That is the name of my friend’s new company and soon-to-be website! Jan P. is a local quilter who, when I met her almost 3 years ago, was a budding art quilter. She has taken lots of classes (a lot at www.quiltuniversity.com) and worked to improve her technique and eye. Her husband is a fabuloso photographer, too. Jan has interpreted several of his photos (including two so far of her three sons… the third one is up next!) in cloth. So…. From Photos to Fiber.

Well, all of a sudden, with short notice and out of the blue, she and her husband got the chance to have a small show at the Lincolnville General Store at the junction of Routes 52 and 173 in Lincolnville Center, the town just north of where I live. Here’s the store,

And here is the cool door handle, which reads Golden Heart Refrigerated Bread

As luck would have it, their artists’ reception was right about the time I would be heading home from Frayed Edges at Kathy’s house, and if I took the back route, I’d drive right by!

Jan hung the show on Sunday afternoon, and the opening was yesterday. By the time I got there, 90 minutes after the opening began, Dwight had sold two photos and Jan had her very first professional art quilt sale! YEAH! Here a shot of folks looking at the photos and art quilts:

Here’s a picture of several quilts, including the one that Jan sold (still didn’t have sold written on it! the blue one with the fish…she painted it and it’s wonderful):

And a picture of Jan in front of her husband’s photos, with his lighthouse photo on her right and, to the right of that, the quilt she made based on the photo:

I couldn’t resist taking more photos on the way out… of the stained glass hanging over the antique wood stove:

And once again finding inspiration for quilting designs everywhere… the side of the old wood stove:

And the trivet built into the stove…what a cool idea (literally!) to get your pot up off the hot stovetop: A couple of months ago, Jan and I scheduled for the three of us (with her hubby, that is) to have a small group show at Zoot, a splendiferous coffee house here in Camden in October, so look for more of their work on view in public in just a few months (eeek! We need to get sewing!!!!). I’ll let you know when their website goes live in a few weeks. Cheers, Sarah

Just back from a glorious weekend away..2 days feels like 2 weeks of refreshing! Have to download over 150 photos and write up blogs, tho…so one more about the Koi quilt, then will take a breather from that. Until then..here you go… the quilt is turning out great! more soon…

About a thousand years ago when I started writing about this quilt (if you’re not sick of it yet), I mentioned that I needed to get this done in a short time frame. But, I wanted it to be really cool, too. I have found that two places are really good for creative musing: the shower and working out. Well, this time I was working out at the YMCA on the rowing machine, where you are nearly sitting on the floor. As I looked up at the high, high ceiling and the lights, I thought about what it is like to look up from underwater and see the sunlight blinking through the water. The appearance of the surface of the water is completely different than from underneath.

So, I took the leftovers from fusing the top, and made a back! I used the two “rejected because they were too busy” batiks and used them here because (a) the “piecing” was simpler, and (b) you can see overhanging trees and vegetation from underneath the water. Here it is:

Remember that long ironing board with all the fused pieces of fabric on it ready to use? Well, I fused up another yard of fabric in addition to that, then a 1 1/4 yard piece of my hand-dyeds. Here is all that is left after doing the background of the front and the back:

Then I thought: wouldn’t it be cool to show the under side of the fish on the back. Ahem. So, I’m going to do that! I need to make the three fish and two fish-portions from the underneath view and quilt them. I’ll then position them on the bottom and stitch in place by machine. The outline of that stitching will then be the outline of the fish on top. I’ll applique the tops of the fishies in place and fuse up the fins and tails, then (finally) quilt the fins and tails (on both sides) at the same time! Sound convoluted? Yeah, to me too…… at least it sounds convoluted when I write it out. But I promise it’s gonna be really cool! More soon!

The fish I was so smitten by were the ones known as butterfly koi. While surfing the web recently, I learned that some koi collectors look down their noses at the butterfly, not considering them “pure, true koi.” Oh well…. I think they are glorious! But even the regular ones are wonderful, too. I’m not as wild about the red/white combinations, or the nearly-all black ones that seem to be prized in koi circles… I love the yellow and the gold and the ones with the feathery white fins. So that is what mine are!

I took this photo last summer, when we were in Sarasota visiting Paul’s Aunt and Uncle on vacation. The hotel had a pond as well as the beach… I think there may be more than just this one quilt… when I have more lead-time, I want to do another one with the reflections of the overhanging palms…..

I LOVE Misty Fuse, a fusible web developed by quilt artist Esterita Austin and sold by her at her website (tho that store is temporarily closed), through Keepsake Quilting (among other places), eQuilter.com and your local quilt shop. Misty Fuse is an incredibly fine, light fusible web that leaves a soft hand to the fabric and can be used at low enough temperature that you can fuse sheers, tulle and other cool stuff without melting the sheer fabrics.

I searched through my stash of sheers (sales at Joann’s are a good time to stock up). I used mostly these:

I made some highlights for the water with the blue, then used the cream and bright white for the fins, with a little bit of the matte gray, too.

Here is the selection of sheers I used for the koi after I fused them up. That red/orange stuff was truly vile…and I knew it would be perfect for flames; it is also perfect for koi! I’ve overlapped some so you can see the layering and transparencies. For the “regular” koi, I used the copper on top of the vile red/orange print. For the butterfly koi, I used the white, cream and pale gray. I ended up not using the gold or red at all, and used the aqua only for the water highlights.

Because I am a wicked tease, I’m only going to show you one of the koi right now! I plan on quilting the water, then doing something on the back (more on that soon enough), appliqueing the fish on the top, and fusing and stitching the fins last of all. So imagine this handsome fishie with some fun threadwork on the fins:

Despite the fact that the background is fused / raw edged, I wanted turned under edges on the koi. Several posts ago, I showed quilting the fish individually. After that, I carefully trimmed the backing fabric and excess batting away from the underside of the fish. The fish on the top shows the fish, trimmed… it looks lighter where the stitching is because (a) that’s where he is painted (that thin wash of metallic paint) and (b) because the green mat is now shadowing through the seam allowance. Those two tiny black things you see are his pupils, done in thread.

As with all appliques, you clip the curves. Unlike most typical applique, I decided to fuse-baste the wide seam allowances in place (faster than thread!). The lower fish shows the seam allowances fused down. Each fish is about 20-22 inches long (that’s ummm… how many cm’s? 55-60 cm? 39 inches to a metre, so a bit more than half) , maybe the width of four knuckles across at the widest point.

The last photo shows one of the quilted fish pinned to the background (so I could mark placement). Obviously, this fish needs fins and a tail. That’s tomorrow’s post! But let’s just say I’m happy!

The front is now as complete as it is going to be before I begin quilting. Here it is a step or two farther along than the last time I blogged about it:

And here it is ready to square up:

Usually I don’t finalize the edges of a quilt until it is nearly done… assembly completed, quilted, and ready to finish the edges. Many times that is because I don’t know what shape I want it to be in the end… I tend to resist proper rectangles and straight edges. However, this quilt needs to be done (and in record time!), so I made a decision before I began that this one would have straight edges, 90 degree corners, and no curvy outsides or other peskiness (at least of that sort!).

The dark line you see is some fuzzy yarn I was using to mark the edges on the design wall and make sure everything looked good, the angles were correct, etc., before marking with chalk and then trimming.

Tomorrow I’ll show what I did next with the koi…..