I mentioned in an earlier post about our mini-group, the Frayed Edges, that we are having a group show in the Picker Room at the Camden Public Library (there is month-long show each month ranging from vintage lithographs and etchings to contemporary oils to art photography and more). We wanted to do a single group project, but one that our hectic lives would be able to absorb. We each contributed a photo, and each of us made a small project based on the five photos. I offered a photo I took last summer at the Ringling Museum, in Sarasota:

This photo and one Kathy took, of a brilliant orange beach umbrella, sand, sea and sky, are the two 5″ wide by 7″ tall pieces. The other three photos are also 7 inches tall, but 10 inches wide. That way when we hang them, each row will be of five 10″-tall pieces. So, here are mine, starting with mine:

And here is the one I did from the photo Deborah contributed (photo was taken by her husband Jeff in Central America):

Then I tried an abstract (actually, I did this one first, but love the way it turned out!). I fused up Kathy’s umbrella, then sliced it up into pieces and put it back together:

Hannah’s Flower was a challenge, so I think I’ll save that one for my next post, and show the first attempt, how I saved the first effort, and my second much more successful effort at the 7×10 size. That leaves Kate’s St. Michael’s church in Kiev. Kate’s daughter is adopted from the Ukraine, and she took these photos on the adoption trip. The domes and colors are spectacular in the original photo. All of us honed in on the domes immediately, but in very different ways. I decided to try my hand at foiling with beads:

I found the link to a fascinating post on Joanie San Chirico’s blog, which sent me to Edward Winkleman’s blog. Who you might ask? Honestly, I’m not sure, but it is a fascinating breakdown on the expenses faced by an art gallery. As he and Joanie rightly noted, many people (emerging artists included) are surprised that a gallery’s cut is 50 percent of the sales price, and only 50 percent (60 if you’re lucky, like me! living in not-really-rural Camden) to the artist. Why? well, Winkelman’s explanation is worth reading: click here to open it up in a new window.

When I worked for an interior designer on San Juan Island, Wash. (that was a whole ‘nother set of nightmares, but I learned a TON about high-end home dec sewing, interior design, and business), the designer used to quote the adage that “the cost of doing business is one-third.” That apparently applies across a lot of industries. As well, wholesale in many industries, including quilting, is fifty percent of suggested retail.

So, despite our math-phobias, let’s do the math. If you take a yard of fabric at $10 per yard, you can guesstimate that the wholesale cost was $5 per yard plus shipping/freight/delivery charges. The cost of doing business is 1/3, or $3.33 (one third of $10), which covers rent, utilities, insurance, wages, cash register receipt paper, fees charged by credit card companies, and so on. Then, if like Maine-ly Sewing, the shop is nice and gives you a ten percent discount because you are a member of a guild, that is another dollar.

If you’ve been doing the arithmetic, that is 5 + 3.33 + 1 = 9.33. That leaves all of 67 cents of “profit” for the shopowner. No wonder quilt shop owners and other shop owners work so hard and have such a long road to staying in business.

For me, I’m thrilled to have my sales at Ducktrap Bay Trading Co., a gallery here in Camden, Maine. I may not make a lot (close to minimum wage) when a journal quilt sells, but it SELLS. Which it would not do otherwise (like sitting in storage on my spare bed). The owner and staff work hard (without being pushy or intrusive) to sell all the works (last time I was in a new staff member wanted to ask me about my work and inspiration so he would have more to tell customers!), and pay their bills, so they deserve their cut, too.

And I won’t grump about the price of things in stores as much……especially not quilt stores!

The most recent issue of Quilting Arts magazine, had an article by Jane Dunnewold that was for me a KAPOW light bulb moment! I totally encourage you to pick up a copy of the issue (order it from QA Mag directly, or check your neighboring quilt or book store). She referenced a book called Notan: The Dark-Light principle of Design, which is available at Amazon (hotlink below and now on my wish list!). Basically, the idea is that you cut shapes from the sides of a square, then flip them outwards. Of course, I didn’t do it like she said….

I can’t remember the last time I have been so excited by an article that I had to drop everything was going (including getting things ready to mail my Houston entries!) and try it! Of course, I had to tweak the idea, because I thought immediately how cool it would be to make diamonds with positive/negative wave shapes to screenprint onto cloth. Here’s a first attempt…. the white is the paper, set out onto batik… I LIKE IT!

Looking up Notan: The Dark-Light Principle of Design, of course, let me on a merry journey thanks to Amazon’s “other people who bought this book also bought (fill in blank). That in turn led me to Camden Public Library’s online card catalog, through which I ordered up Abstraction in Art and Nature by Nathan Cabot Hale, a sculptor (forgive me, for I am probably a troglodyte and he must be well known). At first I thought I’d add it to my Amazon wish list, but then decided maybe not… Do any of you have favorite books about learning to work abstractly? I liked the recent articles in Quilting Arts, and would love to read more….
And a note about the BLOGROLL on the left:

Because of the new format, the sidebar area had come to look very cluttered. Even worse, Blogrolling is no longer updating links to show you what is “new” (has new posts), so I have switched to something called Bloglines. A very helpful woman on the QuiltArt list posted about it, and I really like it so far. So, I am switching over all of my links to Bloglines (which sends me an alert when any blog has a new post…yeah!), and leaving only a few in my visible Blogroll. All the other folks on my list are still there, it just won’t appear on screen. So my friends who are on the list, I am not abandoning you, I’m just going underground in a way.

And a last note:

Have been madly making samples for the book: you know those in progress shots in books? What a TON of work to make five different steps, all of which have to be send for professional photography so you can’t make one, take a pic, work on it, take a pic, etc…….. but I’m hoping to take decent pictures of my grid pieces and two new pieces and have them up in the next day or three.

As usual we had a wonderful meeting, tho it was a bit hectic with summer, kids underfoot and Kate having to arrange last minute kid-care (and for all of us, kids come first!). We sat out on the back porch, where I for the most part forgot to take pictures. Ok, just checked the files. I forgot to take a lot of pictures!

For our group show at the Camden Public Library (opens Aug. 2nd thru the 30th, Artists’ Reception on Saturday the 11th from 1-4 pm), we wanted to do a group project. We came up with the idea of a grid. Each of the five of us would contribute one photo (we all tossed several into the pile, then collectively picked one from each person). Then each of us would make one small piece based on that photo. In the end we will have a grid where each column is a different person’s “take” on that photo, and each row will be one person’s version of the five photos.

Deborah and I both managed to finish…hoooray! AND Deborah gets bonus points for not only finishing, but getting them done in time to mail to me for this month’s meeting! She is also the only one to decide to use some consistent themes, to make the five pieces a series. She did so by printing parts of the photos onto sheer fabric, then using a green print fabric underneath on at least a couple of them, and her “signature” writing on the quilts also. The photo above is Deborah’s work…3 of the 5 pieces.

The pieces are all 7 inches tall, the “horizontals” are 10 inches across, the small ones 5 inches across. We laid them out on my table (OK…plywood on planter pots with a Bolivian cloth on top…sorry about the visual clashing of the stripes and the quilted pieces). Deborah’s are the top row, mine are next, then Kates, and Hannah’s, and Kathy forgot hers at home! Kath and I will get everything organized for hanging in about two weeks. I’ll take better pics of mine and share them in a few days, and I promise they will have a more pleasing background!

Well, I finally have succumbed to putting one of these on my blog. I took this “test” when it first popped up on the quiltart list and was a Nigella, then did it again for giggles (changing the few answers that could have gone either way) and turned into a Snapdragon. It says of the Nigella:

“Many people think you are just a little bit odd, but you consider yourself just a little eccentric. You find new experiences exciting and fulfilling.” I can live with that!

I couldn’t recall what I was then, and the subject came up on the Quiltart list again, so I did it again. That time I was either a Daffodil (my favorite flower, but the description wasn’t really “me”) or (erg) an Echinacea (you know, wholesome, good for you…. erg). So I came across the test yet again, and happily I am back to being a Nigella. Or (since I used to garden) a Nigella damascena (as in Damascus, Syria) also known as Love-in-a-Mist. They make lovely dried flowers, too, and are the most glorious sky blue and self-seed with abandon in the right soil and conditions.

Does that I mean I will be lovely when I’m a dried up old prune?

OK, promise good quilty stuff tomorrow or the next day. Today is clean the house day and tomorrow is The Frayed Edges at my house. I’m fixing one of my favorite summer salads: curried chicken with mango and cashews. Got the recipe from Dianna Rooney while I was at the US Embassy in Libreville, Gabon; she loved to cook and had been collecting recipes for tropical foods before coming to Gabon (which is almost on the equator, on the west coast of Africa). More anon…..