The final figure is one that means a lot to me, as our oldest son is named after him:  Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain.  He also means a lot to Mainers (only we didn’t know when we selected the name that we would end up living in Chamberlain’s beloved state!).  Chamberlain was a professor at Bowdoin College here in Maine at the outbreak of the Civil War.  He asked for leave to fight, and was denied.  So he asked for leave for a sabbatical, it was granted, and he promptly enlisted.

At the Battle of Gettysburg, he was in charge of the 20th Maine.  That small group of men held the outermost position (the left flank) on one end of the union line on Little Round Top, a hill at the end of Seminary Ridge.  On July 2nd, they took a wicked battering from Confederate forces; by the end of the day, they were out of ammunition and engaged in hand to hand combat, but they held the line until darkness fell and fighting stopped for the night.  Because the 20th Maine held their position, the other Union forces were able to hold their positions.  Because the Union held the line on July 2nd, the tide of the battle changed in favor of the Union, and by nightfall July 3rd the Union had won the battle.   The Union victory changed the tide of the war, and the nation remained one.

SO…. when it came time to pick historical figures, and one for Maine, the choice was clear (at least to me!).

Here’s a drawing based on this photo:

And the rendition in cloth (before I colored the eyes):

And on the quilt top:

Woohooo…..  a while back my contact at Janome America (I am VERY fortunate to have a loaner Janome 6600 from them, thank you Janome-America for your support!) called to ask if she could interview me about thread.  It turns out she moonlights writing for The Quilter magazine….

I had thought I would be one of several people quoted in a longer article, as she had also spoken with Bob Purcell, co-owner with wife Heather, of Superior Threads (which also happen to be some of my favorite threads…I must, literally, have several hundred spools!).  Well… it ended up being a 2-page profile!

In the magazine’s machine quilting section are an interview with longarm master quilter Renae Haddadin, the profile of me,  an article (I’m guessing this one is also by my contact) on “choosing the Perfect Thread:  a Machine Quilter’s Product Guide” and one by Morna Golletz of the Professional Quilter Magazine on a machine quilting career.

Thanks A. for calling, asking me, and turning it into a whole article (and bless you for mentioning the book up front!)!

A while back, I shared a tiny tease from Little Brown Bird, a small wholecloth art quilt here.  Well, here is all 16×20 inches (or thereabouts) of it:

I made this quilt as an illustration for my Machine Quilting Unlimited article (July 2009 issue) on Negative space.  I developed the vine motif as part of the illustrative exercises, then decided to put it into use in the quilt.

The fabric is one of my hand-dyes, and is relatively monotone yellow-green.  I quilted it using five shades of green thread (Superior Threads’ 40-wt. polyester, with green Bottom Line — a fine 60-wt polyester — in the bobbin). The darkest shade of green is used in the bird, the next darkest for the straight lines and vine/leaf motif, and the lighter shades to shade/lighten the background.

Here is a detail of the bird:

And here is another of the leaf/vine motif:

If you visit my blog on June 16 (obviously it will not be “live” until the 16th!) blogpost, you can download a free PDF of the leaf/vine motif for use in your own quilting!

I promised that I’d share the top I began in the Jan Krentz Hunter’s Star workshop, so here you go!  Since my goal for the class was to get hints on improving my teaching, and since I haven’t made a pieced top in YEARS, I was fairly laid back about what I would do.  I selected “Caribbean” colors from my stash (yes, I have a goodly sized stash, and did serious reduction of the aquas!).  To make matters worse, since of COURSE I couldn’t do the quilt top just like the teacher said but instead had to do my own thing, I had an arithmetic hiccup while calculating, and now have enough blocks cut to make TWO 68×68 tops.

My blocks finish at 8 inches, so the total quilt is about 66 1/2 inches before quilting (which usually shrinks it up a couple of inches).

Before the class, Jan had sent me a jpeg of a student’s piece using two different sized diamonds.  I LOVED the motion, so decided to make FOUR different sized stars.  In the end, that proved to be too much, so I selected two of the sizes for the first top, and two for the one that will be made at some point.  Ahem.  The photo above is the blocks I made in the class up on the wall for testing at home.

And here is the completed top:

I’ll have to take a break now and do things I ought to be doing like writing my next article for Machine Quilting Unlimited, finishing up my Birch Pond pattern, and working on a commission quilt.  Ahem.  Nothing like taking a detour, eh?

Hi all!  It is frustrating sometimes to be working, working, working, and feel like I can’t really share stuff yet!  In this instance, I finished writing my next article for Machine Quilting Unlimited (click here for more info on the magazine), which will be on negative space (basically, the spaces between….alas you’ll have to wait for the magazine to come out to learn more!).

For the magazine, I decided to use one of the exercises I illustrated to make a design which I then used as a quilting motif, and made a small wholecloth quilt.  The picture above is a detail photo….you’ll have to wait for the design, but I’ve decided to upload it to my blog/website as a free pdf for folks to download when the article is published in July…let’s hope that I can get the pdf thing to work!

Anyway, I totally love how this little quilt turned out and think I may enter it in an art quilt show this summer.

I also needed an alternative to the photo/illustration I intended to use in a different part of the article.  I had hoped that I could repeat an image from one article (in the April issue) to the next to illustrate my points…both to save on work, but mostly to show that the design principles I’m teaching  are all interrelated.  Alas, no go.  So I whipped out a new sample, and here’s another detail:

I really like this one… it would work well for traditional quilters, and art quilters can really soup it up….hope you like it!