What is my 2012 calendar animal, you ask?

My entry was accepted into the 2012 Quilting Arts calendar, so WOOHOO! There has been a hilarious debate on my Facebook page about what animal it is based on only a section of the face. It’s been a good example of the power of the human mind to extrapolate on available information. Guesses for the image shown at left have ranged from lion to bloodhound to monkey to horse to bunny to goat to llama to emu to owl, and even pig or elephant! Then there was prairie dog, but that was a joke (I think!)

The closest guess (without hints) was wolf. But it’s not a wolf.

Without any further ado, here is Cautious:

It’s an animal that I’ve never seen before in person, but one day this little gray fox was investigating our bird-feeding station, and by sheer chance I happened to look out the window. The fox’s coat was beautifully glossy, and it had a full, bushy tail. The neck and ears were reddish, the rest was silvery gray. After grabbing my camera and snapping a few photos, I tapped on the glass and got this view. One of the fun characteristics I found out while doing research about gray foxes (but not red foxes) is that they like to climb trees!

Here is my post about making this artwork. And this Wikipedia page has some nice photos of gray foxes and more info.

SAQA auction starts today (Monday) at 2 p.m.!

Just a quick reminder that the Studio Art Quilt Associates benefit auction starts today. My wolf quilt is on the first page, click here to see thumbnails of the available artwork. There is a link on that page to get to the bidding form. Everything is $750 today, then the price is reduced each day until Friday, when everything costs $75.

Happy browsing and (perhaps) bidding, everyone!

Free Spirit will be auctioned for SAQA

Do you remember this wolf? I decided to donate him to Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) for their annual auction to benefit the group’s activities to increase awareness of art quilting. Almost 300 quilts are available, so there’s something for everyone. It starts on Monday, September 20, and is a reverse auction where the prices decrease every day until the works are sold. More details about how the auction works can be found here.


A large image of Free Spirit can be seen here. Two previous posts that show how he was made can be found here and here.


Have fun looking at all the artwork... it’s amazing to see what artists are doing with fabric, thread, and whatever else they can stitch on. : )

New blog for my books

For a number of reasons I’ve decided to set up a separate blog for my children’s books. I’ll still talk about creating the illustrations on this studio blog from time to time, but the books blog will have activities for kids, publishing info, lesson plans, and that kind of thing. A little more focus is always a good thing, doncha know.
I wanted to mention a couple of things about designing the new blog...here is a screenshot:

I used a template called Ethereal which is quite a bit wider and has three columns, (I think there were several options.) Blogger has a Template Designer feature that is apparently pretty new that makes it very easy to get the colors, type, and so on the way you want them. 


The tricky thing was to change the background image. I took a photo of a stack of my books and after struggling quite a while got it to show up. You have to use “blogger in draft” to get your own image in there, and it’s very tricky to do... this article sort of tells you how, but not clearly enough. I couldn’t tell you exactly how I did it, but after trying several times the Upload button appeared and after that I selected “tile” and it worked.


So, check it out and let me know what you think! Here is the link, or click on the button on the right.

My Teacher Is a Dinosaur free coloring page

Yesterday I received copies of my fall picture book and they look great. The full title is My Teacher Is a Dinosaur and Other Prehistoric Poems, Jokes, Riddles, & Amazing Facts. It takes readers on a whirlwind tour of the history of life on Earth starting 4 1/2 billion years ago... not bad for only 48 pages, right? For more info including reviews, please check out this page.


These previous blog posts tell a little about the behind-the-scenes activity. I also wrote about doing the research for this book on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids) here and here. Last but not least, here is my I.N.K. post about how to write jokes and riddles.


I haven’t forgotten about the coloring page... here it is!

Click on the image to enlarge it then print it out with a horizontal orientation and get out your crayons. (Did you know there is a Crayola set with 96 colors!?!) Or drag it off the web page to your desktop. Feel free to send it to any kids you know that love dinosaurs. If anyone sends me a photo of a colored-in page, I’ll post it here. Or, post it on my author page on Facebook!


Thanks, y’all!

The 2011 Quilting Arts calendar is now available

My quilted artwork made it (again!) into next year’s calendar which can be ordered from Interweave. Below are teensy images of all the winning artwork for the 2011 theme, “Flavor of the Month":

Mine is on the left in the 2nd row down, the garden veggies floating on a light background. Not sure which month it represents, seems to be April. You can see a much bigger image here. If anyone would like more info, here are the previous posts about my calendar entries. 


Next year the theme will be “Feeling Pet-ty,” which will feature one of my favorite subjects, animals. The info about it is on page 70 of the August/September issue of Quilting Arts. I suspect there will be a lot of competition for this one and the entry date is earlier this year, January 7, 2011. Guess I’d better get busy!

I'm a calendar girl (again!)

Just heard that my entry for the Quilting Arts 2011 calendar won... yahoo! Here are all the winning entries. Below is a detail from Garden Fresh, not sure which month it will be yet. 

It’s been fun to enter this contest. The first time I tried, my entry Studio View didn’t get anywhere, but it came in handy as the header for my blog. I can see now why it probably didn’t get in. It had some nice parts, such as the cat or this squirrel:

But overall, it‘s a little murky, not enough contrast. For example, the red cardinal disappears into the rust-colored “pine needles.”

And what is that green blob between the squirrel and the birdhouse feeder?

My spring book: The Shocking Truth about Energy

With a bolt of lightning named Erg and a gaggle of appliances, toys, and gadgets, get ready to find out about energy! Explore how electricity is generated plus sources of power from fossil fuels, nuclear, wind, water, solar, geothermal, and biofuels. For a longer post about it, please check out this post on the I.N.K. blog. And here is the book’s page on my web site.

Some good reviews have come in already, which is always a plus!
Kirkus:

Erg, a cartoon energy-bolt, narrates this electrifying introduction to the basics of energy. A spread is devoted to each of the many types of energy, how they are harnessed, their uses and their pros and cons: Fossil fuels, nuclear, solar, wind, water, geothermal and plant-based energy are all discussed. Leedy presents difficult concepts in a way that even younger readers can understand, encapsulating the key essentials and leaving the complex details for older readers’ texts. Additional pages explain the generation of electricity, address the problem of global warming and educate readers about how they can help save energy. Throughout, the watercolor-and-digital artwork cleverly illustrates the concepts presented in the text with cartoons, diagrams and sketches. The author’s whimsical anthropomorphized electrical outlets and devices keep readers’ attention and provide further information. Backmatter includes more energy facts and ways to save energy as well as additional cons against fossil-fuel usage. What Anne Rockwell and Paul Meisel’s What’s So Bad About Gasoline? (2009) did for fossil fuels, this book does for energy as a whole. (Informational picture book. 5-8)

Booklist:

An imaginary bolt of pure energy appropriately named Erg introduces energy basics: its varied forms, the principle that it can be changed but not destroyed, how we get and use the power of fossil fuels, good and bad news about old and new power sources, and the importance of conserving energy to save the earth. The author begins with the role of food in human bodies, a sure way to draw young readers in. The exercise of imagining human muscles pushing a car easily explains our use of other power sources. Leedy’s experience selecting facts that are most relevant and engaging for young readers is evident, and the information is eminently digestible. The design moves from energetic to near-frenetic. Her brightly colored mixed-media illustrations are filled with animated appliances, bursts of information, and decorated fonts. Three final pages of sensible suggestions for energy saving are followed by three more pages of helpful supplemental information and suggested Web sites, including a source for science fair projects.

— Kathleen Isaacs

Read my lips...the UCF book festival was excellent!

Especially considering it was their first year, everyone involved in presenting the 2010 UCF Book Festival deserves a big round of applause. From the army of student volunteers that helped out all day to the informative full-color program to the yummy sandwiches in the author waiting area, everything was well-conceived and executed with no glitches that I was aware of. There was a teensy problem with the sound system that produced some unusual reverberations, but that seemed to be taken care of quickly. 

Held in the UCF Arena, there were over 50 authors that spoke and signed their books, free book appraisals, many activities for children, books galore from Scholastic, Barnes & Noble, and several smaller outfits, and if you looked closely, even an astronaut wandering around. Several characters from Star Wars were also in attendance. It was particularly funny to see Darth Vader posing for a photograph with a cute baby girl dressed in pink.

My brother Robert’s double booth looked wonderful and he was pleased with sales at the show. Leedy’s Books is located near Fashion Square Mall in Orlando and carries used books (primarily nonfiction) and also my new children’s books, naturally. We made a couple of suggestions in the exhibitor survey, the main one being that 2 days would be even better for next year’s festival. We heard that it was definitely under consideration, so keep your fingers crossed! 


This was one of those events that made you think, “Why hasn’t this been done before?” Well, now it has been and promises to be even better in the future.

UCF Book Festival is this Saturday!

The University of Central Florida will hold their inaugural book festival this coming Saturday April the 17th, and it looks like they’ve done an excellent job pulling it together. Here is the link to the festival’s home page. Admission and parking are free with events running from 8:45 until 5:30. I will be on the author panel Adventures in Children’s Books from 10:30–11:20 in Cypress B (The Venue). The author forum schedule is here. 


I’ll be signing Missing Math and The Shocking Truth about Energy afterwards in the exhibit hall. My brother Robert will have a booth for his bookstore, Leedy’s Books, and has most of my other titles.


If you like Carl Hiaasen (columnist and author of Hoot, plus many more titles), he’ll be speaking from 9:15–10:00, so get going early and come on down! 

Measuring Penny in top 100 nonfiction books

What a nice surprise... my Measuring Penny was named one of the 100 Best Nonfiction Books for Pre-K–Grade 8 by Judy Freeman on the Reading is Fundamental site. The whole list is here. There’s no date on the page so it’s hard to say how long the list has been up, but I just found out.


[A few minutes go by] 


Hmmm... just checked on the publication dates, and the most recent is in the early 2000s. So, it’s old news, I guess! I signed up for Google Alerts to try and keep up with things a little better. Gotta love the ‘net!

Tag, you’re IT!

I just heard that Diane Evans gave me this wonderful award... thanks Diane! If you haven’t been to her DEsigned blog and seen her lovely art quilts, be sure to check it out.

Here are the rules for this award:

1)  Thank the person who gave you this award.

2)  Share 7 things about yourself.

3)  Pass the award along to 5 bloggers who you have recently discovered and you think are fantastic!

4)  Contact the bloggers you’ve picked and let them know about the award.

I’m tagging the following bloggers to be fellow recipients of this award (click on their names to reach their blog):

Salley Mavor (don’t miss her 5-part series about illustrating her 1st book, The Way Home, with fabric.

Joyce Shelton’s Sketchbook... she has been posting a sketch almost every day of flowers, fruit, fish, and more.

Susan Elliot’s Plays With Needles has big, beautiful photos of her bead embroidery and other creative endeavors. This post about her Bead Journal Project is one of my favorites.

In Painted Threads, Judy Perez paints on fabric then quilts it. If you haven’t already seen her work in various magazines, you’re in for a treat. She posted wonderful in-process photos of the piece Oh Deer, Look What Has Become of Me.

Susan Miller posts about her children’s book illustrating and various nifty projects such as painting Christmas bulbs, gourds, and Easter eggs.

The 7 things about myself...

1) I love any color, as long as it’s in the right place

2) We haven’t bought lettuce in weeks... (my hubby is growing it hydroponically.)

3) My current favorite TV shows are Chuck and Project Runway.

4) I save my cat’s whiskers.

5) For me, shopping is a chore except in stores with art supplies, yarn, thread, beads, fabric, or handmade crafts/art.

6) I got swiped at by a tiger once. Fortunately, he didn’t have his claws out.

7) For the last year or so, I’ve been eating one vegan meal a day... it’s healthy and reduces my carbon footprint.

Happy Tuesday!

Quilting Natural Florida 2 exhibit is now open

If you’re in the Gainesville, Florida area from now until April 25, 2010, be sure to stop into the Florida Museum of Natural History. A special exhibit of nature-inspired quilts will be there, sponsored by the Quilters of Alachua County Day Guild. To see the guild’s lovely quilt, appliquéd with the flora and fauna of the state, click here. 


This is my piece, Reaching, that was juried in. We haven’t seen the exhibit yet, but since it’s only about 7.5 X 10 inches, it’s probably the smallest piece in the show. Here is my artist’s statement:


I painted this pine tree directly on the fabric while on location at Highlands Hammock State Park. The twisting branches of pine trees continuously catch my eye, each treetop a unique formation caused by Florida’s weather extremes.

All of the image color is paint, except for the binding fabric. This detail shows the stitching. One drawback of using acrylic is that it causes the fabric to retain needle/pin holes, so it’s best to get the stitching right the first time. I made the mistake of using safety pins to hold the layers together which left a few holes. Using a sharp needle mostly from behind, it wasn’t too difficult to gently pull the threads together to minimize them. 


There are a few more trees that want their portraits done... hope to fit them it sometime soon. I would like to try a larger one that incorporates chunks of fabric in addition to or instead of paint. At long last, the weather is not so chilly now, so that helps. Spring is right around the corner, yay! 

From trunk show to quilt study collection

I received some fun news from SAQA recently... my little 8" X 8" piece that had been part of the SAQA 20th Anniversary trunk show has been chosen as one of 55 to be archived in the permanent collection of the International Quilt Study Center at the University of Nebraska (Lincoln.) There is more info on this page about how it was made. 

Tropical Dreams l has some novel materials incorporated into it, which is probably why it was chosen for the study center. The shell is painted onto a sparkly sheer turquoise fabric, not too unusual, perhaps. But the fronds of the palm tree are painted, stitched heavy-duty aluminum foil, which is a little offbeat. By the way, the painting on foil technique won’t work on the new, nonstick foil that is available now, so read those labels.

Announcing the I.N.K. Think Tank!

If you’re a teacher, librarian, parent, or anyone that is interested in nonfiction books for kids, here is a brand new free resource that you’ll love. The bloggers of I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids), including yours truly, have assigned national educational standards to their books and put them all into this database, the INK THINK TANK.

The participating authors are:

● Don Brown ● Vicki Cobb ● Sneed B. Collard III ● Marfé Ferguson Delano ● Susan E. Goodman ● Jan Greenberg ● Cheryl Harness ● Deborah Heiligman ● Steve Jenkins ● Barbara Kerley ● Susan Kuklin ● Loreen Leedy ● Sue Macy ● Dorothy Hinshaw Patent ● Susanna Reich ● April Pulley Sayre ● Rosalyn Schanzer ● David M. Schwartz ● Melissa Stewart ● Tanya Lee Stone ● Gretchen Woelfle ● Karen Romano Young

The titles range from picture books to YA books, all nonfiction. The awards this group of authors has received are many, including Caldecott Honors, Parents Choice Awards, Silbert Honors, Green Book Awards, ALA Notables, and many more.

Please help us spread the word!

A couple of fab links

Wow, the online studio tour was quite a success. According to Google Analytics, over 300 people stopped by to see mine. (Not sure if it really counts all visitors, but whatever!) Here is the link to the various blogs on the tour, in case you missed the updated page:

Quilting Arts/Cloth Paper Scissors Open Studios

Also, for my quilting readers, if you haven’t seen the blog below, you must check it out. Leah Day is posting a new free motion quilting design with a video showing how to do it, every day for 365 days! It’s pretty amazing, the designs are great, and she’s up to Day 53. Can she do it? Is she nuts, doing this with a 2 year old? Will there be a movie about it? What actress will play her? Stay tuned!

365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Filler Designs

Hope you’re having a creative week!

An award to crow about

Zowie, someone gave my blog an eggs-citing award. A quote directly from art quilter Diane Evan’s excellent blog DEsigned will explain all:

“The blogger who receives this award believes in the Tao of the Zombie Chicken-- excellence, grace, and persistence in all situations, even in the midst of a zombie apocalypse. These amazing bloggers regularly produce content so remarkable that their readers would brave a raving pack of Zombie Chickens just to be able to read their inspiring words. As a recipient of this world-renowned award, you now have the task of passing it on to at least 5 other worthy bloggers. Do not risk the wrath of the Zombie Chickens by choosing unwisely or not choosing at all.”

I wouldn’t dream of angering a chicken, especially a zombified one, so here are some of my fav blogs (though there are many more, check my profile to see the ones I follow.) It appears that all of these blogs are by artists... go figure!

Doodles & Scribbles by fab artist Joyce Shelton. I have some of her Tea Party set and can’t wait to get more!

BARBARA STROBEL LARDON, a talented quilt artist who coincidentally ran a recent post titled “On the Farm.”

Silver Apples of the Moon by illustrator Tara Chang. She often shows her intricate paintings in progress.

Postcards from Cairo by Jenny Bowker, a quilt artist who lived for many years in the Middle East (she now is in Australia.) Don’t miss these amazing images made of fabric.

Dee Sanchez: A Painting Today. And she means it, all inspired by her New Mexican home.

Adventures of a Migrant Art Worker by Larry Moore. Outstanding plein air painting and illustration.

Many thanks to Diane and to these artists who are sharing their work and process with us all. By all means share your favorite blogs in the comments if you like. Happy viewing!

Open Studios coming on Saturday!

This is a fun idea from Quilting Arts magazine... their Fall Studios issue features tips for hosting an open house in your studio. In conjunction with this theme, they’re sponsoring a virtual tour of studios on blogs, including this one. I’ll post photos of my sewing room on Saturday, October 3rd. If you’d like to participate, click here. It’s easy to do.

This was a timely idea for me, since I had been thinking of showing some photos of my quilting lair anyway, including the design wall and storage solutions that have worked for me. The question is, do I tidy it up first or not?

Do you want greener books?

Have you ever wondered which is better for the environment: paper books or electronic books? I dug through some articles to see if there was an answer to that question and posted the results on I.N.K. (Interesting Nonfiction for Kids.) It’s amazing how many factors there are to consider, and I.N.K. readers have added a few more.

In other I.N.K. news, the 20+ author-bloggers been compiling a database of all our books in terms of how they meet national educational standards. For example, Crazy Like a Fox: A Simile Story helps students to meet several standards developed by the NCTE (National Council of Teachers of English) such as NL-ENG.K-12.4: Communication Skills. The database will be a free resource for librarians, teachers, and parents who prefer to use high quality trade books but also need to justify their educational value. It’s due for launch in October with its own web site so more details will be coming soon!

By the way, here’s what’s going on in the illustration above... Rufus the fox has just woken up and feels “as fresh as a daisy.” During the story, whenever a character is compared to something he or she turns into that thing. Since various characters “shake like a leaf,” become “as mad as a hornet,” and get “as cold as ice,” they look pretty silly throughout.

Listening to podcasts while creating

My iPod touch is my new best friend while drawing, sewing, making jewelry, etc. We had resisted the siren calls of these little players for many years... what finally put us over the edge was that our new car has a USB connection so we could have lots of music without having to bring clunky CDs. When we went into our local Apple Store and saw that the iPod touch was exactly like an iPhone without the phone service, we couldn’t resist. (I have nothing against the iPhone, but we already have the only cell phone service with good reception where we live and it’s not AT&T.) Once you buy the iTouch, there is no monthly phone charge but you can do all the stuff... load your CDs on it, go online (with WiFi), use mapping services, and most importantly to me, download free podcasts from the iTunes store. 

You have to set up an account with iTunes, but you don’t have to buy anything, (not that there aren’t many temptations!) The navigation with the iPod is a little confusing, but to get podcasts the first time go on the iTunes store (purple button), and either do a search on the name of the podcast you want or click the little podcast button if it’s visible on the very bottom. I’m a little vague on exactly when various options appear, it seems to vary. 

You can stream many of the podcasts (listen without downloading it) but you should download at least one and keep one on the iTouch all the time. The reason is that it makes it much easier to browse for more. Once you’ve downloaded a podcast, it’s stored under the orange Music button. If you can’t see your downloaded podcasts when you click on the music button, click on More and it should appear. Once you have a podcast on there, there’s a handy little link that says Get More Episodes... the link takes you directly to related podcasts on iTunes and makes it easy to find more.

There are all sorts of categories of podcasts: News & Politics, Technology, Comedy, Arts, Games & Hobbies, and many more. What I have listened to so far are mostly NPR shows like Living on Earth (environmental topics); This American Life (fascinating stories about people); A Way with Words (fun conversations about word origins and other language topics); Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me (comedy news quiz); and Fresh Air (interviews of newsmakers, authors, musicians, etc.). Scientific American had a fun 3-part series in July about the Ice Age movies, with interviews of the company founders (lots of physicists), art directors, animators, and others involved in the production.

I've only scratched the surface, can’t wait to find more. Let me know if you have any favorite podcasts to share. One thing’s for sure... my days of attempting to listen to the lousy local daytime radio in Orlando are over!