Hi all….a crazy busy day (what else is new), but someone asked the size of tree spirits…big! It is 52 inches wide by 59 inches tall.

I’m hoping to post my upcoming classes later today or tomorrow that I’m teaching….machine quilting (intro, then decorative threads and more), quilting design, Hawaiian applique by machine (but techniques can be used for any sort of applique style), and a couple project classes. At the moment, though, need to feed the kids (it never ends!) and me (ditto).

Thanks to my quilty friends who checked things out and confirmed that they can access the blog, see the pictures and all that! I’ll try to upload a picture of four of us, the Frayed Edges, at our little show earlier this year, and some other fun stuff. In the meantime, enjoy the last lazy (??? never around here) days of summer, for (hallelujah! parents across America are rejoicing) school begins next week. But there may be one more good book before summer ends: Eldest, by Christopher Paolini, is due to hit bookstores tomorrow, and we’ll be there for our reserved copy! It is the sequel to Eragon, and if you haven’t read it yet, DO! It is about a youth and his dragon, a quest, and it’s wonderful. My oldest son, almost 12, has been looking forward to Eldest even more than the 6th Harry Potter (which he finished last night…for the FOURTH time! already!). That should say something!

Off to the kitchen. Cheers, Sarah

After painting the third, larger tree spirit on the left, I began to construct the tree trunks on the right and left. I pieced strips of various of my brown-ish hand-dyed fabrics, then fused strips of commercial fabrics in bark-like (I hope) shapes to the base layer. I stitched together three lengths of yarn with a multi-step zigzag several times…using dark-dark-medium, then dark-medium-medium, and eventually medium-medium-light-raffia. These new “strands” of yarn I couched to the surface for added texture.

The bottom meadow area is all stitched on a length of hand-dyed that didn’t turn out at all the way I wanted, but was just perfect for here. I had gone for a hike on nearby Mt. Battie (you must remember that East Coast US mountians are very old, and therefore not very tall at all) just before summer solstice, and the starflowers were in bloom, so of course they immediately jumped onto the quilt, along with some flat rocks I picked up on that hike. Used a layer of tulle and (shudder) no presser foot to free-motion quilt the tulle over the rocks to hold them in place, then trimmed away the excess tulle.

To finish the piece, I layered some green batik across the top and quilted leaf shapes to hold all the many layers together. I fused various greens onto various other green base fabrics, stitched leaf veins and cut out leaf shapes. These leaves were then stitched to the green batik down the central vein in the leaf, but left 3-d-ish.

I had really wanted to do a piece where the three layers were attached to a board and hang from it separated by an inch or so from each other so that any breeze or air-movement created by walking by the quilt would cause the upper sheer layers to shift and ripple in the breeze, but realized the quilt would then never make it into any shows….no way to mount the piece. So for this one I sewed all layers together under the leaf canopy, and will add a hanging sleeve to the back.

SO, that’s the long version of “how did she do that?” Hope you like…..

Cheers, Sarah

OK…I think that worked! Now….for the middle layer of TS2 (aka Tree Spirits 2 etc.)…. I did one painted panel, and decided it would be the “practice” layer and re-did it! This layer is sheer synthetic fabric, originally white. I painted the two tree spirits on it as well as the tree trunks using a diluted mix of Golden Acrylic Paint mixed with textile medium and water.

I had to use a slightly thicker mix to outline the figures, which I let dry so that it would act as a resist for the thinner paint mix I used to fill in. I really wanted the effect of the finished piece to be that of looking into a hazy forest…not being able to see clearly what’s in the distance. The whole surface was then painted with a very thin wash of warm yellow paint with a few rays of pale green…think of the “angel escalators” when sunrays pierce the clouds. I added a bit of batting wrapped with batik and quilted it to finish the raw edges.

What a surprise…the past two weeks have been chaotic! The good news is that I’ve been busy, taught two classes, had a couple good things happen, and got to go to a quilt show with my friends, the Frayed Edges: Deborah Boschert, Kate Cutko and Kathy Daniels. But more on that later.

I wanted to post pictures of my latest big piece, Tree Spirits 2: Song of the Solstice Grove (and please don’t ask why I sometimes come up with such long names! I have no idea!) that show what it is. It’s one of those pieces that if you’ve seen it, you understand what you are seeing in the photos, but if you haven’t seen it “in the cloth” you don’t really “get” the photos. Anyway, am going to try to upload pics. The first one will be the bottom “underneath” quilt. This is the base layer and is a basic quilt…backing, batting, top, quilting. I used very bold, simple shapes and colors in my selection of my hand-dyed cloth because that’s what it takes to be seen / perceived through the two layers of painted sheer fabric that go on top.

Not everything is quilting. Sometimes it is inspiration for quilting! Hubby bought two kayaks for us this summer with a small fund he calls the Horizon fund….some scratch he inherited from his dear and much missed papa, which he is saving to use to expand our sons’ horizons. Sometimes that means a trip to someplace far away, sometimes it is a more local horizon. This time, it was to open the world of exploring nature from on top of the water.

Now, I am SO not a jock, not athletic, and totally un-coordinated. And when presented with something totally alien like paddling a kayak, it can be just a tad intimidating (read that as terrified until I try it). But I had been in a tandem sea kayak once, 12 years ago with Paul, and enjoyed it. So, I was game to try it on my own on a lake (with, blessedly, no strong ocean currents, duh!). This photo is from our very first outing on Lake Megunticook here in Camden. We saw two loons, a whole bunch of turtles, and I managed to paddle for over 90 minutes. We’d paddle a bit, coast a bit, and it was a gas! I snapped this picture of hubby and number two son (number one was at day camp). Guess what my August journal quilt may look like?