Well, Maine Quilts has come and gone for another year, and it was wonderful. This time I volunteered even more, helping hang and take down the show, and I can tell you I am impressed by the organization, time, commitment, effort and professionalism of the women (at least I think it is all or almost all women) who make this show happen. The show is a project (hope that’s the correct word) of the state-wide Pine Tree Quilt Guild (PTQG..click on the initials to go to the website), and invites entries not only from across the state but from elsewhere as well (last year, a teacher at the show based in Florida, I think, entered and won Best in Show!). This year, including 9 garments, all the exhibits, display quilts, judged quilts, and special exhibits, there were 515 entries filling the Augusta Civic Center.

Best in Show this year went to Pat LaPierre-McAfee for her fish quilt “For a Lifetime” inspired by a carved fish on the wall at a Red Lobster Restaurant in Minnesota (Pat invented the Free Motion Slider!). Clearly she has mastered not only machine quilting, but good design and impeccable workmanship!

The quilt is two-sided, no less….here is Pat her own self holding the big fish to show his bony backside. After looking closely, I realized she quilted two separate fish (front and back) then joined them…fantastic work! This quilt was the only one to receive an Exceptional Merit ribbon this year (meaning a score of 97 or higher out of 100). Here’s one more photo…a detail of the soft colors and dense quilting:

My nativity quilt, Christmas Tableau, was hanging right next to hers and I’m thrilled that it got a first place, as there were only six blue ribbons in the entire show which had 124 judged quilts. And as luck would have it, it was hanging right next to Pat’s (whom I didn’t recognize when I walked up right next to her with her new super blond hair!). And by the way..don’t those awful faded burgundy drapes suck the life and color out of things?

I don’t quite know why, but this very traditional quilt really appealed to me, and obviously to the judges also, since it received a Judges’ Choice in addition to a third place ribbon (and why all the Judges’ choice ribbons went to second and third place quilts baffles me…who ever understands the mind of a quilt judge?) It is listed as 3 CC Autumn by Mollie Gibbons, who said it is an original design inspired by looking at many lovely pineapple quilts.

Another very simple but stunning quilt was hanging just to the right of the pineapple quilt took a second place ribbon….as a friend said, I’d love to see the house that goes with the bedroom in which this quilt resides:

The color and fabric selections were spot on. The quilting was simple, but absolutely suited to the quilt! It is titled Gingko Goddesses by Frances M. Parker (97×102 inches! it was too long for the drapes, so the bottom is pinned up to the back). Frances said in the program that she used a traditional Japanese print style of framing for the setting and the top medallions are from a block by Kumiko Sudo.

Roxanne Wells, co-Pres. of my local chapter Coastal Quilters, is a fabulous art quilter (although I expect if she reads this she’ll protest that oh no she’s not…well, I have to tell ya Roxanne, you ARE! You don’t need to be modest, because you are good!!!) Anyway, Roxanne did a wonderful, colorful applique quilt. She said it was, at first, intended to be a tablecloth to go with her Fiesta dishes…not any more!

I loved this quilt, in the teachers’ aisle, by Jenny Raymond:

and here’s a detail…she had it professionally quilted, and wow it’s smashing:

This quilt, on the very sweet side, won a first place ribbon and both viewers’ and vendors’ choice awards!

Several of the quilts in the Lobster challenge were wonderful. Every year, Maine Quilts has a “theme”; last year it was loons, this year, lobster, and has a challenge and a display to celebrate something “Maine.” This year was the year of Lobstah Chowdah! Here are three of the 40+ quilts in the exhibit. The top one in this first photo is by Jeanne-Marie Robinson; in my local chapter, she always has animals and critters in her quilts, does mostly all hand applique and hand quilting, and wonderful embellishments. She wrote about “Pot Luck” “My lobster is still alive and who knows if it ever will be in a chowder?

I also totally loved the Maine Lobster license plate…done in “real” size…which hung directly beneath Jeanne-Marie’s quilt. Titled “Chwdah” by Ann Woodhead, she says “design and pattern came courtesy of the on-line site of the Maine State Department of Motor Vehicles.” LOVE it!

And I loved the humor in “What Happened to Larry?” by Judith Sala. Made for a challenge at a fabric store in Rockland, the challenge fabric is in the border and is an original design. The serving dish is slightly 3-D.

This lobster was SO dramatic…and exceptionally well-done by Carla Selberg (Carla’s Crustacean, 28 wide by 24):

Art Quilts Maine, the state-wide chapter in the PTQG, had an aisle to itself, with five entries in the “Clothesline” challenge, and another 14 or so in the rest of the exhibit. I managed, somehow, to *not* get photos of individual quilts other than these two closeups of portions of Mary McFarland’s “Calendar Section: January, February, March” (the photos are of January and March)

There was a whole lot more, and tons of wonderful quilts that I missed. I really wanted to take a photo of the whole show / auditorium from the upper balcony area, but when I both had my camera AND remembered, the quilts were all taken down! Next year I guess! And I guess this has gone on for Soooooooo loooonnngggg that I’ll wrap it up for now!

We are heading away on vacation and (eeek! Gasp! horrors!) I’ll be away from computer, internet and e-mail for nearly (eeek, gasp, horrors again) two weeks…. but should have lots of fun stuff when I get back. I’ll post again before we leave, though, so talk to you in a couple of days!

Here’s a great quotation from the first chapter, p. 9:

In order to be creative you have to know how to prepare to be creative. … It takes skill to bring something you’ve imagined into the world. … No one is born with that skill. It is developed through exercise, through repetition, through a blending of learning and reflection that’s both painstaking and rewarding. And it takes time.

WOW….sounds like me in my intro to my machine quilting class. Toddlers don’t run marathons. They learn to toddle and stumble, then walk, then run (seemingly in a matter of a few days when you’re a tired mom of little ones).

Rita Mae Brown wrote a wonderful book called Starting from Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer’s Manual, about learning to write. She said that people aren’t born neurosurgeons, they learn how to do it, and the same can be said of writing. You can learn how to write, and write well, and she sets out a way to do just that beginning with reading the classics, learning Latin and Greek and (you guessed it) practicing.

In modern US society we are so into instant gratification that many folks have learned that you have to work at something to be good at it. So here’s to working at creativity and art—YEAH!

And..a promise…quilt content and pictures coming tomorrow!

About a decade or so ago, my friend Carol and I “rescued” some hostas and daylilies from a house in the northern Virginia DC suburbs that was about to be bull-dozed for a mini-mansion. Carol, by the way, is a master at getting “free” plants….spotting places that are about to be trashed, and getting permission to salvage the plants. We split the proceeds of the day’s digging, and I planted some at my house in Arlington, and she planted some at her house in Falls Church.

Then we moved, twice (first to Friday Harbor, Wash., and then to Camden, Maine), but Carol stayed put. She recently moved to a new house, and somewhere in the process lifted and divided her hostas and daylilies…the ones we had rescued. She offered to send me some! They came lovingly wrapped, and tagged as to what was what, in damp newspaper and plastic bags, in about late November. Carol suggested planting out, except that it was already frozen outside up here in Maine. So the plants spent the winter the subjects of benign neglect in our garage.

This week, we got our FIRST lily!

And the hostas are doing well, too……small, but growing (as in not dead! hooray!)…. When my dear father-in-law passed away, he had two garden “statues.” One was a girl with an umbrella that he said always reminded him of his daughter, and the St. Francis bird bath. When we were dividing up his home after he died four years or so ago, Faire got the girl, and we got St. Francis. I was particularly thrilled because my birthday is on the feast day of St. Francis, I love his poem, and I relate to anyone who talks to animals. So I decided to create a little hosta garden around St. Francis, which is the photo at the top.

Isn’t it wonderful? Good friends, good family, quilterly plants, all in one shady spot!

Well DRAT! Had a nice post almost DONE, and there was a thunderstorm and the power went out before I could hit save…so, trying again.

Quilting Fitzy commented on the last post:
I am SO struggling to learn to knit socks! I guess I need to go to a “real” yarn shop for some instruction! (And the appropriate yarn might help!)

I did go the double pointed needle way, and am into the heel, but am suffering BIG TIME from mass confusion.

Did you find this book was basic enough for a beginner? I’ve knit for years, but only do plain ol’ knit and purl and the VERY simple stuff!

(and of course blogger put her as “no reply” so I can only reply here….hope this helps others, too)

Both books…Bush and Bordi…will assume that you know how to knit, purl, cast on a couple of ways, cast off, increase, decrease, pick up stitches, do cables and yarn-overs and read a charted pattern. If you can do those, no matter how slowly or awkwardly, you can do the patterns in these books.

Of course, a lot of folks don‘t know how to do all of those things, and picking up stitches can be a bit tricky because you just can’t see well enough in a photo…helps a lot to be sitting next to someone doing it, then do it yourself several times. Still… Because I learn well by reading, I find having a basic knitting reference book invaluable..between the words and pictures, I can teach myself. However, not everyone can do that…some folks have to listen to verbal instructions (which to me sound like blah blah blah…nothing takes via my ear-path unless there are written words or pictures to go with it) and yet others have to actually DO whatever it is. You need to figure out how *you* learn, then find someone who can show you that way.

A good local yarn store is a great thing indeed. Here in Camden, we have two. One, Unique One, is wonderful; the other is not. At Unique One, even if you didn’t buy the yarn there, they are happy to help you, love talking knitting and are friendly and welcoming. At the other, to remain nameless store, they barely say hello, and basically it is an uncomfortable atmosphere. If Unique One doesn’t have what I need, I’d rather order something and wait than go to the other store!

If you can, buy some good sock yarn from a nice local store, and ask if you could come sit there while starting to turn the corner so you can ask for help if they aren’t busy, or ask if there is a sock class. It’s worth it! I generally do very well with the written word, but did take knitting classes over a span of decades (in the early 70s took beginning knitting at the local community college one summer, in the mid 80s, took an Icelandic class to learn how to strand different colors of yarn while living in Toronto)…

OK, that’s enough blather…I promise pictures in a short while….

Well…if you can call over two years an interlude! Before we left Friday Harbor in June 2004, I bought a book called “Knitting on the Road” By Nancy Bush. I had just learned how to know socks on two circular needles, thanks to Cat Bordi (a fellow resident of San Juan Island, and author of Socks Soar on Two Circular Needles). I had never been able to manage socks before because the double-pointed needles slipped out on me…arrrrgh! But I could do it with circulars, yeah!

So I bought some wonderful burgundy sock yarn at Island Wools and decided to make the pattern named, what else, Friday Harbor! I began the socks. I got about 1 inch into the first leg, and stopped. Life intervened, along with a move across country, hubby’s heart attack, open-heart surgery and recovery, a LOT of quilting, and life in general.

Thanks to a fourteen inning minor league game at Hadlock Field, the Portland Sea Dogs (Red Sox farm team) in early July, they are now FINISHED! Ta DA! Drum roll please…

Please ignore my pasty white legs (ugh….oh to be Polynesian or some other race with glorious tawny brown skin…and no, tanning doesn’t work, I burn then peel….no tanning for this Irish ancestry girl…). We will also ignore the fact that it is muggy and mid-summer and I won’t be able to actually wear these for another two months!