My issue of the new Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine arrived yesterday- the May/June 2013 issue with my article and my “Prairie Fire” quilt on the cover.

It is gorgeous, I am so happy with it! There is a six page spread inside with lots of pictures and text detailing my process.

Look for it wherever quilting magazines are sold and watch for my workshop at Empty Spools, Asilomar!

I really did think that someone, somewhere would know where some of that Wheat batik was when I posted it to the QuiltArt list with thousands of members. It was gratifying to see the number of quilters who responded with offers of similar fabrics. But I already had similar fabrics and was holding out for THE one. Along the way I followed all of the leads and even ordered a few that I thought might work as it became apparent that the right one was not going to surface. The one on the left is the one I wanted and the others are possibilities. But they are mostly lighter in color than what I wanted. The current trend with the blues is less grayed than the one I was looking for, But the white dog contains some beige-y blues so maybe these will be even better.

Thanks again to all who tried to help!!

So now, I guess I am ready to carry on and reconnect with the cutting and sewing using the fabrics that I have. With my luck, once I cut and sew the “right” one will come along!!

In the interim I have been busy with tax prep, designing some new work and hand quilting on the Oak and Acorn quilt. I have entered some more shows and shipped some more quilts.

My contract for teaching a five day Picture Piecing Design workshop at Empty Spools, Asilomar a year from now has arrived. So for those of you who are intrigued with this process, I hope you will consider signing up for that. It will be a wonderful place to spend a week in February 2014!

Last week was a very busy blur!

On Monday I drove into MO for a lecture and workshop with the Lee’s Summit Quilter’s Guild. What a fun group of ladies! That always takes at least three days, getting ready, going and then putting everything away afterwards.

There was also an Art Guild meeting and a theater date to go to. We saw “Every Little Crook and Nanny” which was really good with a twist at the end that no one saw coming.

One day it rained most of the day which was wonderfully welcome and perked up the gardens immensely. I spent an hour or so pulling weeds the next morning as conditions were perfect. The temperatures even became more bearable with highs only in the 90′s but now they are back up into the hundreds again.  I have been reading a book about making gardens that are easier to take care of.  I hope I get some good advice!

I have been busy between other things working on the Bignonia and it is all quilted. Yesterday I cut and sewed the binding so perhaps today I will get that finished.  I forgot to get a photo of the finished top before starting the quilting so have nothing to show you yet, but it looks good!!

The Mary Elmusa workshop was fun. Mary brought lots of things to try.

We explored various techniques for printing on cloth including painting, sun printing, stamping, stenciling, silk screening, mono printing,  gelatin printing and resists. The green one in the foreground has Elmer’s Glue resist that can be washed out in two weeks to leave a white pattern. I don’t know if these are something I would want to try to use in my own work, but here is what I did in the workshop.

There wasn’t time to overprint which some of these certainly need!

Meanwhile I have been working on the Bignonia, here’s how it looked a few days ago. I did try to post earlier in the week but the server was down.

And when I started this morning:

The new project is finally back up on the wall and I even found he time to cut a few pieces yesterday, but I’ve been pretty busy. Sunday was Father’s Day, with company. Monday we had to go to town for lunch and errands. It was SO hot it just drained me and I came home and took a nap. Monday evening there was a board meeting of the Art Guild to attend. Tuesday, I went to the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild meeting where KAQ member Mary Elmusa was the speaker. I was so intrigued I took the last available slot for her workshop today! This evening I will go to Topeka Civic Theater to see “39 Steps”. Tomorrow I have an appointment for much needed perm and then I think I have a few blessed days off!!! On the way home yesterday I stopped and bought PhotoShop Elements for the laptop and perhaps I will find a bit of time to load that tomorrow and process some of the earlier trip photos.

Or maybe I will take another nap!

Yesterday was pretty productive! I got a whole large section sewed and more pieces cut ready for today. I took a picture of the first day’s progress and that evening we went to Best Buy to get Photoshop Elements for this computer so I could re size, but they were out of it. There are free programs to download but I am reluctant to do that. PE came on my other computer and so I am comfortable with that. In the meantime I will just keep taking photos to show you later.

By now most everyone has something up on the wall and fabric out on the tables. The room is a colorful, messy productive place. There are 3 or 4 dog quilts started, a cat, a lizard, landscapes and some with people or flowers. An eclectic assortment with ladies from all over the country. Many of them have been coming here for years.  Ruth has been doing this workshop here in Kalispell for 18 years, I believe and she is retiring after the last workshop of this trip; she’s doing four here, all 5 days long. We are buying so much fabric I wonder what will be left for the last group! At least they should have better weather!!

It is 30 degrees ! this morning, but clear after rain yesterday. When I packed for this trip I did put in a light jacket and two sweaters with the thought that the evenings might be a bit chilly. I may wear them all today!

The workshop started yesterday with most of the day spent watching Ruth McDowell do her magic on everyone’s potential pictures for their projects. She doesn’t do it all but gets a nice start with a few section lines and some of the other lines that will become seams. I always learn some new thought processes as she talks and demos. She makes it look easy having done over 500 of these quilts. I came with my pattern already prepared and I probably will not make any changes.

The shop we are working in has an amazing array of fabric and they let us run a tab for the duration, but do not tally it til the end so we don’t know how painful that might be but I have a pretty good pile started. I do have to think about my luggage weight for the return flight though!

This Cormorant was a photo that I took the last day we were driving up. Del re sized it for me and sent it back. It is a little fuzzy but I had the camera set a very low resolution hoping that it would be small enough for the blog . Not!

Well here we are in Kalispell! Yesterday was a long day of driving, we started out in Butte and spent about three and a half hours driving through the National Bison Range. I REALLY enjoyed that! We saw herds of buffalo and their calves, antelopes, deer and a spotted fawn, all pretty close and unafraid, lots of birds and flowers. We did not see the mountain goats or the bears though. Inside the visitor’s center we watched a short film about the program to restore the buffalo. I got some nice photos along the way but I need to find a place to buy Photoshop so that I can resize them for the blog. be patient! In the meantime here is one from Del’s camera:

We spent so long at the National Bison Range (we were told it would take a hour and a half to two hours, but spent much longer) that we arrived late to Kalispell. We debated whether to drive on, or stop sooner, but could not find a place to stop and eat other than McDonald’s so we ended up going all the way, part of the time in a heavy downpour. We found a gourmet burger place and were glad that we had not opted for McD’s. By the time we found our lodging and unloaded we were both ready to crash and slept through til 9am!

This afternoon we need to shop for breakfast food as we are at a long stay suite with a kitchenette. We will also go by the Quilt Gallery to claim our space and set up for the start of the workshop with Ruth McDowell that starts tomorrow.

I have managed to find a few snatches of time to sew the final seams together and prepare for the quilting –and even to start the quilting a little bit. I was hoping to be further along by now but there have been too many distractions.

Everything had to go on hold so I could clean up the studio for a local magazine writer who was coming on Friday. The photographer for some reason didn’t come, so I guess I get to do it all over again later.

Tomorrow morning we will have roofers here tearing off all of those 30 year guaranteed shingles that they put on 3 years ago. It must have been somewhere in the small print that the guarantee was only for wind, not hail. Anyway–the dish on the roof will be down for a couple of days which I think means no internet for me. So I will get at least this one post up and probably no more til I get back home from MT as I don’t know how to do it on the road. Which is where I am going to be, because:

Thursday I get to start my much needed vacation. I will be flying out to meet my friend Del in Las Vegas and we will drive up to Montana to enjoy a week long workshop with Ruth McDowell. It is going to be so much fun! Del and I are always looking for a good excuse for a road trip and this is one for sure. This will be about the last (if not THE last) workshop Ruth is doing before her retirement so we figured we needed to be there!

I got an unexpected surprise in the mail Saturday – an envelope with a First and a Second place ribbon from the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild Show!  They do Viewer’s Choice and don’t announce it til the following guild meeting which I had to miss. The small butterfly quilt that I had donated to the Charity Silent Auction won First and Majesty won Second. That’s crazy. The butterfly was not that special! Click on July 2011 in the side bar to see it again.

I tried to get into my blog yesterday but I guess it was down for some reason.

I finished “Majesty”, 35.5 x 42″, last week and wanted to post the pictures! This is the first time that I have done a faced edge instead of a binding.

I am not sure about facings. I read that it gives a more “art” finish and less of a “quilt” finish. It does hang very nicely. It takes longer and there is more hand work because whereas when I do a binding I insert the raw edges of the sleeve under the binding and sew by machine, with the facing method I had to sew all of the sleeve edges by hand. All of the facing edges are hand sewn as well, just like a binding would be. We had the most gorgeous weather last week though, so I was able to sit outside for two afternoons and do the hand work.

It’s done except for hand sewing the twinkle in his eye – what you see here is the white head of a pin that I use to see where the stitches should go. I am pretty happy with the way it came out. There is a LOT of quilting on it!

Saturday I took a workshop with Patty Hawkins from Colorado through the Kansas Art Quilters; she has had many entries accepted to Quilt National, and the subject was landscape, so I thought it might be fun even though it was on raw edge bonded applique/collage which is not a method I enjoy. I was hoping to learn something, which of course I did! It’s always nice to just get away for a while and play. Here’s my start on a piece from a photo that I took on our Alaska trip.

I’m so lucky to have such a nice stash of “nature” type fabrics to work with! In fact I have so much fabric it is overflowing the space I have to store it so I was very happy last week to hear of a local group making clothing for Haiti that was in need of fabric. I boxed up two large boxes of calico type prints that don’t really work for me anymore in the type of work I do now.  They would have been quite expensive to ship somewhere, so I was really happy to have found some place local to take it. A win-win situation for both of us! And now most of what is left fits on the shelves!!

I was accepted to participate in “Seasonal Palette” an exhibit through Studio Art Quilt Associates which will debut in Houston next fall and travel for a year or so after that. Thirty-eight were accepted out of hundreds of entries. We each will make a piece that measures 32″ wide by 78″ high and my assigned season is winter. So, as I have been going through the fabrics for stuff to give away and stuff for the workshop, I have been pulling out possibilities for this new work. I am starting to feel excited about it and anxious to get started……