Point, Click, Quilt! is the title of Susan Brubaker Knapp’s wonderful book which is subtitled “Turn your Photos in to Fabulous Fabric Art.”  And this is a SERIOUSLY overdue review!  I received my copy of the book from Susan in July, just before heading out to teach in Nebraska.  I liked the book so much that I wanted to review it before I went, but felt I really needed to read the entire book closely first….then I got back and life happened!   So now that I have almost (but not quite) dug out from under the accumulated “life happening” stuff, I would like to recommend this book to you.  And offer the disclaimer that Susan is an internet friend and she asked me to have a piece in her book.  However, I’d say all these good things anyway!  Check below for information on winning a copy of this book!

Susan Brubaker Knapp's Point, Click, Quilt!

There are a lot of books out there these days about using your photography as the starting point for your art quilts.  Many of them, alas, make me think of “paint by numbers”–artworks that are slaving imitations of a photo without much thought–fortunately this book is all about thinking.  Susan’s book  begins by teaching you to THINK and to SEE–to improve your own photos so that the process of modifying them into textile art starts with a really good image from the get-go.  The Creativity and Learning to See section talks about one of my favorite things:   actually SEEING what is there, not what you think is there–about learning to really look at the elements of the composition (your photo’s composition) to make it a strong visual image. She covers the basics elements of design, including showing you how to crop a so-so photo into a much better composition, and how you can modify an existing photo to make a better composition in your quilt.

Learning to SEE!

Susan then goes on to “On a Mission:  Photography exercises to build your skills” which has five separate exercises, lavishly illustrated with Susan’s photos.  These exercises show how you can take what I call “reference” photos to put  into practice (and into your imagery) what you learned in the Creativity section.  These two sections are, for me, worth the entire price of the book and more!  They are JUST what you want from a book like this!

Table of Contents. Sorry the photo is a tad blurry...click to see larger.

The “Getting Started” chapter then shows you how to take your photo and turn it into a quilt pattern. Finally, there are sixteen projects, each using a different special technique.  These projects are good learning exercises for those new (and not so new) to art quilts.  Once you have begun to practice SEEING, and interpreting first Susan’s and then your own images in cloth, you’ll be ready to move on to creating your original art.

At the end is a gallery of quilts made from photos to give you an idea how contemporary quilt artists are using photographs to create art.  My quilt of Blue Buoys, made for a Coastal Quilters (local chapter of the Pine Tree Quilt Guild)  Challenge a while back, uses a very tight crop of some buoys in a photo by D. Pitcairn (used with permission) and faces a quilt of an adorable dog made by Pam George.

Blue Buoys (mine) on the left, Peanut by Pam George on the right. Click to view larger.

I’m happy to be able to recommend this book, and so thankful that Susan asked me to be a part of it!  You can order directly from Susan at her website.

LATE NEWS BULLETIN:  I wrote Susan to let her know this post would be going live today, and she said “OH!  I’d love to donate a copy of the book in a giveaway!”  So thank you Susan!  To be eligible to win a copy, please leave a comment below.  I’ll use a random number generator (may be my son!) to  select the winner.  I’d love it if you’d tell me which of Susan’s works you most like…she has a mind-boggling array of beautiful work here (her Gallery page) as well as in her series of six articles on thread sketching for Quilting Arts magazine.  PS:  Susan is heading to Quilt Market and Festival, so I’ll do the drawing on November 9th (after I’m back from teaching in NH, too).

Hi all…. a review for you of a DVD and/or app for you i-Device (iPhone, iPad or iPod touch):  the Footbook by Jim and Diane Stutsman available at their website Online Sewing.  Jim is the buy behind the online group/learning mecca Club J, for Janome owners.

This DVD/App is for Janome feet, but many of the tips on the app will apply to ANY brand of pintuck foot, zipper foot, whatever.   For those of us who don’t have iPhones or iPads or an iPodTouch, they also have the info on a CD to use on a computer.  I noticed that they didn’t have the price on the description (for the CD at least), and wrote the Contact Us person to mention it would be a helpful addition.  Turned out it was none other that Jim Stutsman of Club J with his wife Diane writing the text and narrating the videos.  Jim wrote back, said good point and thanks, and offered to send a free CD to me for alerting them and the suggestion.  Nice!

I will note that this is a DVD / app that covers the uses of all the presser feet.  If all you do is straight seams and free-motion quilting, it may have a lot more information about esoteric feet, like pintuck, beading, buttonhole, rolled edge, ultraglide, overcast and whatnot, that won’t apply to your sewing.  If, however, you want to use those feet, do sewing other than straight seams and make garments and home dec items, there is a lot of great knowledge in this small package.  The photos are really sharp and clear, like this one:

I figured I’d look up a foot I knew how to use and one I didn’t.  I learned from the videos for BOTH feet!  The one I (thought) I knew how to use is the pintuck foot.  I do, but they had an added suggestion of taping a machine needle to help form the channel and guide the fabric.  Great suggestion!  I haven’t looked at all the feet/videos, but I’ve probably done about half, and have learned something with most all of the videos.  That’s pretty amazing!  (please note that, according to Jim, this video is smaller and lower quality from those on the DVD. The iPhone app uses 3 different quality videos depending on the type of data connection, with WiFi being the best.)  Here’s the YouTube-quality sample of one of the videos:

The only negatives:  when I pop the DVD into my  laptop, a MacBook Pro, there isn’t something that opens automatically or that suggests which browsers to use.  You don’t need a live internet connection, just the browser (don’t ask why…don’t know, something with how the DVD player reads the disc).    According to the website, the DVD is compatible with Windows Explorer, Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari.  On my laptop I usually use Firefox.  I remembered the first time I opened the DVD it had nice videos.  When I tried to play it today, no videos.  Weird, I thought, where did they go?  So I opened the DVD in Safari, and there they were.

The second time I put the DVD in the slot, I noticed the disk itself on the label tells you to click on the folder that says “Start.” (DUH Sarah…I shoulda read that to begin with!)   Operator error (as in my goof).  Anyway, I clicked on Start; since I had Firefox open, but not Safari, it told me I didn’t have Safari or Google Chrome which would play advanced features of the DVD.  I opened Safari and pasted the browser address into the Safari window and it played like a dream.  There is, apparently, a Plug-In that I could install on Firefox on my laptop to enable the necessary Whatever to play the videos.  Since I had the work-around of using Safari, I declined to download the plugin and will just remember (I hope) to play it in Safari.  (Note:  for those of you not on Macs, Safari is an internet browser designed by Apple, similar to the way Microsoft created Explorer.)

In sum, I thought the information was well very written, the little video clips (which run 2 minutes or less) very helpful….Thanks to Jim and Diane for the DVD to review and try out.  With 40 years of sewing in my checkered past I’ve learned a lot, but I learned a number of new things from this DVD.  To me, that means it does quite a fine job!  Cost is US$6.99 for the app or $24.95 for the DVD.  You can order it from them here:

http://onlinesewing.squarespace.com/

Cheers, Sarah

Wow what a fun way to start the day:  open up an e-mail from Quilting Arts about “Ten Art Quilting Lessons Learned” to see that they have a new book.  I knew months ago that something I had written for Quilting Arts several years ago was to be included in a new book.  Well this is it, titled The Best of Quilting Arts:  Your Ultimate Resource for Art Quilt Techniques and Inspiration, AND they featured my photo/pieces for the edge-finishes article in the e-mail!!!!!!  Here is a link to see that e-mail online; scroll down to see my little green quiltlets.   And here is a link to pre-order the book.  Make sure to click on the tab to see what is in the book (my bits are in the first section).  It looks like it will be a great book, and I am so thrilled and honored to be included!

The major sections in the book are:

• Introduction
• 1.  Starting and Finishing:  Articles on Art Quilt Basics
• 2.  Trends in Surface Design:  Articles on Stamping, Dyeing, Printing and More
• 3.  Represent!  Articles on People, Pets, and Text in Art Quilting
• 4.  Make it Green:  Articles on Recycled and Natural Materials
• 5.  Too Much is Never Enough:  Articles on Embellishment and Mixed Media
• Contributors
• Resources
• Index

It is 160 pages and only $24.95… can’t wait to buy my copy!  I am thrilled giddy and silly to be included with folks like Jane Dunnewold, Terry Grant, Jane Davila, Melanie Testa and so may other talented artists. WOW…just pinched myself, and I really am awake and it really is true!

Twelve by Twelve: The international art quilt challenge

A while ago an early review of this book summed up their feelings in two words.  Ditto:

Buy it!

Table of contents: twelve chapters for twelve challenges

That said, here’s a few more details about this fascinating, informative book!  The project began with Diane Perin Hock, who invited quilt artists –newbies and experienced– into what became the Twelve by 12 challenge.  (You can see their website here and blog here.)  My friend and fellow Frayed Edges member Deborah Boschert (website here and blog here) is among the twelve, so I am especially thrilled to have followed this group from their beginnings, to thinking about a book and submitting a proposal, to published.  And how well they have done all along the way!

The book is arranged into twelve chapters, one for each of the two-month challenges.  The first chapter is written by Diane Perin Hock who is the featured artist for the first challenge, whose theme “Dandelion” she also selected.  Each chapter opens with all 12 of the 12×12 inch quiltlets on the left hand page and a large photo of the “featured” artist’s quilt on the right hand page.   In this chapter Diane explains how she came up with the idea for the challenge and got things rolling including  My Quilting Life, Choosing the Theme, Exploring the Theme, Creating My Piece, and Starting Your Own Challenge Group, a  how-to sidebar.  At the bottom of each page  the other 11 quiltlets are shown (larger than on the group page) with a  paragraph by each artist about her piece.

The subsequent chapters follow a similar pattern, though the person who selected the theme is not necessarily the featured artists for the theme.  The book ends with succinct artist profiles and links to their websites and/or blogs and—as every good book must have—an index. Of course I had to pick Deborah’s chapter to share:

Chapter 12, Deborah Boschert featured artist; I love Love LOVE the "thread wrap" Deborah has developed for her bindings. You get a clear "end" to a piece yet the picture continues in the thread stitched around the binding. Way cool! (PS--sorry about the salt shaker...needed something to hold the book open and it was nearby!)

As I read through the book, and yes I wanted to read every word, you  can see how the sense of community developed among this group.  It is amazing that each person managed to complete every challenge on time (or pretty much on time), and they share how they needed to make the bi-monthly “reveal” date stretch to accomodate the fact that members live in Belgium, the UK, the US and Australia and the dateline and time zones shift!  Each chapter has a  how-to section, and I think what I liked most was reading how each artist developed here quilt, sometimes rejected false starts, or re-working them, or admitting that “this was my least favorite.”  Not everything “works,” and it is refreshing to see something in print that acknowledges this necessary part of the learning and art experience.

To go back to where I began:  buy this book!  It is a treasure.  You’ll want to sit down and read it through.  Then browse.  Then soak in the art.  Consider inspiration.  Consider technique.  Ask yourself “what would I have done with this theme or problem?”  Then read it again…the book is available many places online including at Amazon.

I have a treat for you today:

Oreo in the garden graces the cover and gives you an idea of the fun within the covers of this book.

This little gem of a book features Ann Fahl‘s Oreo quilts (Oreo being her cat whose colors are, you guessed it, the same as the favorite cookie) and a poem written by my friend Jacquie Scuitto to accompany the quilts. There is also a visual “index” at the back with smaller shots of the quilts that includes their size, date, blurb about each quilt, and the page on which that quilt can be found.

Those of us on the QuiltArt and Janome6500 lists are familiar with Jacquie’s wonderful poems (one of which about thread –thank you Jacquie!– graces the dedication page of my book) which are heartwarming and wise.  This little book is a chance for many more to get to know her.

The book begins with a peek at Oreo.

The poem and the quilts take you through Oreo’s days and things to do (bathe, eat, nap, be curious) and visit some of Ann’s other quilts (like the coneflower and iris where Oreo pokes about).

This book is perfect if you love quilts, love cats, love ditties, or all of the above!  The modest price also means that it makes a great gift for anyone who might enjoy cats, quilts or both!  You can purchase the book from Jacquie via an e-mail from her blog www.quiltmuse.blogspot.com (this method uses PayPal—you don’t need a PayPal account, just a credit card for secure online purchasing–scroll to the post dated April 1, 2011) or from Ann via her website .

Sample pages from A Black and White Tale

Just sitting with this little gem makes my stress levels go down—sort of like patting a cat but with less shedding hair!  It’s a wonderful poem to pick up and read and enjoy the quilts again and again!
I’m SO PROUD of Jacquie (and of course I’m biased, she’s my friend!)—congrats to both Jacquie and Ann on a well-conceived, well-done book!