It is that glorious time of year again, when the air is crisp, the leaves are on fire, the sky is screaming blue (alternating with stormy gray). I don’t know if autumn is my favorite season because I was born in early October (yep, I hit FIFTY this month…. don’t feel a day over early-30s except for my knees!), or just because autumn is so spectacular. After retrieving two quilts from a local quilt show on Monday, I took lots and LOTS of pics on the way home. The one above is one of my favorites…. as usual, I love the close ups. I totally love the sharp contrast of the nearly-black bark and the bright oranges and reds. I’ve been really inspired by some of Dijanne Cevaal‘s recent quilts of treescapes (click on her name, which will take you to her July 2007 archives and scroll down to July 15 and 7), and after the Week 2 dyeing class with Carol Soderlund, think I have several TreeScape quilts in my future!

While on the way down to the quilts, I spotted this tree and, on my return, pulled over for the first of a series of road-side Driver’s Seat Snapshots:

Then there was a whole string of glorious shots (all from the car! I WAS careful and pulled over to the shoulder, etc). Here’s one of turning leaves–I love to see the progression of color change from the treetop and tips of the branches, flushing back towards the trunk.

Then of course there are the startling silhouettes of branches laden with red, the deep shadows of the northern woods behind:

Here is a wide-angle shot, not so pretty, but it gives an idea of what the roadside looks like on Route 90 in Warren and Rockport:

Here is a glorious massing of red:

And a portrait of a young, understory maple:

And another:

Even the gas station had glorious shots. The best priced gas is at the independent station at Tolman Pond on Route 90 in Rockport. Here is a major zoom picture of the trees on the far end of the pond (in the West something this large would be called a small lake!):

As I took the picture of the diesel pump, a guy asked me if I was focusing the camera. I said no, taking a picture. He allowed as how he’d never seen anyone take a picture of a gas pump before, but I think it makes a good photograph. Who knows, we all know I’m slightly deranged (said in a John Cleese voice, please! “Deeee-Ranged!”).

October 9-13 I took Carol Soderlund‘s Color Mixing for Dyers II at ProChem in Fall River, Massachusetts. Long time readers may remember that I took Week 1 last year and blogged about it here (1), here (2) and here (3). The large square in the last blogpost actually ended up being the focal fabric on Side 2 of Koi! (Here for that link.). Well, here is a tease from our second day: color wonderfulness, a.k.a. fabric in the washer:

And here is a full shot of the washer:

I am getting ready to lecture and teach in Manchester, NH, on Friday and Saturday, so will leave the “full” blogging about this wonderful week until next week, but will have more goodies and eye candy for you in a couple of days. Until then, hope you enjoy the color.

Keep on sewing!

The last three pieces hanging at Zoot are two “trees” pieces and the White Flower. This first piece was made for the “Changing Perspectives” challenge; the idea was to present something from a different perspective, or something that made you change your perspective. “Looking Inward” appears to be a night scene, perhaps with the aurora borealis. In fact, the two images are scans of my retinas; my eye doctor shared and gave permission for me to use the scans, which I manipulated in Photoshop Elements to change the colors (the red – green default for the examination equipment was a bit scary!) before printing onto fabric.

The quilt has hanging sleeves on both long edges (it is 14×24) so it can be hung as we would expect to see trees, or as the trees actually imprint on the retina: upside down. Here’s a detail:

Camden Sunset is another of several small quiltlets featuring a photo transfer of a beautiful winter sunset; I snapped this shot less than a quarter mile from our home.

Finally, White Flower is a piece I began for the Frayed Edges Grid challenge (see here for more). I liked this piece, but it just didn’t seem finished with just the white portion–it needed more. So I made another piece for the Grid challenge and mounted this white satin, painted, and heavily beaded piece. The green stamens are satin-stitched chenille stems which stand out from the surface. Overall size is 13×17, the white panel is 7×10 inches.

And here’s a detail of the center:

As with the other pieces at Zoot, these three are for sale. Looking Inward is $195, Camden Sunset is $165, and White Flower is $225.

When working on my journal quilt for this year (which I can’t share until Festival opens at the end of this month), I wanted to try thermofax screens. While making some practice passes with the paint and screen, I made some extra cranes, which I have worked into these two pieces, Cloud Crane and Flying Crane.

This first one is Cloud Crane, the larger of the two pieces (and alas, the piece of paper with the exact measurements has gone walkabout; I think it is 13×16), is a quilted piece stitched to commercial batik over stretcher bars. The quiltlet is made of a single piece of cloth on which I screened both the origami crane (drawn by me, converted into a thermofax screen, then printed) and the background (which is actually a design made using a small white onion cut vertically as my “stamp”). It is quilted with gold metallic thread and a very fine, subtle polyester for the background. A slender gold yarn is couched to the edge of the quiltlet.

Flying Crane is a single golden crane screened onto my hand-dyed fabric, quilted, edged in a satin stitch of gold metallic thread and mounted on a coordinating hand-dyed fabric (also made by me). This piece is overall 8×10 inches, with the crane quiltlet about 4×6 inches.

Here’s a detail photo:

The Flying Crane is $65, the Cloud Crane is $135; shipping is additional and depends on your location.

Machine needle-felting is a new thing for me, but I can see great potential for working this technique into art quilts, especially landscapes. Thanks to Janome-America, I have an Xpression (FM-725) needle-felter to test and try out. Thanks to being busier than the proverbial one-armed paper hanger this year, I haven’t had much time to play with it. I finally pulled it out for these three pieces. When this machine first came out, you had to replace the entire needle-head of five barbed needles; they’ve now come out with an alternate needle housing so you can replace a needle if it breaks without replacing the entire head…hoooray! The price is also modest …somewhere around $300 I think.

The two larger pieces, in blues, are made from a base of hand-dyed wool from Wild Thymes Pattern Co. and a former knit hat that I made which ended up being too itchy. I tossed the hat in the washer for two full cycles to felt it, then cut it up. (An aside: I’m not big on wool quilts or someone else’s patterns, but Barb Cribb’s patterns, wool and kits are enough to make me double back and look again… I love her stuff, so please check out the link. I’ve only met her once, at either Market or Festival years ago, so I’m not affiliated…just love the designs!)

Anyway, the piece above is mounted on an 8×8 inch canvas hung on point, while the one below is 10×10 inches. Both are the deep-profile gallery-wrap canvas. Clearly, I did not have my lighting set up properly…the one above the yellow is more washed out in the photo than in real life (see the last “mocha” for a better rendition of the yellow), and in the next one I think I actually managed to make wool (as in light-absorbing wool) glare! I didn’t think that was possible…sigh.

Here is the one I think of as Mocha, a little piece just 3 1/2″ square mounted on a deep coffee (or is it chocolate) 6×6 inch deep-profile canvas. I felted various yarns onto the wool base for this one, then added the buttons and coordinating heavy threads.

All the pieces are for sale; prices are $30, 40 and 50 and do not include shipping.