third week at the bay

quilt top 

quilt back 

one of the inspirations for the Fairhaven quilt was the amazing colors of the sky over open water 

I spent a third week at the Chesapeake bay red house alone the beginning of October. Molly invited us back to finish our retreat that we interrupted by hurricane Irene. It was almost a month hence and things were a little different but much the same in the house this time adding heat over night as the night time temperatures were below a chill. Once I got all my food and artist and life materials packed and loaded up the drive was quick. The red house was just like we left it last August 27th after the power failed and we had to pack up and come home to the city a week early. Keith couldn't come with me this time so I was prepared for a different kind of experience. I packed up the quilt I began and took it back with new materials for a back design and added an ironing board and card table to expand my set up to be more user friendly. Before all I had was a side table for the sewing machine and a stack of twin beds for "table" space and ironing. This time I had a goal of finishing the top design sewing and making a back and getting them put together with a sandwich of cotton batting in between so I could begin quilting here at home. I also took my big sketch book for morning watercolors and my journal for morning pages. Food and water to drink.... casual clothes and flannel bed sheets.
I arrived to find Molly was in the city and Cappy was there alone. I got my things unloaded and got right to work making my dinner. Then I ate it and walked over to tell Cappy Ruppert that I was there and show him my sketch book. He hadn't seen any of the work I have done from the first visit. We enjoyed a nice visit over some decaf coffee. Molly arrived back from her big Wash. Project for the Arts (WPA) party excited to tell us all about the people and places she had seen. We stayed up late discussing everything we could think of about the time since our last meeting. I told her my plan to finish up the quilt top first.
I completed a daily watercolor sketch each day. I worked all day every day except one on the quilt parts and stopped to cook, eat and walk to enjoy my experience of the Fairhaven community and did a few artist visits with Molly and neighbors who were all very supportive of my work. On my walks I met a wood worker from Arizona named George. He is doing some extra fine finish work on his brother the architect's house at the top of the hill.  I also met a neighbor of his Farley who has a lovely garden I stopped to photograph and found her nestled in the steps next door on a walk the next day. She was kind of hidden from sight soaking up the afternoon sun.  It was fun walking in the late summer sunny days. It had been cloudy the first part of the week. I had a visit from three of the Ruppert grand children who helped me get a start on the quilt parts placement in my design. They are going to make a quilt with other grand children and Molly next summer! I was helping them get a feel for how to begin.

The Fairhaven Cliffs 

My quilt workroom

View of the bay on Sunday the first morning was cloudy

Monday was cloudy too 

Teddy wearing dad's long striped soccer socks, Christian and youngest brother Michael placing strips of fabric on the felt board helping me design the layout of my quilt top. 

cloudy day view of the bay from Foust's house

Clouds come and go thick and thin....

Foust's house garden native hibiscus is red. 

native flowers by the road

view from the bridge between the bay and the lake looking back at the cliffs up the bay side. 

Same place as above looking towards the lake near the bridge

a road up to the Fairhaven Flats 

container garden using drift wood container an idea that will be stolen for my own garden

Blue herons like this spot to fish on the bay we saw them daily

The cliffs from the end of the pier 

early morning view of the hill beside the red house

watercolor sketch of the same...

a white tailed deer with small antlers appeared twice on the hill to graze in the afternoons

On the road by Tacaro a brick baron's estate near by begged for a bicycle ride or a walk. I settled for a drive to save time to work on my projects. 

field of pumpkins and cattle seen on my trip out of Fairhaven on Tuesday to get groceries

close up of the cattle and pumpkins in the field

Last day this boat had been moored in front of my window all night and set sail as I was having lunch. 

dozens of these butterflies were feasting on local asters everywhere when the sun came out. 

numerous monarch butterflies were seen passing by my window and I caught this one on Foust's butterfly bush

actual view of the work station for sewing and ironing 

My drift wood brought home to make a hens and chicks container like the one at the bay. 

the drift wood has very cool inner recesses that will be covered with sand, pebbles and sempervivum and sedum this time next year. 

detail of quilting work with pearle threads 

hoop on quilt and some of the pearle threads I am using to quilt by hand

I am very grateful to Molly Ruppert for this generous gift of lodging in the red house at the edge of the bay. What a treat to be given and share with her the lovely Chesapeake bayside life. I dream of having a house of my own like this but even a short visit is a blissful experience. Now I have my work cut out to get the Fairhaven Summer Quilt completed. I began quilting as soon as I got home and settled in I know it isn't going to take as long as the yoyo quilt did because this quilt is well on the way towards completion. Special thanks also to Steven Stichter for his advice on working with pearle embroidery threads which he used in his amazing creations. I went to see him last weekend and got a fast review of his work and all the questions I needed answered in less than two hours.

August begins

It's already the 8th and I feel like it just started. This is such a hot summer it kind of makes me feel like winter when it's too severe to enjoy the weather but we manage to get out in spite of the high heat. I have been going out mornings to draw. Keith is doing his flower arrangements and I my sketches and other routines. I had an exciting experience this past week. Since I post my photos of my work on flickr.com the folks from around the world can look and comment or just mark a photo as a favorite with a red star. One person who's flickr.com profile moniker is "Life Under Quilts" starred on of my photos of a quilt block so I went to see what she does and was delighted by her work. She had a block I really liked and thought I remembered my friend Steven Stichter making while he was at Penland School of Crafts on a quilting intensive for two months years ago. It was one that caught my attention then and again on life under quilts many quilt photos. I took her name for it "ribbon block" and searched on Google to see if I could find out more about it or a pattern. Nothing like that block showed up. So I was telling Keith about it and he suggested I write and ask her how she did it directly which led to a very exciting response the next day.
She had done those blocks as a tutorial and had photos stored away that she had not used but since I asked she would post the whole thing on her blog the following day. See the post here: Life Under Quilts Blog Sure enough, she did and I was in business.
Cut, pin, sew, press, rotate...

cut, pin, sew, press, rotate...

cut, pin, sew, press, rotate... and in a couple hours I had one of my own. I finished it up and I felt so good. I have it on my big embroidery hoop right now doing simple hand stitch quilting on the first pieced pater block I ever made. It's kind of larger than I expected but I used wide ribbons since she didn't say what size to use.  I think I doubled the width of what she used. Next time I will try it thinner and maybe at angles instead of squared up. I like the sort of spiral thing that happens and the depth that can be seen in the space it creates. This is the block before it is quilted.

In the mean time one of the artists I met on the last International Sketch Crawl at Union Station asked me to make her a vellum and print paper sketch book in my Coptic stitch style. I went up to Pyramid Atlantic to cut the paper and some boards on Friday. Gretchen was not there but I saw that Jose the director was back from his summer vacation and Jake Muirhead the intaglio print studio director was getting prints cut before he takes off on his annual summer family vacation. He looked at my July garden sketch book and suggested that they would be nice intaglio prints and I told him I was thinking about that but the color was driving me this summer. Maybe you could hand color them he says, even though he doesn't like hand colored prints personally. Then right after he left there was an intern sitting with a stack of intaglio color prints done with line etching and aquatints. They were yellow and red ink and beautiful dahlias. She explained how they were done ant that they were part of the "print exchange" that one of the other leaders at Pyramid Atlantic was running. I have missed out on that but I have been busy in the garden and with my sketch crawl buddies and my own quilting extravaganza at home.
The book for artist Angela Newman is going to be very difficult to sew. These vellums are hard to handle because they slip and slide when you stack them. I got the covers ready and the paper/vellum. Now I just need a cool day's weather on the back porch to take up the challenge of wrestling them into the binding. I love her drawing style and she has a nice blog she posts on regularly her work while she is in DC before she takes off to Italy later this year to serve in the US Air Force! This is a link to her post from Union Station where she used Vellum as an overlay to make a drawing with extra depth. Very impressive take a look?
I will not make boring art

Angela's book covers ready to assemble and one section of the vellum folded

the finished covers ready to go in the press to dry

Soon Keith and I will be spending some time at the beautiful Chesapeake Bay in a little cottage. We are both trying to figure out how to take our work on the road, keep up our diet--exercise routines and manage doctor appointments while watering our garden from  out of town. Anyone want to babysit some bonsai and potted plants?

Moving parts, dance, music, drinks and books

guests enter from the cold night air and sign in

Moving Parts: box sets stacked and open

bass and percussion

center pink Kelly O'Brein Moving Parts leader

the first of two dances

This week we met our goal to complete 10 sets of the Moving Parts collection for City Dance and Pyramid Atlantic studios. There was a party with live music and dance performing as well as silent auction of book parts individually and a raffle for a complete set. The whole event was wrapped in a very frosty December night air but the folks inside were happy to be warm and curious to see all that was on display. I had a good time watching and even though my raffle ticket wasn't the lucky one I still feel lucky to have made new friends and advanced my skills as a clam shell box maker. Now we begin the next phase of our project completing the other 40 boxed sets.

The highlight besides all the joyful faces of the artists who contributed to this project and the support people who made it happen was near the end. The man who got me involved at Pyramid Atlantic Studios almost ten years ago Steven Stichter arrived looking a little worn from rushing to find the gallery. He went to some other location and just made it during the last minutes of the party. He has been away from printing and Pyramid for some time now even though he works only three blocks away but said he is making a big effort to come back now. That was happy news for me. I miss his company, friendship and talents.