Spiral Galaxy Completed and a Few Thoughts

Posted on July 26, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Deep space quilts, Food for Thought, My micro-business, Quilt Journal, quilt shows, selling quilts / 6 Comments

I finished the quilt! It hasn’t been professionally photographed yet, so full pictures will come later, maybe after its debut at a quilt show. Here’s a detail shot I took myself in which you can sort of see my quilting:

detail picture by BJ

When I finish a show quilt I really enjoy making I experience mixed feelings of delight that I have made a new quilt and a little let down on not having it to work on any longer. This is at least in part because I am driven to create.

To me, creating is a most wonderful privilege given to me as a blessing by my Creator and encouraged by my family and friends. Ever since I was a small child, I have been blessed with many talents, the strongest of these being sewing, art, and music. I do not engage in all of these at once, but like many artists, I have traveled from one to the other through my life with some overlaps from time to time. For the past ten years, and drawing in more than sixty years (!) of sewing, I have worked to develop quilting as an art form and I have retired from music making. What I find so wonderful about quilting as an art form is that it draws together many of my interests and talents, even applying some of what I learned in the decades of my music, but that’s another topic. Quilting has its ups and downs, but it’s very fulfilling to me to create a quilt of any kind and especially wall art quilts. I intend to continue making quilts until I can no longer hold a needle or run a sewing machine…perhaps into my hundreds. 😀

I love showing my quilts to share the fun with my friends and in the hope that it makes people happy or inspired. It adds a little spice and fun to that when I win a ribbon too. I love sharing my techniques and quilt adventures because I would be delighted to see what I have learned become useful for other quilters.

Here’s where you can see my quilts as of publication of this blog post:

First of all, you can see pictures of many of my quilts either on my website gallery or you can also see them here on The Quilt Show. If you click on the photos in my website gallery, you’ll get the full view and look at the caption on the bottom of each quilt for the name of the quilt and the price of the quilt if they are for sale. If you are interested in purchasing one of my quilts, or just want to know more about it, just contact me at BettyJo@bjfabricartist.com and I’ll get back to you shortly with more details about them. I have a paypal account that enables purchases safely, so just contact me at BettyJo@bjfabricartist.com and I’ll get back to you shortly.
If you are going to AQS Syracuse at the end of this week and over the weekend, my little quilt Canterbury Knight is in the show. It’s been through several shows and received Stevii Graves Judge’s Choice ribbon at Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival earlier this year. I would be very surprised if it takes a ribbon, but it is a very nice little quilt you would probably enjoy seeing. I’m thinking this is probably the end of its show season and I plan on hanging it in my living room when it comes home. It’s sister quilt Canterbury Silk is already hanging, and I think it will be a nice addition. So I’m keeping these two quilts and not putting them up for sale.
G Street Fabrics in Rockville has generously hung several of my quilts in their Bernina section. Those are for sale, and include Dad’s House Plan, Kanazawa Memories, and The Storyteller. I periodically change the quilts hanging there.
If you live or are coming near Ashburn, Virginia, send me an email and we can arrange for you to come see any quilts that happen to be here at the time.

Next it’s full speed ahead on the quilt my son Ken designed for me and continued work on my book.

Sew happy everyone! Teach someone to quilt…your child, grandchild, husband, wife, or neighbor. It can be fun for everyone and a great stress reliever in these troubled times.

Thoughts On Wall Quilt Sizes

Posted on July 14, 2016August 11, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, a pattern, Food for Thought, quilt shows, selling quilts / 4 Comments

American Quilters Society (AQS) recently issued their new rules, which includes sizes by category, for their 2017 shows. Regardless of whether they are made for shows, size of quilts meant for display on a wall is an important topic to me. I would particularly appreciate comments back so we can actually have a dialogue about this.

Why is this important? There are a number of reasons:

They have to fit on the wall of people’s homes and businesses if they are ever going to be anything other than a flash in the pan for showing at quilt shows. I want to sell or give away to family and friends many of my quilts after they have been through their show season, so having them sized for people’s homes and businesses is an important issue.
I know from my own work that the size is often not a big factor in how difficult, how high the technique, how long a quilt takes to make. Indeed, some of the smaller ones have been the hardest things I have made.
I believe that is true that a large quilt can have a bigger impact when displayed at a show among a lot of other quilts.
Larger quilts are more likely to be traditional and are intended to fit on a bed, although show quilts may not be.
Many quilters, including myself, have difficulties that make creating a large sized quilt nearly impossible.
Some shows do not award Best of Show (BOS) ribbons to “small” wall quilts. Some of these can be as big as 59 inches in both directions, which is a large size for home displays and still are considered “small”. In these cases, even if they have special prizes for exceptional small wall sized quilts, the financial awards for AQS, at least, are about half the BOS award.

Oddly AQS has a gap between their miniature quilt, which is 24 inches by 24 inches maximum and their small wall quilt, which is 30 inches by 30 inches. They don’t have a square inch requirement, so if your quilt is 27″ x 37″, for instance, they cannot be entered in many of their shows despite the fact they are larger by square inches for the small wall quilt. My Canterbury Knight quilt is 27 x 37 and could never be entered into Paducah, for instance. Houston IQA is more inclusive.

Sew what do I find the ideal size for me to work in? I like to make quilts smaller than about 48 x 48 and larger than 30 x 30. The main reason for that is that my son Ken’s space for photographing my show quilts is 48 x 48, and it’s a really nice size to work in and the AQS 30 x 30 cutoff. Also, I think it can fit on a normal home wall better than anything bigger. while I may make a very small quilt, I am not a miniature show quilter. That is a whole different set of techniques and design and it is not something I wish to get into.

Even for charity quilts a smaller quilt can be good. I once did a survey for my church to find out what an ideal size would be that would serve as a wheelchair quilt, a crib quilt, or a lap quilt, and found to my surprise that the oft touted 36 inches width is sometimes frustrating to people who find it too narrow. So after the survey I found that 40 to 45 inches wide and 45 to 50 inches long makes a very appreciated quilt size that can function for wheelchairs, children’s quilts, and lap quilts. Here’s my little guide I wrote up for the church, if you are interested. It has several easy and quick simple patterns and other information:

Quilt Making for OSWLC needlework group

Sew happy everyone. I would love to hear from you to tell me what your favorite sizes are for quilt making and what you think about sizes for quilts designed for the walls of homes and businesses?

Finishing Things So I Can Start New Things

Posted on May 26, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Books, Deep space quilts, Food for Thought, High-Tech Studio, Machines, My micro-business, My Studio, quilt shows, selling quilts, Studio maintenance / 2 Comments

I love finishing projects of all kinds. It means I have accomplished something, but chiefly, it means I can start something new. Currently, I am working on finishing my Hoffman Challenge 2016 small wall quilt. It is such a happy project…full of butterflies and bunnies, and set in a whimsical forest. I am quilting it now. I know that you don’t HAVE to finish one project before starting another, but it’s really nice to do it that way. I have a hard time not finishing before starting another, simply because of all the years I had to finish things for really important reasons, and way back when I had my own fashion design/tailoring business when I HAD to finish projects for my clients’ sake.

I am also getting my studio rearranged so I can put my new Bernina Q20 where it will be easily available. To do this, I had to start with reorganizing my bedroom so I could eliminate one of my two dressers and move the Koala cabinet that I use with my Bernina 1230 and Bernina 350 into my bedroom. I have finished preparations for that part of the reorg. Next I will be putting the Q20 where the Koala cabinet is now. It all starts tomorrow with a scheduled pickup of no-longer-in-use clothing and shoes (six bags so far). Then on Tuesday the 31st, the guys come who are taking the dresser away to charity and moving the koala cabinet in place. Then the following Monday, June 6th, I am expecting the delivery and setup of the Q20. And finally, on Wednesday, the 8th, my dear friend and Bernina dealer Mei Ling, and the magician machine tech Lew, who fixed my 830LE, are coming to provide me with a day of training on the use and servicing of the Q20.

Wow! I mean WOW!!! When they have finished on Wednesday, I will be ready to begin a new phase in being a studio fabric artist. I’ve recently learned that is what I am, because I am not an extrovert who wishes to travel all over and teach. I am not particularly an introvert either, because I love people. But I love my studio and my work as an artist whose medium is fabric and quilting. I feel inspired when I’m in the studio working (and usually listening to music).

Upon completion of all of this, I will have available for my creative use two standard workhorse machines for use in clothing and some piece work (and the 350 to take to classes), my Bernina 830LE (Gibbs) for machine embroidery, specialized applique, and decorative stitch work, and my new Q20 set up as a sit down longarm for my quilting work. I will still use Gibbs for quilting when I want to quilt with decorative stitching, but that is only about one percent of my quilting. I also have a small kitchen island that is my cutting and painting station, a nearby small bathroom where I do some occasional hand dyes and for use with cleaning up after painting, and my computer station with a good ink jet printer. In the process of all of this, I am removing a couple of old printers and putting in a second monitor for my computer station (at no cost…just work) to assist me with the design work.

I am most grateful to the Lord, my kids, and my Bernina friends who have or are all pitching in one way or another to help me make this happen. It is a dream studio. Sew I am a healthy, albeit overweight, 69 now. In the past, I sewed decades using lesser machines and after work and weekends, and then spent a lot of time learning the art quilt craft after I retired a little over three years ago. This seams a very good time to raise the level of my work up another notch, don’t you think? It would also be a great help to me to start winning more ribbons and selling more quilts (and even completing and selling my books) to help pay for my fabric art work and maybe even add a little additional income.

I just completed “Drawing Nigh” and am about to finish the Hoffman Challenge quilt. So what is next after my studio revamp? Ahhh.,..I have a lot of plans that seem to be growing all the time. First off, I want badly to make a new show quilt by 15 August for the PA Nat’l Quilt Extravaganza in Philadelphia because I’m going up there for that show and am staying with a long term friend who recently retired and moved nearby there. So I want something to show off with…LOL…I don’t think I can complete Ken’s wonderful quilt by then, so I am planning on attempting the next quilt in my deep space series, which may be doable. After all, it was that show last year that gave Sky Horse it’s ribbon (Best color choice for its category). I think I probably can. More than half of the work on those quilts is free motion quilting. It will be a good tryout for my new Q20. I hope to complete Ken’s quilt by the end of the year or early next. It is much the most difficult piece of art I have ever attempted, so I refuse to rush it. And then, I am considering making a couple of whole cloth quilts inspired by really ancient historical quilts. Oh, and don’t forget the orange/gold dragon flying over volcanos and possibly fighting a phoenix, or the third in my “waiting…” series, or my memorial quilt for my mom, or the deep dark forest in nearly three dimensions, oh, and there’s Jacob’s ladder, and Adam naming the animals, and…and….

Sew happy everyone! Do a little spring cleaning and reorganizing and start something new and fun.

A New Birdfeeder

Posted on April 30, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My Family, My Studio, Tools / 1 Comment

This week I replaced my birdfeeder. The old one had gotten really beaten up with that huge snow storm and the subsequent wind storms we have had here this year. It never worked well anyway. It had mostly plastic and it blew sideways, dumping the birdseed in a windstorm. It got the seed stuck at the bottom with every rainstorm because the drain holes were ill placed and inadequate, and finally the place the birds stood broke off altogether. So I replaced it with a nice heavier and sturdier feeder made with brass, stainless steel, and glass (I hope the glass doesn’t break in future storms since we sometimes get a lot of wind here). It seems really nicely shaped for the birds to use too.

The birds like it. I put it up a few days ago and already I have had a constant crew of various finches, mourning doves, black birds, cardinals, and the ever plentiful sparrows. But the real treat was two bird varieties I have never had at my feeder (or seen there at least).

The first day an American gold finch paid a call. Here is a picture of one from Cornell’s All About Birds site:

American Goldfinch

I’ve seen them fly by occasionally but they never paid a visit when I watched until yesterday.

Today, I had a bird visit that I have never had the pleasure of seeing. He not only visited, but he stayed long enough for me to get a real good look at him with my binoculars. This picture is also from Cornell’s All About Birds.

Rose Breasted Grosbeak

I walked out onto my back deck today and listened for a few minutes while the birds were singing and chattering, and the air felt wonderful, and went out front where my azalea is blooming its head off, and then I went upstairs into my delightful studio and worked on a quilt while I thought about my great family and how I have had many wonderful opportunities and experiences, and I came back down to my kitchen and used my floor scrubber to clean the kitchen floor without having to get down on my aging knees with a scrub brush like my grandmother did, and then I made myself a wonderful low-carb chicken dinner and watched The Martian and it made me think about all the good ways I have been taught to take one problem in life at a time and figure out how to solve it. Yes!! That WAS a very long run on sentence. 😀 😀 😀

I am very blessed.

Sew happy everyone. May you all be so blessed and may birds and flowers bling up your space in this world.

When Projects Go Awry

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in A Little How-To, Applique, Art Quilt Techniques, Embroidery, Food for Thought, Quilt Journal, Techniques, Tools / 4 Comments

One of my wonderful mom’s favorite jingles was a song taken from an old movie that was as old as I am. It was You gotta stick to it tivity: You’re gonna do all right, you’re gonna do all right. She sang that to me when things I was trying to accomplish needed more work or went really awry. I can still hear her from time to time singing to me from heaven. 😀 I did see that movie, So Dear to My Heart sometime in my childhood and remember it a bit.

A little heart mug rug…just showing it because this story touches my heart strings.

It didn’t seem like it at the time, but over the years I realized her singing that little jingle to me repeatedly was a gift that has served me well across the years, and most recently in my quilting. While working on the past several quilts I have had things go awry rather badly and I thought it may be the end for both of those quilt projects.

Just this week, I started embroidering an element on my Hoffman Challenge 16 quilt and took extra care to place it perfectly along the cross hairs with my brand new laser cross hair light. It was stitching wonderfully, until I looked at it and….

Gasp! I had put the hoop on sideways! Oh no. The element was turned a perfect 90 degrees wrong. I stopped the embroidery machine immediately, but it had already stitched quite a lot. I don’t know why I didn’t see it before I did.

Well, I honestly wasn’t sure I would be able to fix it. Machine embroidery is very much harder to remove than ordinary machine stitching.

So I started the process with my stitch remover and tweezers and realized I was simply not making any significant progress and I had put a small hole in the fabric. So I thought I would not be able to repair this quilt. But I was wrong.

I decided the next morning to research what other people do when this happens and found a couple of videos on you tube of people using a hand held shaver and and another with an electric shaver-like device to remove such embroidery from the bobbin side. Someone noted in the comments that it was a regular small razor, which is what it appeared to me to be also. I bought a “Peanut” razor by Wahl, which is a very small palm sized razor and significantly less expensive than the embroidery specific razor.

It came and I successfully removed the embroidery with no further damage to the fabric. Woohoo! I turned it to the back, braced it on my sewing ham to give it a solid rounded basis and shaved the bobbin side holding the razor kind of upside down as shown in the videos. I didn’t think it did anything until I turned it over and scratched at the embroidery with my tweezers, and it started coming up! It took me a couple of hours, but it all came and left no further damage than the small hole I made earlier.

So yesterday I starched and ironed the area and restitched the embroidery off quilt on nylon veiling, which I will applique on. It will cover the small damage to the fabric with no problem and it looks wonderful.

This event follows on the heels of my completing Drawing Nigh which I just finished after having multiple problems and nearly giving up on it more than once.

Sew this is what I think. It is all right to abandon a project, but if you have spent hours and money on it, it can pay you to try to fix it. You may want to step back from it for a while and give it some thought. Do some research on what you can do to fix a problem you may not know how to fix, and keep on trying through one problem after another. If, in the end, you just can’t fix it to look like you want, you may be able to cut part of it into another project, or simply throw it away. But i suggest you don’t do that until you really try to fix it. You may end up with a wonderful end result.

Sew happy everyone and “stick to it tivity: you’re gonna be all right!”

A Visit to the “New” Old G Street Fabrics

Posted on January 17, 2016January 30, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Classes, Fabrics, Food for Thought, Reviews / 4 Comments

This past week my big Bernina 830 (aka Gibbs), decided he would not sew another stitch until he had his spa treatment. I would say his “annual” spa treatment, but it had been two years since he had been to the machine vet and I had put on about 1.3 million stitches in that time. Last year, G Street Fabrics where my dealer was had closed two of their stores in the area and drawn back to a single store in Rockville, Maryland. They recently moved to another building in Rockville. When I took him there, Mei-Ling Huang, the head of their Bernina section and my same dealer that was in a closer store that closed, showed me around. I decided to take my camera when I went back to pick up Gibbs, which apparently had only some minor things wrong that Lew, the technician wizard, fixed quickly for me and did the “annual” clean and check, upon learning that I have several quilt deadlines coming up fast. He fussed at me though about taking so long, pointing out that I have about 460 hours on the machine and suggested I divide the workload with a longarm. Frankly, I was surprised it was that low. Thank you Lew!!!!!!!

There is kind of a warehouse feel about the new store, but this may not be a bad thing. It is much like some stores in New York I have been to that have some great fabrics, trims, buttons, and notions. Two of the most outstanding things about the new location are the Bernina section, which I will talk about separately, and a bunch of classrooms that have windows and light and look fabulous to teach in. The selection of fabrics is fairly substantial, though not to the level it used to be in its old glory days over a decade ago, but a good place to go when you are starting a project. They have a very nice selection of home decorator fabrics, which make wonderful bags, coats, and costume segments, by the way.

The Back Wall of Home Dec Fabrics

One of several home dec lanes

Their quilting fabrics are ok, but I hope that as they pull themselves out of the hole that they will increase this section substantially. Nevertheless, you can probably find the quilting cottons you need for a nice quilt project.

Quilting cottons

They also have a nice selection of buttons and trims, though substantially smaller than the great old store of yore. Still, if you need buttons or trim for clothing, you can probably find what you need here.

Button wall

Sew did I find the general part of the new G Street to be the fabulous, exciting place that it was in its glory days with its stages where the tailoring and the special occasion fabrics were shown in all their magnificent beauty and the quilting section was wonderful?…no. Is it still the mecca for fabraholics the world over as it used to be? No. But I do think it has the possibility of reaching that place again and the class rooms really offer a wonderful possibility for building the future. This seems a very good move on the whole for the store. I found that they do not carry any thread brand I would use in the general store…they need to think about that. Perhaps they don’t realize that some of us really dislike some of the brands they carry. They have some wonderful fabrics that make one drool.

Most of all, however, I loved the Bernina section, which is still in process after the move. It is in a separate smaller wing of the building. Mei-Ling and her crew have already given it an atmosphere of coziness and inspiration. She told me that they are still organizing, so I anticipate that it will be downright fabulous in a month or so. They run their new owner classes in this part of the store.

Walking in to the Bernina section

Feet and other notions

What I really want.

As you probably know, I am trying to sell some of my quilts. You can see which ones here. Mei-Ling has generously offered to hang some of these quilts on her walls, so I took three of them there…”Waiting…”, “Quiet Celebration”, and “The Storyteller”.

What do I hope the store will do? I have a few suggestions:

Increase the quilting fabric section, and emphasize it as much as clothing and home dec sections.
I didn’t check it out, so I don’t know how this is, but be sure to have a solid and good offering of battings, fusibles, interfacings, and other underpinnings for clothes, quilts, bags, and fabric art of all kinds.
Start carrying Superior, Aurifil, and/or Wonderfill threads..in a broad selection of weights and fibers.
Emphasize the wonderful class rooms and fill them up. Carry the threads, fabrics, books, and supplies needed for these classes so once someone learns something they can find what they need there.
Remember the store’s legacy and try to reach that again, and don’t try to be another Jo Ann’s or some such. High quality fabrics with proper pricing (not 25 percent higher than anywhere else, in other words), draw people in.

If you are near Rockville, I hope you will stop by and see what you think of this “new” old G Street Fabrics for yourself. Be sure to look in the Bernina section and say “Hi” to Mei-Ling and look at my quilts on the wall. This nice store is about 50 minutes away over heavily traveled highways in heavy traffic, making it a little cumbersome for me to use on a regular basis, but I will certainly continue to go there for my Bernina needs.

Sew happy everyone. I hope you have a good fabric store near you.

Planning for the New Year in My Studio

Posted on December 29, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Books, Classes, Deep space quilts, Food for Thought, My micro-business, Techniques / 8 Comments

031 As I look at my fabric art plans for the coming year, and take a hard analytical look at where I stand in my fabric art today, I am really excited about 2016 in my studio.

Here are my plans for the coming year. I hope you find them fun and potentially interesting, and invite your comments.

Books: During the past couple of years I have been fiddling around with writing several books for sharing what I have learned over the past sixty years of sewing, art, and past ten years of art quilting. I looked first at one and then another subject, trying to get a focus. Very recently, after much thought, my direction has solidified in such a way that I can use what I have already done and direct my writing in a more focused way. While I am using “techniques for fabric art” as the focus, I believe these books can apply to traditional work also. These will be short books, complete with practice projects. I may get all four done, but I only really expect to complete two this year and two next.

Techniques for Fabric Art: Applique Methods
Techniques for Fabric Art: Surface Design
Techniques for Fabric Art: Threads and Threadwork
Techniques for Fabric Art: From Digital to Fabric Art

Lectures/Workshops/Videos: Develop these along the same subjects as the books listed above, using the same samples.

2016 Show Quilts:

Quick quilt 1: Hawaiian Garden…a vintage panel central theme (for MQX special exhibit, not a long project).
Major quilt 1: Waiting 2…a storm at sea…second in the series of women (wives, mothers, sisters, friends) and children through history waiting for their men to return from difficult missions while keeping the home front. (note: while I realize that women have also fought in wars and carried out difficult missions throughout history, that is another subject that I may address at some point in another series). Underway
Quick Quilt 2: Hoffman Challenge 2016. A two week project, more or less…just a small quilt.
Major Quilt 2: Deep Space 3: Spiral Galaxy M51
Major Quilt 3: Ancient Manuscript Series 3…TBD

I know this seems a lot, but realize that I work on this full time, have already been working on much of this for the past year, and some of this is bringing that work to completion. I’ve already written much of book 1 and some of the other three books, I’ve already designed and begun construction of Quilts 1, 2, and 3, so I think it is a viable plan.

In the process of planning this work, I have decided to abandon the Bernina v7 workbook I was working on. I got it about 80 percent complete and couldn’t seem to get it any further. So instead, I will use it here in my blog and share it in sections across the year.

I am considering developing a project for my readers to work along with me..kind of like a block of the month…but focused on making a small wall quilt. Would you be interested in this?

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Let me know what you are working on, and if you have any suggestions for me.

Sew Happy everyone!

The Heavens Declare the Glory of God…

Posted on December 20, 2015January 7, 2016 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Deep space quilts, Food for Thought, From the Archives / 2 Comments

As many of you know I have an ongoing deep space quilt series. I am deeply moved by the glory of the deep space photography that shows what is out there we can’t really see with our human eye. And yes, I am aware they enhance it with colors and merge many photos to come up with the pictures, but the fact is, they are real. We are very blessed to be able to “see” some of this through the efforts of astronomers and NASA. I can just imagine there are even greater things in deep space than we will ever be able to see in this life. Sometimes when I look at such photos, I mentally hear the passage from Psalm 19, set to music by Haydn, that I sang so many times with several choruses. (Here is the Morman Tabernacle Choir version of this anthem)

The other day I saw this fabulous picture of our Earth home:

content_earth_and_limb_m1199291564l_color_2stretch_mask2048p

King David wrote this psalm specifically to be sung, according to the Bible. “For the director of music. A psalm of David. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands.” During the time of the birth of our Lord, there was a “Star” that caused men (and probably women and children accompanying them) to take a long journey from Today’s Azerbaijan to Bethlehem to see Jesus and what had come to pass. (my personal belief…I have no question that God caused this space event, whatever it was, to happen in conjunction with the birth of Jesus).

NOEL…completed in 2012. This quilt is currently missing, possibly stolen. I’m going to make a new Nativity quilt. This one had some design issues that I would like to correct anyway. (Good news: Since posting this blog, my quilt has been found…the church had it in their Christmas decorations…so now I can get it appraised and give it to the church).

Almost every week I see some picture showing a space scene I would like to create a quilt from. Do I think my quilts come anywhere near the photo–no I don’t, but I do enjoy trying.

The Butterfly

Pillars of Creation

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has trained its razor-sharp eye on one of the universe’s most stately and photogenic galaxies, the Sombrero galaxy, Messier 104 (M104). The galaxy’s hallmark is a brilliant white, bulbous core encircled by the thick dust lanes comprising the spiral structure of the galaxy. As seen from Earth, the galaxy is tilted nearly edge-on. We view it from just six degrees north of its equatorial plane. This brilliant galaxy was named the Sombrero because of its resemblance to the broad rim and high-topped Mexican hat. At a relatively bright magnitude of +8, M104 is just beyond the limit of naked-eye visibility and is easily seen through small telescopes. The Sombrero lies at the southern edge of the rich Virgo cluster of galaxies and is one of the most massive objects in that group, equivalent to 800 billion suns. The galaxy is 50,000 light-years across and is located 28 million light-years from Earth. Hubble easily resolves M104’s rich system of globular clusters, estimated to be nearly 2,000 in number – 10 times as many as orbit our Milky Way galaxy. The ages of the clusters are similar to the clusters in the Milky Way, ranging from 10-13 billion years old. Embedded in the bright core of M104 is a smaller disk, which is tilted relative to the large disk. X-ray emission suggests that there is material falling into the compact core, where a 1-billion-solar-mass black hole resides. In the 19th century, some astronomers speculated that M104 was simply an edge-on disk of luminous gas surrounding a young star, which is prototypical of the genesis of our solar system. But in 1912, astronomer V. M. Slipher discovered that the hat-like object appeared to be rushing away from us at 700 miles per second. This enormous velocity offered some of the earliest clues that the Sombrero was really another galaxy, and that the universe was expanding in all directions.

V838 Monocerotis

Merry Christmas my friends. I send this even to those of you who do not celebrate this time as the birth of Jesus, I hope you have an especially beautiful time during this time. Consider the heavens…

Creativity in the Face of Dark Times

Posted on November 17, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Food for Thought, My Family / 2 Comments

Recent news is the kind that makes you hug your loved ones a little tighter, think a little bit about the future, and thank God for your blessings and that you are safe today. Gilbert Muniz, one of my extremely creative friends, had this to say on Facebook last Friday:

Going offline for at least today. I’m unable to process all the news coming in from Paris right now. I can’t process how sick and depressed this information makes me.
Paris is a living, thriving testament to how much beauty and creativity can exist in the world. I was honored to be able to visit Paris for a design competition in 1999. I met a collective of artists that both admired and respected the city’s ability to both recruit and nurture art, and that is the memory I’m holding on to right now.
No one should have to endure what befell last night. We as Americans are forced to recall memories of September 11th and the sorrow we all felt from that day. For what we have all gone through, today, we are all Parisian.
I encourage everyone to be creative today, if only for a day. Bring some beauty into the world with your art. I personally have to stay busy or the thoughts of this tragedy will drive me insane, and we all know that’s already a short trip. ?
I’m working with my new indigo vat all day today. I know it’s a small gesture to fill the world with something creative, and I know it won’t fix the issues we face today, but maybe, just maybe, someone will smile because of what I’ve made, and frankly, that might just be enough right now.
Be safe, everyone.

I particularly liked his point about making someone smile because of something he made. I think about my youngest son, David, who writes fantasy/sci-fi novels that are absorbing and fun and he is close to releasing a new novel. I think about my oldest son, his wife and son. All of them make me smile with happiness, do what they can to help me in my life, as I do what I can to help them. Our family works well and it is a wonderful thing.

Sew I am working on my new storm-at-sea quilt that is the second in my “Waiting…” series today. I have been a little off my game physically lately, but am getting much better. During this time I have come up several quilts I really want to make (see this blogpost), and now I am beginning to feel like working on them again.

Sew in this time of bad news, make things that make people smile, feel inspired, or just takes their mind off of their fears and troubles for a while, or teach someone to do these things. Keep on marching forward and being creative, lighting up the space near us with beauty and fun despite the dark times.

Sew happy everyone! God’s blessings be upon you and stay safe.

Video Classes and Online Programs I Recommend

Posted on November 5, 2015November 5, 2015 by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Classes, Food for Thought, quilt shows, Software, Tools / 4 Comments

OK, I couldn’t go to any quilt shows this year because of big unexpected expenses this year. So instead, I have taken several excellent video classes to help me improve some of my techniques or just for fun and practice. These are not all quilting classes, but all the techniques learned are things I use in my quilt creation.

I have five classes I particularly recommend and I see a bunch more out there I would like to take. I love this way of learning. It is there for me to refer back to and take again if there is something I forgot or just wanted to see again. So here are my recommendations so far:

Step by Step Quilted Landscapes by Kathy McNeil was part of the launch on 3 November of IQuilt by American Quilters Society (and I see “Bernina” also on the page, so it is probably a joint project). Kathy McNeil does a superb job covering the range of complexities involved in creating a landscape quilt. I found I learned a lot even though I am an advanced landscape/art quilter myself. I particularly liked the way she covers building a depth of field in a landscape scene that is not visually flat and her discussion of values and colors throughout the class. She also adeptly covers a lot of the basic techniques required to build such a quilt in a way advanced beginners through expert sewists that might be moving from garment sewing to landscape quilting would need to know. I highly recommend this class for any sewist or quilter interested in building landscape quilts to decorate their walls or give as memorable gifts. Many of the techniques covered would also be useful in additional types of pictorial or other styles of art quilts.

Learn to Hand Quilt by Pepper Cory found on Annie’s Craft Store, may seem outside of what you may think I am interested in, but I found this class really fun, and yes, I have an interest in all kinds of quilting. Pepper is a friend of mine too and I have taken several classes in person from Pepper, and this online class is an excellent addition to my studies with Pepper. I am encouraged by this to add some hand quilting to my repertoire of quilting techniques, but the class is also a good review of the use of stencils and of the marking and threads for any quilt project.

The Machine Embroidery Inspired Quilt by Susan Stewart is so much fun for those of us with embroidery modules or machines. Susan is a fabulous sewist and heirloom quilter who uses machine embroidery in her award winning quilts in a way few can reach. This class provides some of her techniques that I am interested in using myself. Here she provides a clear and excellent class. I only linked her name to her site instead of to the class because right now there is a discount if you use the link she provides from her site.

Photo Challenge Class by Ricky Tims has finally gotten me over the mental block I had against learning to how to properly use my camera and taught me a lot about using Adobe Photoshop as well, which I can also use in my digital fabric design work. I took the 52 week challenge he offered this year, and he has recently launched his photo class website where he provides his planned classes for 2016. I found this class really important for my work, but I also found it really difficult to try to meet the weekly challenge through several physical challenges that happened this year that I am making progress on getting over, but still have a little ways to go. I think I may be his worst student, but I still managed to learn a great deal so far and there is the rest of the year to go. So if you want to learn a lot, and I mean a lot, about using your camera and processing your photographs I really recommend this class.

Corel Painter classes and instructional videos by Aaron Rutton has taken my ability to use Corel Painter from very amateur to wildly fun abilities to paint what I want to paint for fun and also for my digital appliques for my quilts. Aaron’s classes require that you watch a little, stop and work a little, and then watch a little, etc. But there is no question he is a master digital painter. I have really enjoyed learning from him and also have downloaded his workspace that provides his own set of brushes and so forth. If you want to learn Corel Painter, I highly recommend his classes and videos. Some of his videos are free, but if you support him with just a few dollars a month through Patreon, you will get a lot more access to his videos and extras. I found his classes well worth the price, and he is very responsive if you have a question. I’d really love to see the quilting world incorporate digital art more into their work and also support this young painter.

Sew happy everyone. I hope you have the opportunity to explore some of these classes. If you have one you took and really would recommend, please add them in a comment. Cheers.