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.

Devotion to One's Art

I was so pleased to receive an acceptance for this year's IQA show in Houston for Last Dance (blogged about here). I'd really wanted to make a "big", new quilt to enter, but life conspired against me. I love this little quilt so I'm happy it will have a chance to travel again.



Recently I've read some interesting posts on QuiltArt about whether folks prefer to read just about the art (quilting), or if it's better to throw in some personal goings on. Sometimes, for me, all I have time for is family life with three busy boys, so my quilting posts are few and far between. In the past year we shared our home for 7 months with a relative displaced by damage caused by Hurricane Ike, and this too impacted my quilt making. I somehow managed to write 4 magazine articles in that time, but couldn't spare the time or concentration to create a major new piece. Having Last Dance in my back pocket as a potential entry for Houston helped me to let go and relax a little this spring instead of going 100 miles an hour to finish a quilt in time. It's funny how things manage to work out.

When I'm strongly focused on finishing a quilt for a deadline it's hard to want to stop working on it. To my amusement I can see this trait in my youngest son, age 6. He LOVES to draw. He loves it so much that the elementary school principal called me to commend him on his creativity (that was a little surprising). Anyway, we were doing errands the other day and that did not stop his drawing. He carried an 11"x18" piece of paper and a pencil with him to Target, the pediatrician's office, and Radio Shack. As we walked through Target each time we stopped to look at something he'd squat on the floor, put his drawing on an available empty shelf, and draw. He also drew at the doctor's office and Radio Shack. I'd call that devotion to one's art!

A penguin, with an ice sword and ice helmet, riding on the back of a baby polar bear while fighting a sea lion. The back of the paper has a shark (or perhaps killer whale?) on it.

I hope that you're finding time for both your art, and some relaxation, this summer.

Spoonflower Fabrics

Back in March, following Sue Reno's lead, I decided to take the plunge and order some fabric from Spoonflower. These are the two fabric designs I ordered:

This is derived from the background of my quilt The Gathering.

This is derived from the background of a quilt design I'm still working on.

Overall I'm very pleased with the fabrics - the quality is good, and there's an impressive amount of detail. There was some banding, particularly on the top fabric, that probably only I would notice. I'm fairly certain this was a hiccup in the printing process, because there was no banding on other areas of the fabric with the same design elements and colors. For my purposes this wasn't a showstopper.

I ordered the fabrics on a whim, so did not order swatches to make sure the colors would be exactly as expected. I was OK knowing that this would result in some serendipity, but if you want your colors to match something you really should order a swatch.

Does this mean I'll stop printing fabric for my quilts on my own printer? No, but it's a nice alternative if I want yardage of a special design.

Miss May!

A number of months ago I was very honored to find out that "The Gathering" is going to be included in Martingale's 2010 Award Winning Quilts Calendar. I peeked over at their website the other day, and they have some preview images up. I do believe I'm going to be Miss May! I don't know how long that link will stay good, but it sure was fun to see the layout they've put together. I can't wait to see the final product.

(Edited to add: You need to click on the right arrow by View Gallery - my quilt is the first one after the cover image.)

Quilting Arts Article

I'm delighted to have an article in the latest (June/July 2009) issue of Quilting Arts. It's called "Digital Playtime" and discusses some of the steps I use to create the fabric for my quilts. I hope you like it!

I'm also looking forward to the next issue of Quilting Arts Gifts, where I'll have two projects.

Bog Lilies

Last year I was invited to make a small quilt for the "New Focus" exhibit, curated by Kim Ritter and Judy Dales. The exhibit was held from December to February at the Coos Art Museum in Coos Bay, Oregon. Here's the quilt I made, called "Bog Lilies", a digital collage printed on silk.


I have a larger quilt nearly ready to print, but am waiting for a new supply of fabric. In the meantime I was delighted to receive an acceptance for "The Gathering" into the AQS show in Paducah.

The maple trees are starting to bloom here in Maryland and the birds are singing more and more every day. Spring is on the way!

Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival

This morning I was delighted to find out that The Gathering (pictured in my last post) won Best Use of Color in the wallhanging category at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival. Last month it was photographed for the 2010 Martingale calendar of quilts from the fall IQA show, so it's been traveling quite a bit. The calendar will be coming out later this year, and I can't wait to see it.

I've been working on an article for Quilting Arts, and submitted some potential ideas for the Quilting Arts Gifts issues, so we'll see how that goes. I wrote an article for the Winter 2008 issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited, and Sarah did a great job of blogging about that issue here.

Verizon came through our neighborhood a few weeks ago to lay cable for FiOS. There was ice on the ground, and they marked where they needed to dig with a brilliant orange paint. I took some pictures of the paint on the ice, as it created an other worldly effect (IMHO). This photo was not manipulated at all, other than to change the size.

Back From Houston

I had a wonderful trip to the Houston International Quilt Festival last week. It was great to meet some new folks and catch up with others I'd met last year. Here's a picture of me by my quilt on Wednesday at the Preview Night. Lisa Ellis of www.ellisquilts.com was generous enough to take the photo and send it to me stat!

If it were not for the generosity of my friend Dianne Smith I don't know if I would've made it to the show - she very kindly shared her room at the Hilton with me for two nights.

The quilt show was just the beginning of a lovely week. I flew back home Thursday night in order to not miss Halloween with the kiddos, and I'm so glad I did because it was the best Halloween ever. We went to parties on either end of trick or treating, the weather was perfect, and the boys were so happy. I volunteered in third grade for the big partay, and I can honestly say that I've never heard them so happily loud as they were during the toilet paper mummy relay. The week was the perfect balance between quilting and family.

Last Dance

As always, autumn is spookily busy for me. I have manged to work on a few small pieces in the last few weeks, and made it through 3 of the 4 fall family birthdays!

This piece was just completed in time for the Piedmont Arts Association Invitational exhibit. I named it "Last Dance" because the photos used to make this quilt were taken in October and I was amazed that this butterfly was still around at that late date.



I detailed how I made the digital imagery in this post. I wrote another post about adding the appliqued leaves are here.


This detail image shows some of the quilting in the border. My intent was to add quilting that looked like fungi or leaf litter. As always, the free motion quilting is the most enjoyable part of quilt making for me and it feels like dancing.

The leaves are really starting to turn around here, and it's just beautiful. Tomorrow I'm heading to Houston for a brief sojourn at the Houston International Quilt Festival. I'm sure I'll spend some time hanging out by my quilt. If you see me be sure and say "Hi".