Category Archive

We’re thrilled to announce that this year’s Artist in Residence will be Quilt Artist Mary Ellen Kranz.

You may know her from her appearances on HGTV’s Simply Quilts or from her book Blending Photos with Fabric: A Beautiful New Way to Combine Photography, Printing and Quiltmaking or perhaps you’ve been lucky enough to take one of her classes in Paducha Kentucky.

Mary Ellen teaches quilters how to use the technology that is common in our homes to enhance traditional arts. She delights in introducing new fiber artists to the joys of quilting and aiding experienced stitchers to combine fresh colors, embellishments and new techniques to bring personal perspective to their art quilts. “Right now the technologies have all kind of come together. We now have printers that can print directly onto fabric that are basically home, ink-jet printers. At the same time, we have digital cameras that are allowing people to more freely take pictures. Combine that with image editing software that is getting easier and easier to use and you’ve got opportunities for quilt makers with very average equipment to do some pretty exciting things in terms of integrating photographic imagery into their quilts”

How often have you taken a beautiful digital picture and wished you could share it with the world in another format? Are you tired of simply printing you picture and hanging it on the wall? Or worse yet, taken a beautiful souvenir of a wonderful vacation and simply filed it away on the hard drive? Not any more!

In the months to come, we’ll update you on Mary Ellen’s schedule at Fiber College 2008

Yesterday I had breakfast the Mary Jane, widely known among the up and coming short list of knitwear designers. You may have seen her work in the latest, sold out issue of Interweave Knits Holiday Magazine…she created the December Lights Tam on page 38.

To set the scene…think sparkling, pretty woman wearing a beautifully knit pinkish tam…add warm scones and good coffee and I wish you could have joined us!

We talked about fabric designs (MJ was a trendy designer living in NYC before love and life brought her to the village of Searsmont here in Mid Coast Maine), color combinations, moo cards, blogging and the serious lack of hours in a day when your head swims with creative ideas scratching to get out.

When I spoke enviously of her beautiful blog www.maryjanemidgemink.blogspot.com she confessed that among other things, she’s a professional photographer and a photo stylist for Interweave Press and other media outlets. Without skipping a beat I knew what we needed for Fiber College 2008…and MJ graciously agreed to instruct a class on styling our own fiber art for photographs…who among us wouldn’t like to take better digital photos of our work?

As you may well imagine, our conversation flowed from one subject to another in a sort of stream of consciousness…ideas dropped from the sky like confetti and you’ll need to wait until all of the classes have been posted in April to see what other treats Mary Jane has in store for us. In the meantime, if you’ll please excuse the flash on this picture, here are a few of the moo cards MJ had in her purse…next year we’ll have moo cards for the College too!