Tuesday update: I worked four solid hours, maybe a bit more, before breaking for lunch and had this–I love how the cave opening and rocky hill on the right turned out:

I then took a half hour bike ride (I WILL lose those pounds!) and ate lunch. Less than 90 minutes later I went back to work. Interrupted repeatedly by two sons coming home at different times, having to bludgeon number one son to do homework, etc. This is what I finished at fix-dinner-time:

Seems like I didn’t get much done in the afternoon…a wing (which I really like–fused tulle, a tacky halloween spiderweb number that works well on quilts) made by slashing and layering the splice lines to create ribs, and a boy. Who isn’t done. Sigh.

Anyway, I’m pleased with the overall progress. I have a bit more to do—branches for the trees, a woodfire in front of the boy and dragon (dusk is approaching….though I’m not sure the sky looks like that…hmmm….should I skip the fire? you tell me!), and some more grasses on the ground. Oh yeah…the spines / doo-hickies along the spine on the dragon! DUH Sarah!

Well…at least I got to the cloth today. I signed up for the Fabled Fibers challenge MONTHS ago…something like six months ago. And I have been so flat out busy that I finally began cutting fabric Monday. The quilt is due Sunday. Ahem. Ya think I work well under pressure? Guess so…. I keep finding myself under deadlines!

The idea behind the challenge is to illustrate a fable or children’s story. I couldn’t make up my mind, but the image will suit either The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame (of Wind in the Willows fame) or the story I wrote for Joshua when we were getting ready to move to San Juan island back in 1997. Since the Reluctant Dragon was written well before 1923, it is in the public domain, and I didn’t so much as look at any of the illustrated versions! And, I did think about the quilt a lot, though, and had a clear idea in my head. So…..

Last week I took a photo of Eli with the dog:

Then I turned traced Eli (paper over computer) and turned the dog into a dragon, then enlarged the whole thing in Photoshop yesterday to four pieces of paper:

Today I fused a whole bunch of fabric (you didn’t think I was going to attempt to do this in a week with traditional needleturn did you LOL?????) and got started. Here’s what I had as of 5:05 p.m. Monday. The “canvas” is about 34×40 inches…..

So, I’m obviously going to machine quilt this….and have only one major time eater this week, a Workshop Committee meeting for the 2008 Maine Quilts show up in Augusta, and that will be fun. Today I managed to row over 7000 metres on the rowing machine at the Y (am on a 2-week push to drop 3-6 pounds…have been on a plateau for TOO long), and plan a bike ride tomorrow, then off on Weds…. stay tuned!

We had a great class last Saturday, a rainy, chilly day here in mid-Coast Maine. We had six students, which is one more than we usually have in the class (small room), but it worked really well. As usual, the first half of the class is lecture…my trying to take what I’ve learned here and there over 18 years and share it with the class so their learning curve will be shorter than mine!

Everyone did really well, and I can tell that there are several awesome machine quilters in the making. We had ladies from north of Nobleboro (where the shop is located) all the way down to Brunswick (maybe 30 minutes north of Portland) and in from Vinalhaven, an island off the coast on the outer edge of Penobscot Bay. Sally kindly let me take this picture of her:

She did the cool thing with her circle, too…. in the classes, I start the students with the walking foot on and have them stitch a grid to make a free-motion sampler on one sandwich. On another sandwich, I have them learn to eyeball sewing on the diagonal across blocks (it’s magic…you actually sew right through the intersection without trying…have no idea how it woroks, but it does for virtually everyone the first time! anyway…), then have them sew a circle trying to get the start and finish to match and, finally, to use the presser foot to make a line parallel to the first circle. Then Sally went to town:

I’ve got some more classes coming up (yeah!) –another intro to machine quilting on Oct. 15 (a Sunday), a Postcards workshop on Oct. 21, both at Maine-ly Sewing in Nobleboro, and the machine quilting at Cote Brothers in Auburn on the 28th.

I’ve been noodling around with an idea for a trees-on-the-hill series of teaching / learning applique patterns, so these postcards are essentially sketches for that series. I’ll be keeping all but one of these (there are two almost identical…one will stay, the other will go to FFAC or for sale).

The simplest one is Lone Tree on a Hill:

Then, Trees on a Hill #1 and #2:

Then, add sunset–Trees on a Hill at Sunset:

and finally, Trees at Night:

Well, I promised you more, so get ready! Today’s theme is “orbs”, or planets, or moons, or whatever. Circular. I don’t know why but I’ve had this “thing” for night and deep space quilts lately. Out of the 16 or so new cards (some not complete, others to be posted about in a day or two or more), I will keep a few as teaching samples, sell a few, and send five or six to Virginia Spiegel’s Fiberart For A Cause, a fundraiser for cancer research. (And a slightly tacky aside: If anyone really is interested in purchasing one of these cards, they are $30 (including not-insured shipping in an envelope in the US)…write to me soon if you’re interested, otherwise some of the orbs will go to FFAC in about ten days).

The first is the exception…it has mountains as well as space / sky, and is another in the moon over the mountains series I posted about earlier.

My favorite of these orbs may be this one, Mars. I usually stay away from reds, but I really like this one:

Oh yeah…I forgot Turtle Moon, hmm….that may be my favorite (the theme here: Simple is Beautiful)—that’s the one I left at the top of the blog as a teaser to get you to read on!

Planet Irridescence is made using Shiva oil paintstiks (nevertheless, made to use on cloth and the oil doesn’t halo). I placed a rubber stamp I carved underneath and layered metallic aqua and silver Shiva for the planet, then used a commercial “animal skin texture” rubbing plate for the rest. “Bound” / edge-finished with sparkly yarn and eyelash yarn twisted together.

Magenta has been one of my favorite Crayola colors since I was in first grade, and here is Magenta Moon–I had fun quilting this one!

Copper Heavens is simple, and unusual colors for me…I was trying to work in atypical colors and materials. I really like the variable-width satin stitch: