To begin at the beginning: as I entered Vermont, what else would I see but COWS, the kind on the Ben and Jerry’s label! Of course I had to pull over and snap a picture!

It always amazes me how rapidly time evaporates.  I got home on Monday, it is now Saturday, and I feel like the week simply disappeared in errands, exercising, painting (of the baseboards and trim variety), preparing to paint (the basement floor variety), and a thousand other things.  I’ve JUST this past hour tossed the laundry from the trip into the washer!   So while it is stewing and getting clean, I thought I’d start at the beginning and attempt to catch up!

From the last post, you know I was able to meet Dana B. from an online class with Jane LaFazio (at Joggles.com) and friend Susan Brubaker Knapp and have dinner the first night.  Susan and I were snapping pictures from the get-go…. she spotted this light fixture (and got a much more artistic shot through the entryway):

Lighting at Leunig’s Bistro on the Church Street pedestrian mall in downtown Burlington, VT. Dinner was so good I returned several nights later with other teachers after the show ended!

I was rushing a bit so didn’t get the photo quite centered, but with cropping in Photoshop, like this view of the same fixture:

Holding the camera directly under the fixture….

As I told my quilting design students on Saturday/Sunday in class, design ideas are EVERYwhere!

My first class (Thursday) was Tame Fussy, Fiddly Threads.  We were lucky to be in the room with Janome provided machines, all 7700s, and I know at least two of my students went HOME with ones they got at an amazing show special from Bittersweet Fabrics (that owner, Dave Lavallee, and his company gave some AWESOME prizes including machines to at least six lucky youth quilters!).  I always encourage students to cut loose and make their own designs and color combinations with the paints for stencilling their black cloth….

Lovely and delicate coloring on this piece, which she had just begun quilting.

The class teaches how to use the threads so many fear:  metallics, holographic, heavy poly, multicolored.  The trick is getting the correct needle and tension.  I begin class by having students prepare their freezer paper stencil and painting. (PS–the paints used are Jacquard Lumiere textile paints, available at various art quilty places and at online retailers such as art supplier dickblick.com.)  While the paint sets up, we review the things you need to know, then by late morning (ish) sewing begins!   This time one student decided to make a tree, and her friend and tablemate followed suit:

Trees…with freezer paper stencil still affixed while the paint dries

And in the back, Cricket (LOVE that name, and how totally cool that her parents named her that–it’s not a nickname!) did some spectacular color-work…just love the look and color of these leaves:

Crickets colorful leaves

One interesting thing–she was having some issues with the machine/quilting despite having experience with free-motion quilting.  We changed her seating to something with the seat higher up–closer to correct position (you know how in classes the machines are ALWAYS too high up on the table for the usual classroom chairs?) and presto, problem solved!  So if you are having difficulties controlling your Free-motion quilting, try adjusting the height of your chair (pillows, whatever!).

This student wanted a more airy look to her stencils, not filled in heavily the way I made mine. Love the soft look, and the fun she is having quilting!

I had encouraged students to bring a scrap–that way you can test drive threads and tension and don’t have to pick it out if things are off.  This student used her cut-out leaves as a mask and painted the background…this turned out fabulous.  Here it is in progress:

The sweep of metallic colors on black was FABULOUS!

The 30-wt So Fine (formerly Brytes) from Superior Threads makes an awesome color statement…here she is using the blue.

And remember those trees…here is one later in the day:

Love the way this turned out!

At Show and Tell Saturday night. The gentleman at left is Richard Cleveland, the founder of VQF. Part of show and tell is each teacher gets to go up, and if there are any students there they come up and share their projects. I’m holding my version, and you can see my students to the right, including that wonderful “sweep” of color over the leaves, the “test” piece held by the lady at the far right. GREAT students, fun class!

There was a VERY special moment for me at the Sharing, but I’m going to be evil and make you wait to hear about it!  I had two more classes:  Fine Finishes and Quilting Design.  I was so busy with a full 20 students in a BUSY class that I didn’t take a single (SOB) photo for the Fine Finishes bindings and edge finishes class, but got some great pics of the design class (small but superlative), and some photos of some of my favorite quilts from the show.  More soon!

On a clear day, you can see almost forever…or at least from Hope to Liberty, Freedom and points north and west in Maine….  Today we went for a walk onto a neighbor’s hilltop / blueberry barren, and it was glorious.   There were some woods on one side, but I stood and took photos in an almost-complete circle…more than 270 degrees.  When I got home, I discovered my Photoshop Elements would create a panorama for me automatically.  I fiddled a little to fine tune it, so here is a hilltop in Hope, Maine, about noon today:

A panoramic collage...click to view larger

Clearly it was GLORIOUS!   The puppy was hot and panting though it is only about 70 degrees outside.

Here are two shots, larger and not collaged, of the view:

The view to the northwest. The building in the center is the Robbins Lumber mill.

And a bit to the north/east of the previous photo--the house in the center is the one we look out on from our land (trust me, that small gray blob in the middle of the photo is a house), which is about halfway between where this photo is taken and the house on the next hillside over

I spotted some rocks that might be good for doing rubbings (grin), and these little gems will be wild Maine blueberries ready to eat in about two months–the flower is bunchberry, a form of low-growing dogwood (cornus canadensis I think):

Wild blueberries, currently not much larger than the head of the glass-ball-headed pins

Then we meandered home:

Looking east toward Camden...I am pretty sure that is Mount Megunticook with the knobby edge. Love the falling down old stone wall. They actually have these walls on the official town plat-maps.

Paul and, quite a bit farther ahead, Eli with the puglet!

I feel somewhat guilty, that I have neglected the blog.  I’ve been busy with end-of-year for our 8th grader (graduates Thursday), house stuff, quilting/work stuff, and generally not working myself into a ground up pulp.  I promise before too long I’ll take a few days and do nothing but write blogposts, prep the photos etc.!  Hope you are all having a wonderful early summer, Cheers, Sarah

Just took these a few moments ago and had to share…..

And to skip back to the first in the sequence….and then in order.  Taken from the living room side windows and (the last one and the one above) the porch, looking west over the lawn and the big meadow below the stone wall/hedgerow…

Pinch me… I really get to live here?  Where’s the best place to live on Earth?  MAINE!

At long last we got a light dusting of snow yesterday—it has been a balmy, mild winter here in the far northeast corner of the US.  Until yesterday afternoon (January 31st for heaven’s sake!) we could see bare ground in way too many places.  Better today…. though I am mystified how it can be 95 percent humidity when it is 23 degrees F (below freezing for those of you on C. scale).  But, that meant we woke up to this:

I love it when the branches are all white.....

So this morning when I went out to do this,

Mom! STOP taking pictures, I wanna GO! I smell critters!

I took the camera!  Since the snow barely covers the ground and walking is easy, I went up behind the house and took this shot:

From behind the house, the view obscured by white fog

By this time last year we had about 18 inches, not two, of snow!  But I love how sometimes crystals grow on the branches and dried grasses:

Isn't that just spectacular, those shards of gentle ice?

And the pine grew the crystals too

And I’m still obsessed with milkweed pods and Queen Anne’s lace… this shot could so easily be turned into a great graphic design for fabric:

Queen Anne's Lace stalks that didn't get mowed before winter set in

I may have to go try this photo again…. it is a bit hard to see the ice crystals against the background of snow, but I love the crystals and how the dried flower pot makes a cup or nest of snow:

A nest of snow

Here’s to hoping we get at least one good blizzard this winter.  I love staying home, snug and warm, reading and (if the power doesn’t go out) quilting!   Now, to get down to the studio.  Nope, breakfast first, THEN studio!

Late last summer and last fall I took two online classes with Jane LaFazio at Joggles.com.  For one of the lessons, I chose a milkweed pod that I had found by the roadside.

One of the pods releasing its seeds, ready to sketch

My friend Kathy laughed…. I didn’t know what these were, but was enchanted with their prehistoric look–she called them the bane of her gardening existence!   It would appear they are quite common not just in Maine, but I didn’t have a clue (what else is new, right?  Laugh along with me!).  Anyway, that class exercise fed the flames of my passion for these amazing products of nature! I swear they look as if they belong in the Cretaceous with the dinosaurs!

After looking closely at the silks/seeds I realized that something I had glued into my sketchbook in Fall 2010 before at a soccer practice–a wisp found in the grass–was in fact one of the seeds and silks!  Then when popping in at my friend Kate’s house, I found a lovely huge stand and twisted off a bunch of the stems to take home.  The ones with fewer silks are now in a vase as a dried arrangement in my studio (I told you I’m besotted!), the others were for sketching.  There is ABSOLUTELY a quilt, if not several, in these things!

So for the end of 2011 and the start of 2012 I decided I needed to sketch the ones with the silks–which had been fluffing the kitchen for far too long.

My first sketch... just the line drawing for now, no color until I make photocopies to use to make some screens. These are drawn on 9x12 paper, so larger than life-size.

The pods outlined

I had this bright idea to do the drawing in two phases:  the pods on the page, the seeds and silks on an overlay, so that I could make two screens (without having to re-draw them!):  one of the pods, on for just the silks, then I could screenprint with two colors.  Well…despite the cover of the package of Vellum saying it was suitable for ink, pencil, paint, etc., my *permanent* Pitt India-Ink/waterproof pen SMEARS.  Grumble.  Will have to muck around –maybe a Sharpie won’t smear?  And I’ve waited 36+ hours and the ink still smears.  If I try to erase the pencil guidelines, it takes the ink and smears it all over.  Bleah. Good idea, materials need refining. Ahem.

The pods, with the seeds/silks on a vellum overlay

And here is just the overlay:

Just the seeds/silks thingies on the vellum...lovely eh?

Another pod...yes, I am obsessed

And yet another that shows how the seeds cluster inside the pod. Mother Nature is really so clever...these little puffs float on the lightest whiff of air and then cling with the silky tentacles--to EVERYthing in the kitchen!

I can totally see making some screens, with the drawings in different sizes, to do some printing on cloth as well as rendering these in fused applique…. now, I just need to make the quilt for the Dinner@8 challenge for this year (a juried invitational quilt exhibit…see here for more info on past exhibits), then I’ll dive into this one!  It feels so good to be energized and excited about making art!  It has been a rough several years, and I think we really are moving into a less drama-filled life…this is GOOD!