastic over (acetate sheet), placed PFD (prepared for dyeing) white cloth over that and painted them, minus hair (which I’ll do with free-motion threadwork).

My first attempt, using Tsukinenko inks, was a bust. Somehow I can never get the blending I want with those inks, whether using the sticks or a brush. So I tried So Soft paints, from a kit put together by Bonnie McCaffery. They WORKED! The paints are very creamy and soft, leaving a fairly nice hand to the fabric afterwards–not stiff and board-like! I ended up appliquéing the figures to the quilt by hand, and it looks good! In the interest of keeping things sorta secret, I’ll only show you part of one of the ladies, appliquéd and with thread-lace-hair:

Eli loves his pug SO MUCH!

He is really pretty darn good about taking care of him, too. Recently, we were having a major rain, and Widgeon (the pug) really doesn’t like getting wet. So Paul decided to make a temporary rain coat for him out of grocery bags (that hairy mop in the lower left is Yeti’s tail….)

Here’s Eli delightedly showing Joshua Widgeon dressed for rain:

Later on, as we were having the first fire in the woodstove for the season, Widgeon decided to play cat and stretch out.

It got really hard to keep the eyes open,

and finally, impossible to stay awake a moment longer:

and just because he is SO CUTE!!!!!!!!:

A bit over a year ago, I was dumbfounded and elated when Larkin Van Horn invited me to participte in an art quilt show she is curating to be titled “It’s Good to be Green.” All quilts are to be 18×45 inches, and please, no Kermit the frogs, she said. Almost instantly I had an idea to do a quilt about the water spirits that inhabit the streams and lakes. My first thought was the ruselka from Russian mythology, but after doing a bit of research, learned they aren’t such nice creatures, so I amended that to Naiads.

The show will open in March (In Tillamook, Oregon, I think), and we’ve been asked not to share the finished products until after the show opens. Best of all, Larkin will be producing a CD catalog of the show so you can all go see it, even if just “virtually.” However, Larkin did say it would be OK to share pictures of in progress, so here you go. This first picture is of a very rough sketch for the overall piece (the left white paper—use medical exam table paper!), some sketches for the naiads, batting cut a bit larger than finished size in the center with an extra bit of batting on the left for the tree, and on the right, possible fabrics for the background:

It’s kind of interesting since I initially thought the entire quilt would be green…green ladies (remember the “green naked ladies” from my Tree Spirits 2 quilt?), green hair, green water, green sky. But after having made Windows of Hope for my Journal quilt this year, I felt the need to add color! I also decided not to crop out the sides of my design wall…I’m always curious bout other people’s studios, so thought this would be “honesty in blogging”…teeheee… lots of stuff gets stuck up there!

A while ago, artist and art quilter Thelma Smith surprised me with a box of manna from heaven, aka hand-dyed fabrics! I was so thrilled! This glorious piece had a perfect spot for the banks of the river (that’s the part that is missing), but before I cut it further, I wanted to take a photo. Isn’t this a glorious piece of cloth? Thanks Thelma!!!!!

I got the background together, fused to the batting; the stuff pinned to the lower right and left are sheers that will go on top of the water, which is made from the fabrics I worked on during the dye workshop with Carol Soderlund (check my blog entries for October 2007):

I’ll post about the naiad figures in my next entry on this piece….

Eli’s soccer season ended well, with a 3-game round robin up in Waterville on a warm and sunny late October Sunday. Here’s the happy team at the end of the three games…they won two of the matches.

Eli lost his good new school shoes, and we had incredible ice cream at John’s in Liberty on the ride home. Before that, Eli (number 17, in the middle) was his usual scrappy, go-for-it self on the field:

He had a couple of amazing saves as goalie during one game (securing a victory for his team!), and after the game Coach Gross gave all the boys medals for being great team players:

The team had a fun bowling party to celebrte the end of the season and thank their coaches. Eli helped Kienan’s littlest brother, Cam (in the green) with his first attempt to bowl:

Now Eli’s back to his regular schedule of karate, until wrestling starts in December, at which point he’ll split his time again. He’s doing really well in school, and reading way above grade level (types his proud mama!).