With abiding thanks…..

That great whoooshing sound you hear is time whizzing by yet again….since the last blogpost, since  summer 2007 when Joshua got hit and was in the hospital, since this past summer when I finally (in the heat of July) finished both Joshua’s and Eli’s quilts. It took FOREVER to get Joshua to let me take a picture, but I so wanted to thank everyone for their kindness and support for all of us!

Within a few days of Joshua getting hit by the jeep (on July 17, 2007…posts start that week), a kind and thoughtful soul on the Janome 6600 yahoo group had a kind and wonderful idea:  instead of sending get well cards, send blocks!  She chose a simple one:  an 8 inch (finished square) surrounded by 2 inch sashing, to finish at 12 inches.  Fabrics:  something a teenaged boy might like, all colors, scrappy.    A friend relayed the post to the QuiltArt e-list, and eventually more than 75 blocks arrived!  Many folks sent extras, including ones special for Eli, since he too was greatly affected by the accident (and he logged more miles than anyone going to the hospital up in Bangor, nearly 90 minutes each way, almost every single day for three weeks as Paul and I traded off spending the night there with Joshua or coming home to care for Eli and the animals).

Here, at long last—all healed and well, is Joshua doing what he loves best, playing guitar, on his quilt.  When I asked him if he wanted  to use sashing or a border he said no, I want as many blocks as possible!  So his quilt is 6 feet by 8 feet, 48 blocks!

Each of the boys picked their favorites, with Joshua requesting all the musical ones, Eli wanting the one with the orca/lobster, the wolves and the soccer balls!  They both love their quilts, and I am so grateful for the kindness and support these blocks represent at a time that was really kinda scary!   It is a jolt when you are told your healthy-until-4 days ago 13-year old son needs a large transfusion because he is so anemic (from internal blood loss from the three broken leg bones and the consequent loss of red-blood-cell-generating bones), and then needs another one.  We knew he would live, but not if he would keep his leg, or how well he would live.  The  thoughts and kindness of so many were a great support to all of us, and especially to Joshua who kept saying “these are for me?!?”  The blocks came from Australia, Singapore, Europe, Scotland, England, Canada, all over the United States, and I mean ALL over….. If the maker hadn’t signed the block, I wrote her name and city/state/country on each block so we can look at the quilt and say, look, this one is from “xxxx.”

And here is Eli on his bed with his quilt, made from 25 blocks.

Cindy Sissler Simms is a maven at Mariner’s Compass blocks, so she sent two awesome ones, which I made into coordinating pillows, one for each boy.  I love the way they turned out…. I machine quilted them simply with the walking foot, proving that sometimes simple is PERFECT!

Again, thank you (which seems so small and not enough) from the bottom of our hearts, hugs, Sarah

And yet another piece!  Amazing what happens when you finally dig out from under the mountain of accumulated work…all the stuff that piles up while life is happening!  One of my favorites in the new crop of small art quilt pieces is  Birch Pond:

I’ve always loved etchings and woodblock prints (even bought a couple books on woodblock print making, tho I’ll likely never make such a thing…but of course the design ideas and visual techniques can always be applied to different media…like quilts!).  Mary Azarian is one of my favorites, and I got the Shepherd Seed Catalog for years just to see her illustrations.  Alas, I can’t find the latter online….the link for Sheperd’s Seeds automatically switches over to White Flower Farm where there are NO seeds listed…Sob!  Anyway, check out her website…the Farm and Field prints are fancier than what was in the catalog, but in the same vein.

So, looking for something fun and easy to do this summer at Maine Quilts, I was thrilled to see that Laura Wasilowski was teaching her Woodcut Quilts class!   Laura’s website is www.artfabrik.com (with a K…sigh).  As part of the class kit fee, we received some of Laura’s lovely hand dyed fabrics and threads, but of course I had to be me and took my pre-fused stash of batiks (well, a selection). This piece varies somewhat from “true” woodcut quilts because the individual leaves are not edged in black, but I can live with that <grin!>.

Here’s a detail:

The 14×14 inch quilt is mounted on 21×21 stretcher bars covered with dark blue batik cloth, clean finished and ready to hang.  It is available for sale at Ducktrap Bay Trading Company (gallery here in Camden, Me. — click on the New Work link under the Galleries column for more info).

I had fun in the class… it was low key and easy paced (a bit slow for a kind Type-A sort like me who is quite experienced, but that happens to me a bit too often….I’m to ready and raring to go!), I learned new stuff, Laura is a well-prepared and entertaining teacher and best of all, I now know some of her tricks so I can let what I learned percolate and come out in a quilt in the future.  Yeah!  My own woodblock prints without having to carve the wood (not that I’d mind learning that, either, but there aren’t enough hours in a lifetime already!).  Cheers!

Amazing… I actually got something done!  The quilted portions of these two pieces, Buoys 1 (Blue) and Buoys 2 (Pink-purple) were made for my local quilt chapter’s 10×10″ challenge.  The challenge was to make a piece based on guild-member Jan P’s husband’s photo.  Dwight’s photo is called Ropes and Buoys, and it was a delight to see the wide range of pieces.  (To see the challenge pieces as displayed at Maine Quilts this past July, click here then scroll nearly halfway down.)  I recently mounted my pieces on batik stretched over stretcher bars (with a base support and batting to make it look good).  They are for sale… directly from me until Wednesday morning then via Ducktrap Bay Trading Company, the local gallery that carries my work.

Here is the Blue Buoys:

and a detail shot which shows the intense quilting and shading with thread:

I wanted to try doing the buoys in totally-not-realistic colors…the ones in the photo were mostly yellow and orange.  While blue and light blue might be a real combination, I can’t imagine I’d ever see any real buoys that are pink and purple (tho there are women lobstermen (???   that sounds weird, but I am pretty sure that they don’t call themselves lobsterers, maybe lobster fishermen, but that has the guy thing too… ???), but decided to try a really wild color combination to play with value and hue.  Here is Buoys #2 (pink – purple):

And the detail of the pink one:

Each piece is 10×10 inches mounted on a 16×16 inch frame (one inch deep); the background fabric  wraps around to the back which is clean finished and ready to hang.  The price for each is $250 plus shipping (if you order from me before Weds., shipping is included, otherwise it will be whatever the gallery charges).

The birthday boy, waking up, waiting for Dad to get up so he can open his gifties….

Opening the box…gee…what do I do with it?

Oh!  Open it…good….a check from Nana!

Next…envelopes…hmmm…what could be in them?

Hmmm…another card, from Mom and Dad, an annoying one that you have to turn upside down and around and around to read…..but it has a check!

Now what are those pesky parents of mine doing?

AH!   Heaven, also known as pumpkin pie (yes, Joshua vastly prefers his pumpkin pie to cake…..)

The “1” candle is getting shorter….. I bought year candles every year from 1 to 10…now we are recycling them, and as he goes through his teen years, the 1 is getting a lot of use!

And what will Joshua do with those checks?  Well, they were spent before I left the house to give a lecture at 8:30… his old iPod got crushed, then stepped on (in his backpack, on the floor next to his desk at school), so he has a new red iPod nano which is just about permanently attached to his ears.  And here is what he does when he’s NOT listening to music…he makes it:
If you look carefully at the (unmade) bed, and below the (nearly naked) blond girl in bikini, you’ll see my laptop on top of the quilt made from blocks from the quiltart list… I am having a devil of a time getting him to let me take a photo of him with it to share with you all.  If he doesn’t soon, I’ll use the one of him sound asleep on the TOP of his bed, on top of the quilt….. blackmail works?????PS…if anyone knows how to embed youtube videos so that the formatting on my blog stays the same, drop me a note!

Well, we really need Deborah here to remind us to TAKE PICTURES!  Sigh……   I remembered about the lunch food photo… AFTER we ate, so alas this is all you get:

Kate has this beautiful hand crafted silverware (hand wash only!) which she brings out for our visits, with the matching scroll napkin rings.  Her son H. did the artwork on the trivet; his school does an (expensive) annual fundraiser where you can pick the product onto which your child’s 8 1/2 x 11 artwork is printed (size is reduced but proportions stay the same I think).  Kate chose the tile, then had a friend make the wooden holder to turn it into a trivet.  Wonderful!

The lunch menu:  Corn chowder (me, recipe from Martha Stewart’s Sept. 2007 issue of Living….I’d skip the cayenne, cumin and coriander next time, but loved the cheddar and the bacon –I added the latter), baby organic spinach greens (which we picked from the field next door…the farmers had already harvested, so neighbors can now go in and cull from the still-growing roots…..yum…but why didn’t I take a picture???? where was my head?), and Kathy brought these delectable (Sorry Deborah….we ate them with you in mind…since she introduced us to them) molten lava cakes…chocolate, with a gooey, yummy hot “lava” center of chocolate (if you have a Hannaford store, look for the On The Go Bistro or Hannaford Inspirations line in the frozen food section).  Best of all, they are only 300 or so calories, so it is a decadent treat that doesn’t use up an entire day’s worth of calories.

We shared a few things… my loot from Houston, Kathy’s in progress piece (glorious as always, for the Art Quilts Maine black-white-plus one other color challenge…. Kath picked blue), and some Ikea fabric Kate bought to make cushions for the Bowdoinham library kids’ area:

Kate had been to NYC on business, and she and her business partner in Adoption Day Cards snuck in a stop at the Ikea south of Boston (about 6 hours away from me! boohooo….. I wish it were closer).  I think Bowdoinham is very lucky to have Kate as their new librarian!   Here’s the other fabric… Kate has a totebag made from this one that I have loved… it would do well in the black-white-plus one challenge… Kate of course thought leaf green, I thought vivid cranberry……(and sorry about that triangle of bright sunlight in the center bottom!)

And on the way home, I got gas for 2.15 a gallon.  This guy was perched on the top of the building as the sun began to set:

He stood there on one foot the entire time I was filling my tank…

That’s it for now….. off to Boston as soon as I finish writing this, and by the time it “publishes” I’ll be on my way home.  Giving a lecture for the Bead Designers International group… gonna be fun!