WOWIE what a wonderful thing!   In February, when my friend Susan Brubaker Knapp was tapped to take over the hosting duties for Quilting Arts TV when Pokey Bolton stepped down (Pokey is now the Chief Creative Officer for Quilts, Inc., the wonderful folks that bring us Quilt-Mecca aka International Quilt Festival), Susan asked me if I would like to be on the show!  YOU BETCHA!   And what a wonderful six weeks it has been, prepping step-outs and samples and driving to Ohio to tape the three segments.

Getting ready to roll tape for my first segment on Quilting Arts TV, Series 1400.  On set with host Susan Brubaker Knapp.  I show you how to make my incredibly versatile Inside-Out Bag so you can customize size, pockets, techniques for the outside (pieced, applique, surface design). The bag is quick and easy so it also makes a great special gift.

If any of you are on Facebook, you may have seen the images Susan, Vivika Hansen DeNegre (executive Editor for Quilting Arts), I and other guests have posted, but here are some more.  And one of the best parts is, just like Houston, getting to meet folks in person that you first met online.   Jeannie Cook-Delpit of Bernina was there to help with the machines, and Sue Reno and I taped the same day so it was a blast to meet her.   Sue appears to do things the way I do:  be prepared to the max and pack in tons of great information. Sue also taped a DVD workshop on her cyanotype process that I know is going to be great!  I’m so looking forward to seeing Series 1400 which will begin airing on PBS in July.

First:  many thanks to Pokey Chatham Bolton, an amazing woman with vision and talent and drive:  who knew when she fell in love with crazy quilting and started a magazine in the back of her in-law’s sheep barn that Quilting Arts would become what it is today! I spoke with her after finding Issue #2 on the stand and called up to subscribe!  What a long way you’ve come and how much you have accomplished, Pokey!

Second:  many thanks to the sponsors of the show including Bernina of America, Coats and Clark, Havel’s Scissors and AQS.  THANK YOU for bringing this show to the happy quilters of the world!

I’m somewhere near the Pennsylvania-New York border on the Thruway driving toward Solon, Ohio (near Cleveland) where the show tapes. I chose to drive rather than fly–I hate airports! It didn’t take much longer than flying, I could take everything with me, and listen to audio books en route.

The trip from Maine to Ohio was 835 miles each way, so a full day and a half.  I left at 8 a.m. Tuesday and arrived in Ohio just in time for lunch.

This unassuming door is the entrance to the company (owned by a woman–YEAH!) that films and produces the show. Well organized, lots of good pre-taping information and support–great staff! Thank you Kathie, Katherine and all the crew that make us look good.

Susan Brubaker Knapp is a wonderful artist, teacher, mother, friend, and she is going to be WONDERFUL as host.  They are keeping the format the same in general, but introducing a few small changes, first among them is that instead of three segments in a half hour, there will sometimes be two longer segments so we can share more in-depth information.  Susan is handling the chaos of taping with aplomb, asking great questions, and I couldn’t have felt more relaxed or comfortable with Susan, Vivika, Helen Gregory (now VP for Content at F+W/Interweave) and Kristine Lunblad of Quilting Arts.  Thank you to Kristine for taking all of these photos…it was so funny:  she’d have three cameras around her neck and as many phones to take the requisite “on set” photos for each segment.

TV lights do weird things to make up, so when taping for TV or a DVD workshop, a professional comes in to do your make up so you look good on camera. Thank you Sue, because you succeeded! Here I am taking a sorta blurry selfie after Sue worked her magic at the make-up/hair station.

The guests (meaning those of us on the show) were invited to bring outfit changes for our different episodes  They film 12 or 13 episodes at a time.  If you’ve seen the show in the past, you know Pokey had on a different outfit in each episode.  But the guests are in multiple episodes, and they all tape the same day.  So Susan had to change about a thousand times (well maybe five to seven) a day.  They have a bulletin board up with photos of Susan in outfit and jewelry, with “Day 1,”  “Day 2” et cetera, so they could keep track of what she needed to be wearing for which segment/episode.  So I went in and looked at the photos to pick which of my tops to wear so we’d look good together.

Some of the trays for my segments: the rear three are for the bags (the last tray is all the different bags I’ve made with this method), plus the one for the thread-needles segment.  PS:  Marie Z. J.:  see your black-white-gray thread-catcher bag on the second tray?  I love it so much I brought it to use on set!

On the day I arrived, I set out all my stuff for the segments on trays (like great big sheet cake pans).  I guess I had a lot for the bags segment, as one staffer asked if I was taping a workshop (60-75 minutes) as well as a segment (mine were 10-12 minutes each). Hmmm.  Over-prepared?

And the last tray, for my free-motion quilting segment on taking the leap from walking foot to beginner designs. Thanks to Jenny Bowker (website here) for allowing me to adapt one of her teaching methods and share the way I teach it on the episode. While we’re speaking of Jenny, she has just undergone surgery for breast cancer in her Australian homeland. Let’s all send MASSIVE healing light and comfort and “nuke the cancer into oblivion” thoughts to speed along her recovery. Go, JENNY!

And my suitcase, emptied of projects but with a few quilts to decorate the set still inside. And my take-with-me electric kettle which I take when driving. Nothing like a relaxing cup of decaf tea (made properly with boiling water!) at the end of a long teaching day on the road!

To close, a special Thank-you to hubby, who totally didn’t mind that I spent our 31st anniversary driving to Ohio and setting up my trays!

Next blogpost:  Taping my segments on Thursday!

A note:  where I live in rural Maine, alas we don’t get QA TV on our local PBS affiliate.   In some markets, the creative shows are on a PBS spin-off channel called CREATE TV.   If you get your TV on cable, you will likely be able to catch the show on air.   We have DirectTV, and alas no joy.  But you will be able to purchase the entire series or individual episodes (download only on the latter) once the series airs.

Wow… this is fun:  I am shipping out FOUR quilts to various shows and exhibits today!   The first one to go on display is Conversations 1, at the big AQS show in Paducah!  Then two are going off to be in the Traditional Treasures special exhibit for the International Quilt Festivals in Chicago and (in fall) Houston, and then the pug-love is headed off to a round of exhibits with Mary Wilson Kerr’s Dare to Dance exhibit!

Conversations 1 is going to Paducah!

Next on the exhibit trail is Mr. Wiggles Does the Circle Dance.  This portrait of Pigwidgeon’s joy when getting his supper is in Mary Wilson Kerr’s soon-to-be-available book and exhibit “Dare to Dance:  An Artist’s Interpretation of Joy.”  You can read more about the exhibit and where it is going here.  This quilt is going to log a LOT of miles, starting in West Virginia, heading to MANY Sew Expo’s, MANY Mancuso shows and will return home after (get this!) two and half years on the road!   Wave hullo to our beloved pug when you see him!

Mr. Wiggles Does the Circle Dance is going on the road! If you look closely (at least in person) you can see below the bowl that I’m asking him “Are you hungry?” That questions sets off the dance which begins with three (always three, only three) counter-clockwise (same direction always) circles. He then runs behind your legs and bumps you in the direction of the closet which holds the kibble!

Then, to my utter astonishment and complete delight, I have TWO quilts that made it into a **traditional** exhibit at International Quilt Festival, the Traditional Treasures that will debut in Chicago in June and return again in Houston.  This is the first time I’ve had traditional quilts juried in to a major national show, and I am elated!

This may be one of my favorite quilts. It is inspired by a beer carton (for our grocery challenge, see blogposts here and here). I revised the harbor to be Camden, Maine, and the schooner to be the Louis B French. The miniature storm at sea is mostly from a John Flynn quilt kit, with the small square in a square finishing at (EEEK) 1 1/8″. At least when I pieced them accurately! Finished size is 20 1/2″ square.  This quilt and the next one will also (yippeee!) be included in Lark’s forthcoming 500 Traditional Quilts book!

And my Hawaiian inspired quilt, Nourish the Body, Nourish the Soul, will also be in IQF’s Traditional Treasures.  There are apparently only 25 quilts in this exhibit, so I am totally gobsmacked and humbled to have two quilts included.  Nourish is 64 inches square, is available as a pattern, and is the basis of my Hawaiian Applique by Machine class:

Nourish the Body, Nourish the Soul, by Sarah Ann Smith. The blocks are either food (taro, pineapple or breadfruit) or things that are beautiful: the plumeria with its heavenly scent and the bird of paradise.

Have lots of things to share, but am so busy I don’t have much time to blog!  Will try to post again in a couple of days!

It’s a miracle…it’s not even a full year after Joshua graduated and got his GED and his quilt is DONE! Here, Joshua and Ashley are opening the quilt and looking at the top /side one!

As Joshua got close to finishing his GED exams, I asked him what fabrics and colors he would like in his graduation quilt, because of  COURSE he needed a quilt for graduation!   He really liked a fabric I used to cover the back of a chair (I don’t much like the chair so wanted to cover it up), so that became the “base” fabric.  And Joshua loves what I do, and he loves color (I tie-dyed them Grateful-Dead-style fabric for a kitchen valance), so I put together big prints for the diamonds and small semi-solid-ish-look for the sashings.   At first I thought I’d go totally random, and it looks like a mish-mosh.  Then I hit on doing rainbow in the sashings, and it worked!

Here’s the quilt laid out on our queen sized bed. It is about 86×97 inches. I wish I’d made it one row wider, but by the time I figured that out the skinny half-triangles on the side were done, so I called it good!

My initial idea was to do random large blocks, but I wasn’t certain it would look good.  So I hit on the Kaffe Fassett inspired diamonds.  THEN I took the leftovers and made the back (or the other front?):

Here’s the back of the quilt, which can be an “other” side. I used more of the blues and greens here.

Then I asked Joshua to wrap up in the quilt:

There’s my boy giving his girl the eye <<grin>>

And then I asked them both to wrap up in it:

Of course they laughed!

And here’s Ashley looking like a very colorfil Cousin It:

Ashley under the quilt

And then Joshua couldn’t resist the tempation….

Picking up his honey! Luckily, no one got dropped even though we were all laughing so hard!

Are those not the cutest kids on the planet? LOVE YOU BOTH!

So that’s Joshua’s graduation quilt, and he even got it not-too-late!

Just a quickie catch-up post!   I’ll have some great news to share in a couple of weeks about what has been keeping me busier than my usual busy.   But I’ve also managed to squeeze in a few other things.  First in date order is two online classes with the delightful, talented, and superlative teacher Val Webb (website here).   This winter I had planned to relax and take two of her classes which overlap by about a month.  Despite the fact that you can really do a LOT of work (and LEARN a LOT), I decided to take both.  First one is Drawing Dogs and Cats, second one is Fairies (or as I prefer, Faeries) in Nature.

My Luna-Boy faerie in gouache, about 9 x 6 inches.

In Val’s classes, you learn not only about drawing, but also painting, as well as various media and techniques.  The lesson above is for small children as fairies, with wings, and gouache (which I have never used).  There are some technical issues; basically, I need practice with the medium!   But overall I am quite pleased with my Luna-boy.  In the next photo, we worked with graphite to sketch a dog.  His right eye is a bit off (thank you for the feedback, Val! I knew something was off but couldn’t spot it until you helped), but I’m fairly happy with this one, as well.  I attribute all good stuff with these two to the quality of Val’s teaching!

Sweet doggie, in graphite pencil.

This week is also number 2 son’s 16th birthday.  How the child can be 16, weigh more than me (wooohooo! finally!), etc., defies comprehension.  Clearly the calendar lies.  Eli’s request for birthday dinner:  my waffles and Joshua’s parmesan fried chicken, an exact repeat of what Joshua had in early November.  As it was the beginning of the wrestling season, Eli couldn’t pig out.  This time he could and did <<grin>>!

We will NOT think about the calories involved in waffles and fried chicken.

Thanks to de facto DIL Ashley for taking pics as I brought in the birthday cake:

The calendar lies. There is no way my youngest is 16. I realize I am old enough to be his grandmother, but that is irrelevant LOL! Eli, we love you to bits and are so thankful you came into our lives (even if we were and are old and tired!).

She also got this great pic of Thumper the 26-toed cat.  As you can see, our cats pay us no mind.  Sigh.

Thumper. Sigh.

And guess what it is doing today.  Again.  Sigh again.

One more time. At least it isn’t sleeting a lot, as was predicted, and the temperature is now down to freezing or just below.

At least it is pretty–the flakes where HUGE!  We were predicted to get a lot of snow, school let out early, and we are all expecting it to be cancelled tomorrow.  Then the weather service predicted less snow, more ice and lots of sleet.  That is actually a lot worse.  But we haven’t had any sleet here in Hope, though beyond the ridge of hills on the coast is may be sleeting.  Here it has been snowing for about 7 hours.  We’ll see what the morning brings.  We will also fill buckets with water as it is likely to be heavy, wet snow and power could well go out.  Again.  Sigh.

And to end of a fun note, this fall I will be helping curate (i.e. be the behind the scenes worker bee) the new SAQA Food exhibit, open to SAQA members.  Alex Veronelli, mover and shaker at Aurifil Thread, will be the juror.  Just today I received the Quilts, Inc., eInsider newsletter, which had this profile of him.  It’s an interesting read.  Enjoy.

Now I need to go start on dinner.  Oh whee.

Wooohooo!   I can’t share the picture yet, but I can let you know that a small watercolor of mine has been selected to be one of the new projects included in Lesley Riley’s Inspirational Quotes Illustrated, to be published by North Light Books / F+W (the latter is also the parent company to Quilting Arts and Interweave)!   I am tickled silly!  In 2013, Lesley Riley self-published  Quotes Illustrated; a mere two days later North Light contacted her, and the book is being expanded and will be out in November 2014!  You can see a bit more here.  What a THRILL!  Thank you, Lesley, for choosing me as one of 30 out of more than 260 new entries–really looking forward to seeing the book.