Camden, Maine, and environs has been a vacation spot for well over a century. The area is known as the “Camden Hills” region, and even has its own state park. When the leaves are off the trees, we can see the outline of Mount Battie, the “mountain” (more like a tall hill) that is closest to the center of town, and Megunticook, the next hill inland, through the bare tree-tops.

The photo in the center of this quilt (transferred to cloth via my printer) is of the Megunticook river in the middle distance and “Mount Megunticook” in the background. I took the photo while on a walk from my home, about a mile away. In winter, the river freezes solid, and “ice out” (when the last ice in the lake–which is upstream, of course–and the river melts) is usually around April 10-12. A hundred years ago, the tannery (torn down last year…about a mile from our house and located alongside the river) and two woolen mills in town used energy from the river to power their businesses.

This piece is small…. 9 3/4″ x 15 1/2″, and I was surprised at how much I like it, despite its simplicity.

Caz asked a question about how I attached the turtle to the canvas (and her message came as an “anonymous” post meaning I can’t reply directly to her), so I decided to post the reply here.

I just use thread and needle, but you definitely want to use a thimble…painted canvas is stiff and takes a good poke to get the needle through. I pick a color used on the edge…in this case, that spring green that I used to attach the yarns on the outside edge. I’ll knot the thread, come up from the back through one of the stitches already on the small piece, take a small (1/8 inch) stitch on top that is unobtrusive, then move 1/2 inch to 1 inch along the back. If the piece is long, like Tree Branch Moon, I might make the stitches more like 1/2 inch apart along the top edge (to support the weight…smaller pieces aren’t as heavy so you can actually take slightly longer stitches), then use 3/4 to 1 inch stitches along the sides and bottom.

Another option, that I haven’t used *yet*, is to sew velcro to the piece, then sew or glue velcro to the canvas. I am thinking this might be an option for using with pieces mounted on Plexiglas, especially if, for example, I had a series of seasonal quilts that are the same size. I could then mount velcro on a sheet of Plexiglas, and position velcro in the same spots on each of the quilts. With a quick “rip” I could remove one seasonal piece, and replace it with the next season, needing only the one piece of Plexi….

Hope that helps! Caz–sorry I couldn’t reply directly to you, and hope you see this!

A while back, I made Turtle at Sunset. In preparing for the show at the bank and to send some new work to Ducktrap Bay Trading Company (the art gallery here in Camden that sells my work), I decided to give him a new background. I had some hand-dyed fabric that would have looked great stretched on stretcher bars (the kind painters use to make their own custom-sized canvasses), except there wasn’t enough of it.

So, I painted an 8×10 “gallery wrap, deep-edge” canvas to look like the fabric! Gallery wrap means that the canvas wraps to the back side of the canvas (usually it only goes onto the sides and is stapled there) and is stapled on the back. This way, you can paint the sides and have a finished piece that doesn’t need a separate frame. Most canvasses are about 3/4″ deep, which looks kinda wimpy to me, so I bought the twice-as-expensive “deep-edge” canvas, which is 1 3/4″ deep and stands out nicely from the wall, giving a polished look to the piece. At least, I hope it does! Here’s what he looks like now:

I took him to Ducktrap yesterday, so hope he sells to someone this summer! I’ll be adding more of the new pieces in coming days… hope you’ll surf in to visit!

Well…. it’s summer in Maine, and it felt like it. Hot and humid, so it was lucious to be at Kathy’s house for the first time, enjoying the breeze from nearby China Lake. The good news is that I actually remembered to take a picture of us at lunchtime! Here we are:

Deborah had always recorded our meals in beautiful detail…I didn’t manage that this time, but at least we got the one photo! We had: cheese-broccoli quiche from Kathy, summer salad with fresh peas from Kate, bread from Sarah (who wimped out and did store bought… I got up at 5 to drive Joshua to wrestling camp, so had logged over 150 miles before got to Kathy’s house at 10 ish…), and watermelon and berries from Hannah (who, please cross your fingers on her behalf, had someone looking at her house (it is for sale) for the second time while we were there).

Mostly we got caught up, enjoyed a momentary respite from what is for all of us seeming like a VERY hectic summer, shared a few bits, and talked about our show next summer at the Camden Public Library! It will be part of the Maine Year of Fiberarts 2007, and we’ll have more details on that later on. It was great… we came up with some great ideas (which we need to run by Deborah, since we didn’t bring her new landline number with us!!!! aaargh…need to put it into my cell phone so I have it with me!) with ease and ready agreement and fun ping-ing of ideas. That’s what it is all about.

And of course pictures… the only thing I remembered to snap a picture was some cool bracelets Kathy bought recently while on a family vacation in PEI (Prince Edward Island):

I shared some of my new, small pieces…and PROMISE I *will* upload photos here in the coming days…..

Well I’m whupped (as in exhausted, debilitated, ready to drop in my tracks…). It never occured to me that it would take TWO full days to remove the upholstery on a single chair, but that is what it has been….. I managed to skip lunch (Me?!) two days in a row (unheard of!) I was working so hard at stripping this chair:

Over three years ago, I bought fabric to re-upholster the chair. Yep…when Marie and I went to Spring Quilt Market in Portland (Oregon) in 2003, I bought umpteen yards of fabric to cover this and another chair. I planned to do the work that winter. Of course, in January 2004, we realized we needed to move and put the house on the market. You can’t have the unholy mess of a big re-upholstery job in the living room while showing the house, so it got postponed.

We moved July 2004 and spent the next six months or so unpacking and settling in to our new house on the other side of the US (from Washington state in the far northwest to Maine in the far Northeast…note the theme: North! where it’s not hot.) Just as I was about to deal with the chair, Paul had a heart attack and open heart surgery in February 2005. and I was (thankfully temporarily) single parenting while he got well again (he’s fine now!).

(what you are seeing here is the seat, right side and back..the white stuff is cotton batt…different from quilting batts! and the dark is horsehair, the tan is nearly-disintegrated burlap over the springs.

Winter 2005/06 came and went, and here we are. I wanted to paint the living room. Paul said not until you do that chair. Fair enough. So this is what the chair now looks like, and the above are (obviously!) some photos of the getting from the top photo to this one. I’ll keep you posted with progress….

Oh yeah…I’ll also post some quilt related content! On Monday our mini-group, the Frayed Edges met at Kathy’s house, so have a few photos to share…. hopefully tomorrow (if I wake up!)…