After Paul’s sudden and surprising heart attack and open heart surgery in February 2005, he said (during his recovery) “gee, we never do anything fun with the boys” (this came as a surprise?). So he decided to use some of the small inheritance he received from his dad (who died in 2001) to take us all on a Disney Cruise of the Eastern Caribbean. I am thrilled to say that it was FANTABULOUS! I can heartily recommend it to anyone with kids of any age (from infant to teen or older). Disney really did it right, taking inspiration from the heyday of international cruising, the 1930s, for the design and service ethic on the ship.

We sailed on the Disney Magic (if you click on this link, click on the “tour the ship” for more pics, which is designed with an Art Deco theme. I took so many pictures of the decor…a tasteful and classy blending of Disney with art deco. I kept thinking how much FUN it must have been to design this ship! If you look carefully at the golden design on the hull in the photo above, you’ll see Disney characters dancing in the waves; the colors of the ship itself are Mickey: Black, white and red!

The good design began with the Disney building where you embark at Port Canaveral, Florida…a map of the Caribbean with water life in it on the floor, and among other things, a scale model of the ship, with one side “cutaway” (that’s the boys on the left):

You then enter on the third deck (of 11!) into the grand foyer, which is three stories tall, with a chandelier that looks like a Dale Chihuly:

The grillwork on the elevators (to the left of the chandelier) looks very “Deco,” but if you look closely you’ll see the Mickey mouse round head and ears in the design:

Here’s another shot of the elevator going past…the boys loved these glass-backed elevators!

Another elevator on the Forward end of the ship had these glorious wood inlay panels:

In other posts, I’ll share the decor in the dining rooms and the Walt Disney theatre (full-size movie theatre size, and also can have stage presentations!), the wonderful “bed critters” in our stateroom each evening, our stateroom and bathroom (yes….there were design lessons to be learned even in the bathrooms!!!!), our outings (think Dolphins, Stingrays and more!), how they keep the kids busy and entertained (so mom and pop can have some down time!) and more. Since I’m leaving in a couple days for a week-long workshop, I won’t have time to do all this before I leave, so will continue when I get home….

And just because, here’s a photo from our first dinner, which was our “character” dinner where performers decked out as Disney Characters from Mickey to Goofy to Chip and Dale to Lilo and Stitch visit the guests…we skillfully avoided them most of the time, but did get this photo (you notice that by being the photographer, I managed to escape being in the photo…teehee!):

that is quilty , it seems, is take a class with Esterita Austin at Maine Quilts at the end of July (how can it be mid to late August so fast???). I used my own photo instead of Teri’s still life, and did a slightly different thing with the fabric, but am pleased with how this is working so far. Obviously it has a long way to go…..

and I managed to pick some fabrics for a journal quilt, and that’s about it. I MISS making art! I MISS sewing! After two weeks of vacation (eeek! at least I have yarn, pencils and paper….), then a few days home, then a dyeing workshop, then a week until (yahoo) school begins and life resumes some normalcy…..

That’s it for now!

It was a wonderful two week trip…a week aboard the Disney Magic cruise ship, then four days in Sarasota visiting hubby’s aunt and uncle (where it was HOT HOT HOT and HUMID, yuck)…. it was wonderful all around, but deliriously happy to be home, and back in touch and on e-mail and all that good stuff. I had prepared several posts in advance, hoping to upload them while on the road, but couldn’t get into blogger, so will upload one of those just after this message, then will hope to get new stuff up over the next few days.

Woohooo…..what fun! Missed you all! Cheers, Sarah

I wanted a jacket to cover the teal “tank” shirt to take on our upcoming vacation trip. Paul and I will be (gulp and gasp!!! Imagine it?) going out to a dinner, a NICE dinner, with NO kids…for maybe the second time since Joshua was born almost 13 years ago (and NO, I am not exaggerating…we don’t have any relatives who can help us, and babysitters are too spendy a splurge for us). I bought the yarn at Maine-ly Sewing on sale, and decided to make a sewn jacket. Here it is:

I was initially going to lay the yarn out on water-soluble stabilizer only, but it just wasn’t working, so added a layer of black tulle. If we had had a decent fabric store nearby, I would have used a black or teal sheer, but the nearest one was two hours away, and time was short. So I used the tulle, water soluble stabilizer (think saran wrap that dissolves), spray baste and pins and created the jacket fabric from tulle and ribbon yarn.

Then I made the jacket—the body is all one piece, with only shoulder seams (covered with a layer of ribbon so it looks continuous). The sleeves are set in, and I used a piece of the ribbon-yarn to “wrap” the seam allowance and create a finished edge. Finally, I sewed two lengths of ribbon yarn together to make a “binding” for the edge, which I sewed around the sleeve hems and the opening/bottom hem of the jacket.

Best of all, it packs down to nearly nothing!

At LAST we can share.….the long skinny box has arrived in Dallas at Deborah’s house (you know her from her wonderful blog)! In January of 2005 (gee….only last year?) Deborah B., Kate C., Kathy D. (of Studio in the Woods blog) got together and formed a group and decided to call ourselves the Frayed Edges…

Then towards Fall came the news that Deborah would be moving to…gulp….Texas! Just as she was getting ready to move, she met Hannah B. and introduced her to us, and the Frayed Edges became five! Of course, our mantra from day one has been “no stress.” We wanted to make Deborah a farewell gift, but with the holidays just before her move mid-February, it didn’t happen. In March, we met at my house in Camden, (we had always met at D’s because of her little one, who is nearly our mascot!) and planned out what to do: four journal-sized-ish pieces with a common horizon line running through them all, and a “Maine” subject.

In April we met at Kate’s house in Bowdoinham and discovered to our great surprise and pleasure that they all worked together and that the white in my piece and Kate’s (the first and fourth) framed the piece nicely. From left to right the quilts are by me (Sarah), Kathy, Hannah and Kate. And here are close ups first of the two on the left (mine and Kath’s)–mine is of the Marshall Point Light at Port Clyde, both because it is quintessential Maine and because I so clearly recall Deb and Kate talking about letterboxing there! Kathy’s is of the glorious fiddlehead fern that unfurls in May and is a delicacy in quiche, salads and other local foods.

and the two on the right are Hannah’s and Kate’s. Hannah did a sunrise, because the sun first rises on the United States right here, and Kate did a winter scene of smelt shacks on a lake (ice fishing is a favorite pasttime here).

We talked about hanging the four, and talked about branches or sticks. Kate happened to have a “found” oar and two likely pieces of driftwood, one of which won out. Better yet, Kate had jute exactly the color of driftwood!

By June we had our pieces done when we met at Hannah’s house and played stamping and making screen prints in her basement, and I took the pieces home and bound them with the same yarn I couched to the outside edge of my piece.

In July, at Kathy’s house in China we put everything together and started to hang the quiltlets from the driftwood, but it needed more time and precision, so I brought the whole shebang home, tied them mostly evenly (unlike in this photo!) I hope, and made a box to send to Deborah!

We MISS YOU Deborah, and even though you’re half a continent away, we are still the five Frayed Edges! And by the way…any chance we might get you to lend it back to us for our group show at the Camden Public Library next summer for the 2007 Maine Year of Fiber Arts???