Then Kate showed us Ukrainian pisankyi (sp>?). Her adopted daughter Olena is from Ukraine, and these eggs that Kate made in the Ukrainian style are awesome!

Kate said that just ONE of these eggs can take a full day to make. She showed us the wax tools, much like a tjantjing from Bali used for batiking, which melt the soft beeswax (hold over flame) so you can draw the fine lines. I forgot to take a picture, but Kate has a set of “circle makers…heavy cardstock with holes in, and markings evenly spaced so you can make symmetical markings on the eggs.

First, you need to extract the egg insides. She has this cool tool that makes a small hole (with no cracks and chips), and another one that helps pump the egg out. Since it is just air, you can USE the egg…no waste! Sounds like scrambled eggs and bacon for dinner to me! Anyway, here’s Kate showing how to use the pump:

The process is much like batik: apply wax, dye first color. Add more wax (covering some of the previous color) and dye again. Repeat until done. Phew!

And here is her container of eggs from a birds-eye view:

Then, Kate turned the eggs over so we could see the sides:

I LOVED this one with the wheat stalks:

And here we are at lunch (which was actually beefore the eggs…who cares about chronology!). We had peanut soup, made by Kathy from Kate’s mother-in-law’s recipe (Kate—don’t forget I want that recipe…YUMMM again!):

Don’t they look nice and happy? Kathy always looks so pretty in all the pictures of her, and Kate has the nicest smile!

On the way home (on a detour…lotsa road damage here in Maine last weekend…we had snow followed by torrential rains which have washouts and sinkhole-sized potholes all over the place–gonna be LOTS of work for the road crews!) spotted this falling down house. I’m developing this “thing” for pictures of old falling down houses, wondering what it was like when the house was new and filled with a young family with kids and hope and hard times and love:

And then this barn on Route 3…you can see an old log cabin in the center, chinking and all:

OK, that’s all for this particular wonderful meeting. Now, to work!

What a wonderful day we had! We were a small group this Monday, though. Deborah, of course, is in Texas, and Hannah…drum roll…is still in China with her new daughter Nina and hubby Bart. Check out the pics from Beijing and Guangzhou here. I realized on the way up that the four of us were all in China…Hannah in the country, then Kathy, Kate and I were in China (Village) in Maine! There are lots of towns in this state named for other countries: Mexico, Poland, China…..

I took SO many photos I may have to do this in two posts! We started with sharing, coffee and Kathy’s homemade biscotti…drizzled with melted Dove dark chocolate easter eggs…YUMMM! And Kathy sneaked some extras into the box of cookies I brought (Pepper-Cumin, from Rayna Gillman’s blog here, also YUMMMM) made with cumin seeds sent from Rayna (since I didn’t know of a single place to find them up here in the wilds of Maine!). Thanks Rayna!

Anyway, back to Frayed Edges. First Kate showed us this GORGEOUS length of fabric she bought on vacation in Florida, made by Bold Over Batiks–expensive but SO worth it!:

And Kathy bought a sweater pattern after she saw mine last month, ordered this beautiful hand-dyed yarn and has already begun knitting….how come it takes me so long to get going on anything…lookit at what Kathy has done already:

Kate wanted to know what to do with a piece she began at our last meeting for the Art Quilts Maine log cabin challenge. We fiddled with the edges and here is what we came up with:

Aren’t these glorious fabrics? One of the AQM members passed away, and her husband gave her stash to the group. AQM then (and drats I missed it) sold the fabric as a chapter fundraiser, $5 for a bag of scraps. Kate scored these awesome hand-painted pieces and made this top.

And here is Kathy’s piece, seen on her blog, too:

The background fabric started as white, then Kathy painted with the goal (achieved!) of looking like patina’ed copper. She adapted Deborah’s use of washers (check out Deborah’s Journal and scroll backwards to see how she used washers and inspired Kathy…see….we can still cross-pollinate and be more than a thousand miles apart!) and painted them up to match the fabric…awesome.

I loved the way Kathy quilted the piece, in waves and then sworls and eddies in the center

Tune in tomorrow or the next day for lunch and Ukrainian eggs…gotta go finish the taxes! (BLECH…art is so much more fun! Of course, tax refunds aren’t bad….)

So I took a break from writing, and doing taxes (UGH!), and going to wrestling meets (courtesy of our late snowstorm, which has postponed regionals and States by a week), to sew! The good news is I can share this with you:

The bad news is that I can only tell you it is (wooohoo!) something I’m working on for an article. If all goes well, I’ll be published again by the end of this year. But, I am pretty sure I’m supposed to keep things “under wraps” until publication. So, I can only show this to you and not tell you about the article. Aren’t I wicked?

I just had to share these links with you, which I came across on the QuiltArt list (thanks Diane!). The main site is about how machines work:
Click here.

The next page is about how a sewing machine creates a stitch:
Click here.

And this last link is a 26 minute video about sewing machines, from the first one through today. The video quality is a bit blurry due to on-line streaming or whatever, but it was SO cool!
Click here for video.

These are a lot of fun…even my 13 year old son liked them!

I’m actually SEWING today (if I ever get off the computer) so hope to have quilty content tomorrow! And then, yeah! a small Frayed Edges meeting with Kate and Kathy at Kath’s house, as Hannah is in CHINA! She and Bart have met their new daughter (to join three already at home) Nina. See pictures, and prepare to have your heart melt and get a lump in your throat by visiting Hannah’s blog, Xiao Nu Hair (which means little girl in Chinese) here.

There are so many good bits about line in Aimone’s book, that I think I’ll add a bit more. Think about these comments in relation to quilts, how lines define the geometric shapes of pieced quilts, the edges of appliques and the stitched line–by hand, by machine, quilting and embellishment (including a line created with a sequence of beads…)

Even broken or lost and found lines can serve most effectively to establish shape. P. 35

Line as shape maker–Whenever a line ventures out on a journey through space and crosses ack over itself, it encloses an area. The enclosed area reads as a shape. P. 33

Line representing edge–An edge is the place where one shape butts up agains another; a line can represent this edge. P. 36 (And from Sarah: think horizon, water’s edge, contours of a body)

Line as direction or movement p. 38 (from Sarah: ——- is static, lllllllll is at attention, /////// moves to the right)

Line for emphasis…changes [in] the weight of the line to establish a hierarchy of emphasis P. 40

Line as rhythm, symbol, to create depth…. In two dimensional design, this involves creating the illusion of three dimentions. … In drawing, a line that varies is known as a weighted line. The thicker lines advance to the front, while lines of medium weight fall back by contrast. Thin and very thin lines seem to recede further still, all creating an effective feeling of depth. P. 40-42

A note from Sarah: How can we adapt this use of thick line in quilting? It seems to me that we take the inverse….by using the stitching line to make the background recede, we leave in the negative space a “thick” line that comes forward and draws attention to itself…….

I’ve been doing taxes, working on the book, going to wrestling meets, guitar lessons, karate testing and that sort of thing, so precious little has happened in the studio. I’m going to reward myself by an entire DAY upstairs today working on samples for an upcoming article and maybe even a small piece to enter in shows! Will share as soon as I can. In the meantime,
MAKE ART!