The second figure I tackled for Be Inspired (see original post dated July 11th) is Martin Luther King.  In polling of the four grades (5 through 8 ) King handily topped the list of inspiring figures from history, so he became the central figure on the first (of a projected three) “Americas” panels.

When dyeing the fabric for the earth/sea and sky backgrounds, I also did 2 1/2 yards of fabric in skin tones.  The patchy look on King’s face will smooth out once quilting in shades of browns and reds and some black is applied.  nyway, I’m thrilled that this actually LOOKS like King!

Here’s a picture of the full panel with Sacajawea and MLK:

Now back to tracing, transferring, cutting, fusing and making people.   I do wonder WHAT possessed me to volunteer to do a quilt with 39 or more people……….  (reminder to self:  next time smack self upside head and run the other way!).  Of course, the fact that things are working out has me happily amazed….

A few thousand years ago, the middle school principal here in Camden–Maria Libby–put out a call for artwork suggestions for the middle school (a little over a year ago it was).  Among other things, she needed something big for a long, LARGE wall in a hallway below the big gym in the 7th/8th grade end of the school.  My first idea, a seasonal series of panels about the area, was nixed as the kids had already painted something similar a few years before.  Then inspiration hit…what about panels of people who inspire the kids…people from across time, around the world, all disciplines!  So “Be Inspired” was born.  I’m still totally amazed that she loves the idea of textile art, especially on such a big scale…way cool!

This picture is the modest beginning:

I dyed the “earth/sea” fabric (about 12 yards! enough for all six large panels plus one smaller panel) as well as the sky fabric.  Each of the six panels will be 36 inches wide and about 50-56 inches long, with straight top, sides and undulating bottom edge.  The seventh panel goes over a door in the middle of the wall and will read “Be Inspired!”  or “Who Inspires You?”  Then on the door I’ll make a poster that is a “key” to all the figures and places depicted on the panels.  Overall, it will be 21 feet in length and about 4 1/2 feet tall!!!!

Next, after surveying the kids a year ago to find who inspires them most, Mrs. Libby and I selected a representative sampling of folks.  The rules were famous more than 20 years ago, no naughty folks.  In the end, we decided to make one exception:  to include Barack Obama, since as the first non-white President of the US, he will clearly be a historic figure; plus, his inclusion dates the construction of the quilt(s) to 2009 and forward, which is kinda cool.  By doing 20+ years ago, we avoided the sports or pop stars of the moment and confined it to truly historical figures.  Here’s the tentative list for all six panels:
Panel 1:

Asia and Africa:

1.  The Pyramid builders
2.  Mother Theresa
3.  Doctors (Medecins Sans Frontiers)
4.  Jane Goodall
5.  Gandhi
6.  Nelson Mandela
7.  Sir Edmund Hillary (might just do Everest w/ a small figure for that one)

Panels 2, 3 and 4:

The Americas

1.  Martin Luther King
2.  Abraham Lincoln
3.  Rosa Parks
4.  Jackie Robinson
5.  Harriet Tubman
6.  The astronauts
7.  John F. Kennedy
8.  Amelia Ehrhart (w/biplane for the Wright Bros)
9.  Thomas Jefferson
10.  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
11.  The Incas / Machu Picchu
12.  Sacajawea
13.  Lucas / Spielberg / represented by R2d2 and 3CPO if they agree
14.  ?? Lucille Ball (may be a licensing / $$ / copyright problem)
15.  Obama
16.  Teachers

Panels 5 and 6:

1.  The Beatles
2.  Albert Einstein
3.  Beethoven
4.  Anne Frank
5.  Leonardo da Vinci’s vitruvian man
6.  The Cave Paintings
7.  Engineers (bridges, ships buildings)–Eiffel Tower?
8.  The Spanish and Portuguese explorers–ships
9.  Jacques Cousteau and/or the Calypso
10.  Shakespeare

This first panel includes Sacajawea, Martin Luther King (the clear leader in voting by the kids), Jackie Robinson, Barack Obama, teachers, and Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  Chamberlain led the 20th Maine at the Battle of Gettysburg, where he and his troops played a pivotal role in the Union victory; he later became a governor and senator for Maine, president of Bowdoin college (in Brunswick, Maine).  So he’s our Maine representative…. Here’s the somewhat “iffy” looking beginning…with the tracings/drawings on paper, pinned to the background.  My first set of pin-ups were too small, so I enlarged them all on my all-in-one-printer until I thought they filled the quilt nicely.

At the top is the first person I made, Sacajawea.  There are no known images of her, so this is based on a sculpture (in Iowa? or was it Idaho?).  She looked a little lonely, so I added mountains.

The hard part is funding.  The school and schoolkids raised enough to cover about one panel (I’m paid, as well as material costs), but the local quilt guild, The Pine Tree Quilt Guild turned down my request for funding (apparently the fact that I’m to be paid is a problem, tho that wasn’t clear in the guidelines… I said I’d use the funds only for materials, but I guess it just didn’t fit the criteria…however, the sweet soul who chairs the panel deciding what fit felt so strongly about the project, she sent a PERSONAL check / donation!!!!!! Thank you!).  Anyway, I’m hoping that once this first piece is done, we’ll be able to generate interest and donations to cover the rest of the project.

Postings here will be scarce for a couple days, as I said I’d have this quilt DONE to enter in Maine Quilts…. it must be delivered on July 21, and as of this moment I am still making the fusible appliques.  EEEEEEK!  Gotta go quilt!

What is an Alewife?  It’s a fish!   I’d never heard of them either until we moved to Maine.  I’d probably not ever heard of them until I discovered a gem of a quilt shop called Alewives Fabric and Gifts in Damariscotta Mills (about 45 minutes south of me).  Because they are set back a couple of miles from Route 1, and I’m always racing to somewhere, I’d never been there until my dear friend Kathy invited me along one day.  As I’ve said before, that store is a serious Visa accident waiting to happen!  (and I’ll be totally wicked and tell you that they now have batiks and Amy Butler and Kaffe Fassett and and and for sale online!)  But this is about the fish…and they run in early May (yes, I’m late writing this up!… I knew they were running because a month ago on a trip south I saw a roadside sign and truck selling smoked alewives!)

Kathy did this quilt of the Alewives, who return from the sea, travel up the Great Salt Bay and head upriver at Damariscotta Mills, telling me about the fish ladder. (Kathy blogged about the quilt, I think, but her blog doesn’t have a search box on it so couldn’t find a picture…sorry!)  A fish ladder?  yep…. as you approach the area, you see the area in the above photo.  You can tell the fish are running thanks to a generous supply of cormorants and seagulls lurking for an easy meal.

Then you see the pen used to harvest some of the fish, which are about 10 inches long I’d guess.  The fish are used for lobster trap bait and used to be used as a foodsource.  On the information plaques, it says that for over 200 years it has been a tradition to give widows alewives (salted and cured I’d think….).

The lower portion of the fish ladder…which is basically a stream 24 inches wide or less (about .65 metres) with rocky small falls, rivulets and pools progressing up the hill to the Mills pond and lake at the top of the run…..was wall-to-wall fish:

If you look carefully, you can see both the shadow of the railing (lower right) and all those dark curvy things are alewives.

The next three pictures are close-ups of the information sign.  If you click on the photo it should (?) open up larger so maybe you can read the text.

I was lucky that someone came to purchase some alewives while I was there.  The fish are plentiful, so there is no risk to the fish stocks in harvesting them, and the proceeds from the sales are used for renovations and upkeep of the fish ladder.

First, the guy who works there gets a helper, and they use a sturdy mesh frame attached to two long poles to herd/sweep the wall-to-wall fish into a pen. As you can see on the right, there is a lot of late-spring runoff water tumbling down!

Next:  you see the fish splashing up next to the screen/sweeper:

This shot shows a fair number of the soon-to-be-bait alewives:

Then, the workers crank the pen which tips up.  The fish slide down into the hopper:

Talk about a thundering roar as all those flopping fish thump and twitch their way down the metal ramp/tilt/whatever it is!

And then there are MORE:

Finally, they stop flopping, having spent too long in the air.  They are then scooped into a crate for the waiting lobsterman.

And that’s my fish tale for today!  I love living in a place where people have lived for over 200 years.  For those of you in Europe, it is no big deal, but in the US it means we are among the oldest European-origin communities around.  Cool.

Strong Women of the World, rise up, unite, and rejoice!

The Quilt Mavericks are this wonderful, supportive, loving caring group online;  I am fortunate to be a part of it.  Recently, one of our members shared something about her personal life for the first time ever (after living with a horror for 20 years) and asked us for strength and white light… you have to understand that Mav Power is a force to be reckoned with!   When all of us get together, we can conquer and save and love the world.

A number of the members in response shared similar tales of difficulties from their lives, and one of us (who was it?  OK.. it was Leslie!) said we should have  A Strong Women’s Day.  Once it was spoken, it came to be!   Let’s start a movement!

When I first heard Garrison Keillor’s Lake Wobegon / A Prairie Home Broadcast 20-plus years ago, I chuckled at the humor in his closing:  “And that’s the news from Lake Wobegon, where the men are good looking, the women are strong, and all the children are above average.”  Of course, that was the point of his humor…. the play on conventional expectations that the man is strong, when in fact it is women who are the ones made of steel and love, who endure the trials of life and still love and care and cope and rejoice.

Fellow Mavs Leslie blogged about strong women, here, as did Deirdre, here and Margi, here, and Cindy here, and Julie here, and Margaret here.

I’d like to choose my friend Linda Wauchope as my strong woman this year.  She died more than a decade ago, but in her final months, she showed me courage beyond anything I have ever seen or touched in my life.  Liver cancer took her when her children were a bit younger than mine are now (mine are 11 and 15); she and her husband were building a new home that she never got to live in.  He accelerated his retirement plans so he could be home with her for the final months of her life.  Watching her waste away with each passing visit was offset by watching her strength of spirit endure to the very end.  After her memorial service at the reception at their old home, I noticed the calendar in the kitchen:  Linda had left notes of when to get the furnace serviced, when to renew this or that policy, annual chores to be done, on every month.

To this day, I often think of her, her irreverent, sassy sense of humor, and think “gee, Linda would get SUCH a kick out of this.”  So Linda, here’s to you my friend!  (The photo above is from about 1990 when we both lived with our husbands in Libreville, Gabon.  We were both US Foreign Service officers, but on leave without pay so our hubbies could pursue their careers.  Her husband was the Ambassador, mine the Deputy Chief of Mission (deputy Ambassador)…  long ago and far away.)

I wrote about Linda two years ago when my quilt, The Tree, was donated to and auctioned for cancer research.  The quilt was dedicated to three people in my life who suffered..and two who died from… cancer:  Linda, my brother Charlie, and Daddy.  The photos got moved out of order when we migrated the blog from blogger to my website, but that post is here.

Albeit LATE spring…..   I took some photos the past couple weeks and thought I’d share with you all:

The fiddlehead ferns are the true sign that spring is well underway…this was about two to three weeks ago:

I’ve never actually eaten fiddlehead salad, which is the unfurled buds/tops with vinegar.  I am told by Mainers that it is an acquired taste, and one best acquired in childhood (presumably meaning it’s not so good later on).   And here, the wider view of the ferns–and yes, there is a fiddlehead quilt in my future…I keep thinking it would be cool to ghost a real fiddle into the background:

In spring, with the runoff, the small Megunticook river rises.  It literally flows under Main Street (which is one block long), under the businessess, and down the falls into the harbor.  On the up-river side of the street there is a bridge area which is lovely…. I love the angles in the siding and balcony and supports:

Here is a wider view…it’s not as good as a photo, but gives you the context for the one above:

And here are the trees:

Eli took this photo, and we think it is a flicker of some sort up in the branches: