Must. Stop. Screen Printing.

I don't know what it is about screen printing, but it seems that once I start I just can't stop.

I've been writing a little article involving screen printing for an upcoming edition of Quilting Arts. Perhaps the hardest part of writing an article, for me, is being satisfied with my samples and examples. Two things got me to stop (or at least slow down) the sample making this time: the deadline, and I ran out of screens to burn.

Here's a print that is not in the article:


Trust me when I say that this is much better in real life. The leaves are various metallic colors, as is the leopard moth. However, I really feel that the moth needs more oomph. Perhaps that can be added with an outline of the moth by either more screen printing or some quilting. The dots need something too. It's a work in progress and I do have plans for it.

In the meantime I started playing with the image in Photoshop. Here's what I've got so far.

I really get a kick out of both techniques - playing with paint and playing with pixels. What do you think?

September Machine Quilting Unlimited

Thanks to *everyone* for all your lovely comments on yesterday's post! Wow! You really made my day.

After I finished the quilt in my last post I got busy writing an article. I love working with the folks at Machine Quilting Unlimited, so I jumped at the chance to write another article for them. You can check it out it out in the September issue. Here's a glimpse of part of it:


It's all about feathers - a variety of types, on a variety of types of quilts. Believe it or not, feathers are fun! Because of their organic shape they work on a wide variety of quilts, and I've used them fairly often in my work - the border of The Gathering is just full of them, and they're all over Under the Rainbow. Once you get the hang of them they are a pretty quick way to fill up an area and are graceful to boot. The September issue is also jam packed with lots of other great articles, including the cover story on Patt Blair, how to quilt large quilts on your home machine, a great article by Marcia DeCamp and much more.

Houston IQA

I'm so delighted that for the fourth year in a row I've been fortunate enough to receive "the call" from Houston. My newest quilt, which I must say I poured my heart and soul into, has won a cash award in the IQA World of Beauty (Houston quilt show). Here's a sneak peek:



It's a digital collage that I created in Photoshop using a number of my photographs and a painting. I printed it on five panels of silk using my Epson 2200 pigment ink printer, then seamed them to create the quilt top. It's very heavily free motion machine quilted using a variety of threads - rayon, silk, cotton, and maybe even a little polyester .

It's a red letter day, as my oldest son is officially a teenager today. I better run and make his cake!

Miss October!

I now have a copy of the Martingale 2011 Calendar of IQA Award Winning Quilts, and I'm proud to say that I am Miss October (well, actually Last Dance is).


I had so much fun making this little quilt, and I'm just delighted to be in the calendar again this year.

I happened to be at a Metrothreads meeting on Saturday, and someone made an interesting remark. They admired how I made the left wing look transparent, so that the leaf beneath it showed through. Truth by told, I didn't do that. When I took the original picture, which you can see here, the butterfly was resting on dried oak leaves. As I manipulated the photo, including increasing the saturation, the colors on the oak leaf and the butterfly wing became more similar, producing the illusion of transparency. You can see an explanation of how I created the central image here, and see what a difference upping the contrast made.

I was very lucky to be in the right time and place to catch this somewhat unusual moment - a butterfly resting on autumn leaves. Keep your eyes open, and maybe you'll catch a magical moment too.

Scenes of Summer

School ended *very* late this year, due to all the snow, so we've only had 2 days of summer vacation. Here's what it's looking like so far.

Daylily "South Seas"

Maypop (or Passion Flower)

I think this kid has it pretty good. A little computer time after swimming with 8 friends plus his brothers.

Oh What Fun!

I had a great time at the Annapolis Quilt Guild Show this past weekend. It was wonderful to reconnect with old friends, and meet many new ones. Here are some photos of the spacious setup they provided for me.

A whole booth! A big shout out to Hilke for the pipes and drapes.

Ann, one of the Quilt Show co-chairs, and I. Ann is a very accomplished quilt artist, and she, Helen, and the rest of the volunteers put on a great show. I know that Ann won at least one (maybe two) ribbons this year. It's truly amazing to behold the set up and break down of this show - they are very efficient.


Here's a lovely reminder of the past. As a guild member I was asked back in 2000 to help design the 2001 raffle quilt. This asymmetric mariner's compass was the focal point of the quilt. The guild has a pin made every year from the raffle quilt design, and Helen offered me one that they still had.

To the many folks who stopped by to chat with me - thank you so much, I really enjoyed meeting you!

Annapolis Quilt Guild Show

Looking for something fun to do this weekend? Join me at the Annapolis Quilt Guild Show on Saturday, June 12 and Sunday, June 13. Located at Annapolis High School, this wonderful guild puts on quite a show, including quilts (of course), over 20 vendors, and numerous demos. I'm very excited to be this year's featured quilter, so if you come be sure to stop by and say hi! I'll have quite a few of my quilts with me, and hope to do a little free motion quilting while I'm there.

I haven't posted a picture in a while, so here are two. Yesterday when I went with one of my children to wait for the bus, this is what I saw. It looked like a beautiful dream.

Quilting Arts Free Image Transfer eBook

Would you like to learn six ways to use image transfers for quilting? Check out Quilting Arts new eBook, 6 Image Transfer Techniques for Your Art Quilts. I'm delighted that an article that I wrote is included in this free book. There are also articles by Leslie Riley, Marie Roper, Mary Ann Tipple, Pamela Price Klebaum and and Ginny Eckley . If you're interested in using image transfers in your work you'll find lots of food for thought, so head on over and download it today.

May Issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited

I'm thrilled to have been a part of the last two issues of Machine Quilting Unlimited. In March my quilt "Last Dance" was featured as the "Jaw Dropper" (what a great name!).

For the May issue I wrote an article on creating unique quilting motifs. If you've ever wanted or needed to come up with a unique quilting design to fit a block or border, this article has loads of tips on design sources and techniques.


I really love this magazine (and not just because I've been in it). It's a wonderful source of information on all aspects of machine quilting, both domestic and long arm. It also features great articles on wonderful artists who quilt by machine. In the May issue alone there are articles by Carol Ann Sinnreich, Gloria Hansen, Jenny Bowker, Eileen Doughty and more. Suffice to say I really look forward to each new issue!

Happy Easter

Wishing you a day of brotherly love.

I'm Ready For To Go

That's what my youngest son used to say when he was about 2 and was eager to get going to whatever adventure awaited, and that's how I feel today.

I'm about to start quilting a large (for me) quilt in hopes of finishing it by the deadline for Houston. It's about 40"x50". Note to self: it took one week and a day after the prints were "cured" to stretch, spray, assemble, and baste the whole shebang in preparation for quilting. Now the fun begins!

In the meantime I've rediscovered my love for piecing. I started out as a piecer, but quickly became A Little Too Serious about it. All my points always had to match. All straight lines were as straight as I could make them. My secret guilty pleasure for the last few weeks has been regularly checking out the Fresh Modern Quilt group on Flickr. Melody Johnson mentioned it on her blog, and looking at those quilts, and absorbing the enthusiasm of that group has brought me much pleasure. A few weeks ago I took a little break and sewed up nine "wonky" log cabin blocks, and boy was it fun! Once I'm done with my "big" quilt I'm going to sew those blocks up and make a cuddly quilt just for me.


All the snow is gone and spring is here! I hope it's a beautiful day where you are too.

Snow Dyes - Rounds 1 & 2

I've done three rounds of snow dyeing so far (with *plenty* of snow left to work with). Here are some results from rounds one and two. All of the pictures can be made bigger by clicking on them.

Snow Dyed, then snowverdyed ;)

Bottom fabric was dyed in the drip pan below other fabrics, so technically it was low water immersion dyed

Center fabric was snow dyed twice - once with chocolate brown, then again with grape
The bottom piece was another "drip catcher"

I confess that for my work I prefer little to no white space on a piece of hand dyed fabric. This has led me to usually dye with fabric that has been soaked in soda ash solution then dried before dyeing, or use a drip dyeing method like Robbi Eklow explains in her book Free Expression. For the snow dyed pieces I either redyed ones that came out with more white space than I wanted, or squirted a little extra dye on areas that I could see were really pale. I have a couple of more pieces I'll post a little later.

I finished up an article for the May issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited this week. It's about designing your own quilting motifs, and it was fun to think of lots of ways you can go about that.

I'm also super excited that once again this year I'll have a quilt in Martingale's calendar of IQA award winning quilts. It will be interesting to see what month they decide to use for Last Dance.

SN-OMG

Well, we're just hanging around the house today.

That's the end of the driveway near the street. I'm 5'3", just for scale.

It's a lot deeper there due to the plowing, but it's got to go anyway. Thankfully my husband was able to use the snow blower on the majority of the driveway.

That's the birdbath a few hours ago. My husband thinks it about 28"-29" right now. BTW, it's still snowing. All those crazy weather maps showed us right in the middle of the bulls eye all week, and they were right.



To the left: looking out the front door yesterday morning at 10:30, when it started to snow.

Below: the view this morning at about 10:00. Bear in mind that I shoveled that walk last night at 9:30 when the snow was about 5" deep.

Here's one of my enthusiastic helpers.

I'm very thankful for many things today including electricity, good snow boots, and a snow blower.

After I have some butternut squash soup, chocolate babka, and make some gumbo, I guess all that's left to do is try snow dyeing.

FFAC Tote Tuesday

I'm delighted to be taking part in FFAC Tote Tuesday.

I've donated two half yard pieces of hand dyed fabric to the tote being put together by Vicki Anderson of Machine Quilting Unlimited. Here are some photos of the fabric


These last two photos show the range of colors on the width of the fabrics.


There will be lots of other machine quilting related goodies in this tote, including a one year subscription to Machine Quilting Unlimited!

What is Tote Tuesday?
ToteTuesday, a Fiberart For A Cause fundraiser for the American Cancer
Society, will open Tuesday, February 2 and continue through March.

ToteTuesday will feature themed totes filled with unique, beautiful, and
inspiring items from the worlds of art quilting, fiber arts, knitting,
beading, mixed media and surface design.

You can expect totes offering original artwork, autographed books, hand-dyed
fabrics, gorgeous yarns, beads, handmade journals, fun and useful
materials/tools for mixed-media and surface design, online classes, DVDs,
and much, much more.

A list of the more than 20 themed totes now in progress is here:

http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/blog/archives/4265

100% of the proceeds will be donated directly to the American Cancer Society
through Fiberart For A Cause. Fiberart For A Cause has already donated over
$190,000 to the ACS:

http://www.virginiaspiegel.com/NewFiles/ACSFundraiser.html

Please mark your calendar for Tuesday, February 2 and be prepared to be
amazed!

Got Snow?

(Embiggen to get the full effect on this one)

Woohoo!

Several more inches fell after this

There's nothing like a snow day.

Houston Quilt Festival 2009

Well, I once again took a fun but *quick* trip to Houston for the International Quilt Festival. Here's the lowdown.

I took a super early flight on Tuesday and had lunch with my good friends Jill and Bill. Back in the day Jill and I were both engineers at McDonnell Douglas and were known as "the bookends" - we did just about everything together except quilt. It's always a highlight of my trip to get to see them again.

Tuesday night was the exciting awards ceremony - I was delighted to receive third place in the miniature art category. I of course saw Pokey (who presented my award), and fellow award winners including Sarah Ann Smith, Judy Coates Perez, and Candace West.

Wednesday morning I had breakfast with my good friend Debra Gabel of Zebra Patterns. Debra is both an amazing quilt artist as well as an incredible pattern designer. She'd been to quilt market and also had a booth at festival. Her CityStamp, StateStamp, and NationStamp designs were a really big hit - very unique and clever. I also had the pleasure of meeting her friends (and booth staff) Peggy, Dee and Sandy.

This year the luncheon where the top eight award winners speak was thankfully moved to Wednesday (instead of Saturday). I'd never been able to hang around until Saturday, so it was wonderful to be able to attend the luncheon this year. The tables were quite large so I didn't get to chat with everyone, but did sit next to Barbara Lies and Candace.

One side of festival that I've never experienced before is vending. I had the opportunity to help Debra and company with some last minute booth preparations and it was both fun and educational.

Wednesday night - preview night! For the third year in a row the delightful Lisa Ellis did me the favor of taking my picture next to my quilt. I think the next time I go I'll have to plan a little better and actually eat dinner with her or something.

I did my best to see as much of the show as possible. After wards Debra, Peggy, Dee and I headed out to get a bite to eat. We ended up at the House of Blues, and after all was said and done we now have the recipe for the Best Margarita Ever.

I met many other nice folks, and was happy to reconnect with others I've met at previous shows. My flight home was Thursday afternoon, so I soaked in as much atmosphere as possible before then and took one last look at all the great exhibits and show quilts. Once again a fabulous show and of course lots of friendly and creative quilters!

Eye of the Quilter

Once again the Houston International Quilt Festival folks came up with a great idea for a special exhibit - The Eye of the Quilter. Instead of quilts, it's photographs taken by quilters that they find inspirational.

While perusing thousands of photos on my computer in search of some entries, I realized that there are a number of things (besides my children) that I photograph over and over:
- I think I'm in contention for having taken the most macro photographs of flowers in the nation, if not the world
- reflections - in bodies of water, windows, and on cars
- water droplets and condensation on *anything*
- bare branches
- the Japanese maple in our yard in its autumn glory
- anything natural in our yard, whether flora or fauna - it's amazing to me the variety of things I've photographed on our property

I did enter three photos and have my fingers crossed, but instead of showing them I'll show several that were in contention that I didn't send. All of them can be enlarged by clicking on them.

Waterlilies at Brookside Gardens

The red maple mentioned above - this is part of the view outside my dining room window

A different view of the red maple

My youngest son's eyelashes a few years ago

I also noticed that sometimes weeks or months go by when I don't take very many photographs, but once I get on a roll watch out.

On another note, yesterday I got "the call" from the IQA that Last Dance won a cash award in the Houston show. That call really made my day!

Quilting Arts Gifts 2009-2010

On Friday I received my preview copies of Quilting Arts Gifts Holiday 2009-2010, and it's packed with great projects. It was really wonderful to see the wide variety of techniques this year.

Here's a sneak peak at the some of the samples I made for my two articles:

These are bookmarks that wrap around the book. They're really fast and easy, especially if you've made fiber postcards or ATCs before. Both of my samples were made from odds and ends I had in my studio.



These are the samples I made for a junior legal pad folio. There are pockets inside - one to hold the legal pad in, the other for receipts etc. The red one is my favorite. I was really tickled that in the photo in the magazine they included an open shot of the peach folio, and it had my handwritten mockup menu in it - actually a good representation of what we often have for holiday dinners.

Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens

Yesterday morning I sneaked out of the house early, and went to Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens on a little photo excursion.

I've passed the signs to the gardens countless times on the way to visit my family, yet never got a chance to check it out. I'm so glad that now I have!

These photos are just the tip of the iceberg of what you can see there.

Just one of the large ponds of lotuses.

There are not just lotuses, but water lilies, other marsh flowers, and a boardwalk through a swamp. As I walked along the boardwalk numerous birds and butterflies flew through the air and landed on the plants - difficult to capture in a photograph, but just beautiful.

There was not a tremendous variety of water lilies blooming in the large ponds at this time, but if you go be sure to look behind the park office. There's a little sign that says "more flowers", and there you'll find three small ponds filled with a variety of beautiful lilies.

If you live in the Baltimore/Washington area I highly recommend a visit. The park is open from 7am to 4pm, partly because the flowers eventually close in the heat of the late afternoon, so plan accordingly.