Asheville Quilt Show 2010

Here are a few of the wonderful quilts at the Asheville Quilt Show, “Stars Over the Mountains,” held this weekend at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, NC:

Quilt (untitled, detail) by Margory Eberle of Weaverville, NC. Quilted by Joyce Fong.

Hummingbirds 2 by Penelope Wortman of Candler, NC, with Ellen Perkins.

Neighbor Ladies by Margaret Hunt of Clarks Hill, SC.

Go With the Flow: Water, Wind and Music by Patty Ashworth of Oak Ridge, TN.

Round Midnight by Caroline Manheimer of Asheville, NC. Quilted by Rachel Reese.

View of the mountains from the North Carolina Arboretum. 

Summer Beauties by Judy Heyward of Mt. Pleasant, SC. This quilt won a ribbon for Outstanding Machine Workmanship.

Vintage Button Bouquet by Linda Roy of Knoxville, TN, won a ribbon for Outstanding Hand Workmanship.

 

Ring Around the Posey by Elizabeth Miller of Charlotte, NC.

Under the Watchful Eye of Queen Charlotte II by Deborah Langsam of Charlotte, NC.

Arabian Mystery by Judy Heyward of Mt. Pleasant, SC.

Birder’s Fantasy by Mary Field of Asheville, NC.

Seasons III by Beverly Hertler of Red Bank, NJ.

Mini Madness (miniature quilt) by Kristin Kipper of Greer, SC.

Celebrating 75 Years of the Blue Ridge Parkway by members of the Asheville Quilt Guild: Julie Bagamary, Georgia Bonesteel, Ann Bordeau, Robin Brooks, Connie Brown, Laura Casey, Donna Faber, Norene Goard, Amy Harry, Yolanda Hall, Judy Heyward, Ira Inman, Maureen Kampen, Lynda Kepler, Ellen Levine, Janice Maddox, Nancy Matthewson, Linda Nichols, Diana Ramsay, Sharon Smaldone and Rita Williams. Quilted by Norene Goard.

Quilting the Garden by Renate Jaeger of Jonesborough, TN. (The design is from the book of the same name by Alma Allen and Barb Adams.) 

Capriccio by Norene Goard of Hendersonville, NC.

I was charmed to see this kind gentleman patiently escorting a woman in a wheelchair (perhaps his wife?) who was dressed entirely in pink. I snapped this photo of them in front of my quilt, Pink Petal Party.

Friendly Gathering by Gail Sexton of Sunset, SC.

Flip-Flop Paper Piecing by Mary Kay Mouton of Milledgeville, GA. This tiny miniature quilt won Best of Show. Mouton is the author of a book (also called Flip-Flop Paper Piecing) about this technique.

Faces from the Past by Judy Simmons of Fletcher, NC.

Melinda Schwakhofer

My friend Melinda Schwakhofer has created this beautiful piece to raffle for a special cause: The Sheldon Centre. According to Melinda, it provides “a restful environment, gentle hospitality and therapeutic resources to people in ministry from all denominations, who come to Sheldon for help and support in times of stress, crisis, burnout or breakdown.” Through The Society of Mary and Martha, The Sheldon Centre is raising money to rebuild their most out-of-date accommodation, the Long Barn.

Melinda made the gorgeous accordion book (shown above) from silk and handmade paper. Here is her description:

I call this little book a prayer book. It is quite small and the pictures and words invite contemplation.  It  measures 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" when closed and extends to 18". My prayer book is made from images of Lacock Abbey, Wilstshire, UK and a Chartres-style labyrinth at Meyers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC.

I printed them onto silk dupioni, fused them to buckram and stitched around the arcs and shadows with gold metallic thread. The other side of the book is designed with a detail from Chartres labyrinth and a quote from Thomas Merton. I printed these onto handmade paper which has been washed with gold paint.

“The darkness becomes an atmosphere of breathless clarity
in which we find peace
and the deep night becomes the brightness of the noonday sun
in which we find the one our heart desires”.
– Thomas Merton

To make a donation (and enter the raffle), click here. Donations can be made from any country and in any denomination. On Sunday, September 19, Melinda will draw a winner at random from all of the people who have made a donation. “This prayer book may help you to find your way in a dark time,” says Melinda. “Your donation will certainly help to provide a place for others to find their way.”

To learn more about Melinda, please check out her website and her blog. Melinda is an American living in Moretonhampstead, Britain, and her blog is a place I visit often. It is a marvelous little slice of England, filled with her spectacular photos, beautiful and insightful writing, mouth-watering recipes, and of course, her art.

Goodbye, Max

Our beloved cat Max was hit and killed by a car on Monday, while we were away visiting my parents. Since then, I’ve been breaking down into sobs every few hours. Max was an amazing creature, a very special cat, and his death came far too soon.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you already knew Max. He was always doing funny and silly things, begging to be photographed; you can see some of these photos in this post, and a video of him taking pins out of my pincushion here. Most recently, I featured him in this piece I made for Quilting Arts magazine.

My husband, Rob, is a gifted, eloquent writer, and yesterday, he penned this tribute to Max for our local paper, The Mooresville Tribune: 

He barreled into our lives eight years ago as an impossibly blue-eyed kitten, brought to our front door by a solemn-faced neighbor girl whose pitch was more a threat than an offer. “If you don’t want him,” she said mournfully, “I'm going to have to take him to the shelter.”

And so we wanted him. Our oldest daughter was going into kindergarten, and we decided she was ready for a pet. She named him Max.

His fur was a mix of black, gray and white — stripes and solids — that gave his face a distinctive, serious look, but he had touches of golden brown that added warmth. He grew into a strikingly handsome cat, and we called him our Beautiful Boy.

Max never doubted it, either. His confidence in himself seemed unshakable. He did not hide beneath furniture, run from strangers or shy away from direct eye contact. He never walked into a room that he didn’t immediately own. We liked to joke that “Max” was short for “maximum” because he had the maximum amount of personality that you could cram into a cat.

When Max lay on our daughter’s bed at night, his purrs reverberated through the back of the house. But he could be a different beast with the rest of us. He was aggressive, running around at full speed, stopping only when he would sprint up to one of us and sink his teeth into an ankle. He would hiss and dart for the door when we went outside.

We decided that Max was an outside cat, and told our daughter that forcing him to live indoors was probably responsible for his surliness. We warned that an outside life carried with it some dangers — hungry predators, speeding cars, malicious humans. She decided that if outside was where Max would be most happy, outside was where he needed to be.

Max quickly went from stressed out to blissed out. He still spent time inside, sometimes snoozing beneath the lamp in my wife's quilting studio while she worked, and occasionally emptying her pincushion (you can watch him in action at YouTube; search for “Max” and “pincushion”). She eventually made him the subject of a small art quilt that appeared in Quilting Arts magazine in June.

More often, he ruled the yard. He provided the audience for football and soccer games. He crouched beneath the little dogwood tree, preparing to sprint after squirrels he probably knew in his heart he couldn’t catch. He oversaw yard work.

Soon he discovered life beyond our yard, sauntering across the street to spend time with our neighbors. I sometimes called him the Mayor, but I’m sure he thought of himself more as a king and of us as his subjects.

We grew accustomed to his being out and about, so much so that when we left town near the end of July for a few days, we did so without even a goodbye. We were far away when he was struck and killed near our house Aug. 2.

We weren’t there for him, but Max’s loyal “subjects” were. One of our good neighbors collected the body and brought it to our house. Another called and gave us the heartbreaking news, and then with two more put the body in a cooler, to give us time to get home so that we could give Max the burial that a cat of his stature deserved.

The next day, when my wife gently lifted him off the ice, and carefully took him out of the plastic bag, we saw that the fatal blow had left few marks. Even in death, he was our Beautiful Boy.

We dug a hole, and with our two girls we buried him in his beloved yard.

No one saw who or what hit Max, though it’s a reasonable bet that the driver was going too fast, not paying attention, or maybe both. But it’s hard for me to reduce eight years with Max to a safe-driving public service announcement.

Max reminded me that people and cats have got to do what they’ve got to do. We knew the risks involved in letting him out the door, but we knew that's where he had to be. He knew it too, and he made sure we figured it out and followed through.

The outdoors cut short Max’s time with us, but that’s where I will choose to remember him: lying contentedly beneath the little dogwood tree, happy with his kingdom, living his life the only way he could.

– Rob Knapp

 Goodbye, Max. Love you, boy.

Blueberry Jam

The pattern for my Blueberry Jam quilt is included in the Fall 2010 issue of Fons & Porter’s Easy Quilts magazine, which will be on newsstands in early August. 

All the fabrics are Bernartex batiks (and if you want a fabric kit with the same fabrics I used, you can order one now on the Fons & Porter website here). I designed the quilt with big circles and leaves, so it’s easy to appliqué smooth curves and sharp points. Or you can make it using a fusible appliqué technique.

I quilted my quilt with big swirls on the blueberries, curvy veins on the leaves, and an overall leaf pattern in the background. 

These blues and greens are my favorite colors! This quilt was inspired by a trip to a blueberry farm near my parents’ home in Tennessee. Blueberry Jam is 43-1/4" x 52", but wouldn’t it look smashing in a bed sized quilt? 

Quilting research shows growth in number of quilters and money spent

Quilts, Inc. (the company that does Quilt Festivals in Houston, Long Beach, and – next year – Cincinnati, as well as two Quilt Markets annually) and Quilters Newsletter magazine has just released data about the quilting industry from its Quilting In America 2010 research study. The extensive, detailed report will be available sometime in August. 

What did the research find?

• 14 percent of U.S. households (16.38 million households) have at least one quilter. That’s about 21 million total quilters in the U.S.! 
• Each quilting household spent an average of $219 in 2010. That’s 27 percent more than in 2006.
• The estimated total dollar value of the quilting industry is $3.58 billion. 
• The “dedicated quilters” group (those who spend more than $600 per year on quilting-related items) reported spending $2.5 billion on their hobby in 2010. 

For more information, you can download this PDF that recaps the research’s basic findings.

The research was conducted by TNS Global, Inc., and DP Research Solutions.

Wooden Spools

This is one of the two pieces I made for the current (August/September issue) of Quilting Arts magazine.  My article is on adding dimension using thread. I started out with a background of pale pink, then fused the spools down, and thread sketched the spools and the shadows, using a crosshatching technique (stitching in several directions to build up the darkness/value of the shadows):

The thread on the spools was constructed with fused pieces of fabric in the same color, but different values before I stitched real thread on top:

Once I was done, I realized that I needed to establish a horizon line, because it looked like the spools were floating in space, so I painted the upper part of the background a darker pink, using acrylic paint.

If you like this piece and would like to stitch one of your own, you can get my line drawing pattern on the Quilting Arts website. Just join the Quilting Arts community (for free) and go to “Free Stuff” and then the “Online Extras” section. There you will find several of my free patterns for pieces I’ve done for my thread sketching articles. 

And of course, pick up a copy of the August/September issue of Quilting Arts magazine for lots more information on adding dimension to your work with thread sketching. It should be on newsstands soon, and on its way to subscribers’ mailboxes now. Or you can purchase it on the Quilting Arts/Interweave website.

I Didn’t Know… Did you?

I made this piece, I Didn’t Know Roses Had Hips, for the August/September issue of Quilting Arts magazine. My article focuses on creating dimension with thread. Here’s a closeup shot where you can see the colors of thread I used on the rose hips and the brown leaves, as well as the cross-hatching (lines in several directions) I did to shade and make the rose hips look more round:

This is the photo on which this piece is based:

I took this photo on a family trip to Maine two summers ago. The name of the piece comes from my 10-year-old daughter, who asked what “those things” were when I showed her the quilt. I told her they were rose hips, formed as the fruit after the rose flowered, and the title was her response. It was too cute not to use!


This issue of Quilting Arts is available for pre-order on the Interweave website.

August/September Quilting Arts

The newest issue of Quilting Arts magazine is about to hit subscriber’s mailboxes and newsstands. It contains the latest installment in my series of articles on thread sketching, focusing on adding dimension with stitch. 

Isn’t the cover luscious? This is the work of Ana Buzzalino, an artist from Calgary, Canada, and I love, love, love it! Those cool aquas and pale teals are the perfect cooling breeze for hot August. Can’t wait to see the cover up close when I get my issue.

If you don’t subscribe, you can order this issue; it is available for pre-sale on the Interweave website now.

2011 Quilting Arts Calendar has arrived

It’s here! The 2011 Quilting Arts Calendar is available now at the online Interweave store. I don’t have my copy yet, but I’m betting that my piece, Candy Corn, is featured in the month of October!  :-)

Framing fiber art

 A nice way to finish a small piece is to frame it. This makes the piece less likely to get soiled by dirt or dust, and makes it more appealing to people uncomfortable with how to hang fiber art. It also makes small pieces more finished and formal looking. I did this with House Rules 2 (above) last fall, but forgot to blog about it. House Rules 2 is 16.5" square. Today, Debbie wrote to ask me how I hung my smaller art quilts, so I figured this was a good time. 

Textile pieces should never be framed directly under glass, because any moisture that collects inside the frame can be pressed into the fabric, causing water marks or mildew. Either choose a shadow box, or add spacers between the glass and the mat. You can take your fiber art to a good quality framing shop and they can do this for you. Or you can do it my way, with a $20 frame from Ikea and a little elbow grease. If you choose this method, make sure you sign the back of your work so that it will still bear your name even if it is taken from the frame later.

Look for acid free mats (see Willa’s notes in the comment section after this post). I found a $20 shadowbox frame at Ikea (above). Measure your quilt, and then open the frame and measure your mat. Subtract the size of your quilt from the size of the mat. (Example: Your quilt is 17" square, and the mat is 20 inches square, so 20-17=3. Divide this number by 2 (Example 3÷2=1½.) Add 1/8" to this measurement (Example 1½ + 1/8 = 1-5/8".)

On the back of the mat, draw a pencil line that is this far in from the outer edge, around all the sides (above). My piece was square, so I drew in the same distance on all sides. 

Place the mat on an old, clean towel. Use a heavy needle or nail to punch holes along this line every ½" or so (above). You don't want the holes to be too big, but they need to be big enough that you can pass through them with the needle and thread you’ll be using in the next step.

Thread a smaller needle with heavy thread, such as hand quilting thread. Place the quilt on the top of the mat and align it with the holes. Take a stitch on the back of the quilt so that your knot is on the back, and bring the needle out at the corner. Go down through the corner hole (above) and come up through the next hole (below).

 Take a small stitch through the back of the quilt (below). Try to get all the layers except the front (because you don’t want your stitches to show on the front). 

 Go back down through the same hole (see below), and then on to the next one.

Continue in this manner, pulling the thread taut every few stitches, until you have gone all the way around. If your thread runs out, make a large knot on the back of the mat. Secure your stitches with tape on the back (below). Acid-free artist’s tape offers the best protection for your piece (see Willa’s comment below this post).

Remember to sign your name and date on the mat with a Micron Pigma pen (below). Most artists sign in the lower right corner.

 Clean the glass, insert the mat with the quilt stitched to it, and finish framing according to the frame’s directions. Voila! Now you can hang your fiber art the same way you’d hang any other piece of art in your home. 

NOTE: These directions are now available in a PDF format you can download, print out and save. To download, go to the “Free Stuff” icon in my blog sidebar, or simply click here.

Art Meets Science

 Lepidoptera and Coleus are on their way to Birminham, England this week. They are part of the Studio Art Quilt Associates’ (SAQA) exhibition called “Art Meets Science” that will have its opening at the Festival of Quilts in August. All of the quilts that are available for sale will soon be listed on the SAQA website (the section is still being built as I write this, so check back in a few days to see all the quilts online).

I love the design of the exhibition catalog! It is a piece by Ita Ziv called Fire Fingers. SAQA always does a beautiful job on their publications.

The venues for this exhibition that have been announced to date are:

• Festival of Quilts, Birmingham, England, August 19 - 22, 2010
• Pfizer, Inc., New York, New York, Sept. 16, 2010 - March 16, 2011   
• Visions Gallery, San Diego, California, January 1 - April 1, 2012   
• Global Health Odyssey Museum of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, June 1 - Sept. 1, 2012    

The juror for this exhibition was David W. Fraser, MD. He is research associate at The Textile Museum, and a consulting scholar in the Asian Section of the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. The curator was Jill Jensen, a professional fiber artist from Virginia  who works with cloth, paint, printmaking and stitch. She has worked extensively as an artist-in-residence throughout Virginia, and holds degrees in Chemistry and Metallurgy. Surely both of them are a perfect combination of art and science! You can read Fraser’s and Jensen’s statements about the exhibition here. 

 Lepidoptera

Coleus

Happy Independence Day!

’Tis liberty alone that gives
the flower of fleeting life
its lustre and perfume;
And we are weeds without it. 

– William Cowper

I’m In Stitches

The staff of Quilting Arts magazine has just launched their latest creation, In Stitches, a one-of-a-kind special issue that “celebrates hand and machine stitching.” It is available only as a digital download. That means you can download it onto your computer, and use it on or offline. You can download the magazine and the software you’ll need to view and use it, on PC or on Macintosh for $14.97.

In Stitches is designed to include more in-depth articles, and to present them in a completely different way, through videos, slideshows, and patterns for projects you can easily print out and use. It includes interviews, articles, photos, videos, stitching tutorials, tips, techniques, and more.

My fabric vase pattern is included (that’s it with the sunflowers in the image above).

A bluebird block

This is a block I designed to teach a needleturn appliqué workshop for my hometown guild, Lake Norman Quilters, on August 14. It is a big block (20" square); big enough that I could put borders on it and call it a wall hanging. But I’m thinking about doing other blocks with birds and words and putting them together in a bigger quilt. 

If so, what birds – and words — should I use?

Valley Fiber Life

Marcia Young, founder and editor of Valley Fiber Life, has added some of my work to her website’s gallery! Valley Fiber Life is an online magazine and community for fiber artists and fiber arts enthusiasts. It includes a gallery of many different kinds of fiber artists, articles and interviews, a list of resources, and more. 

Some of the art quilters featured on the website who are also contributors to the site include Ruth B. McDowell and Virginia Spiegel. The articles offer a great introduction to some artists I didn’t know about before. 

If you want to stay in touch with Valley Fiber Life, make sure to join the international Fiber Arts group on Facebook. You can also sign up on the website to receive its e-mail newsletter.

Overall Quilter and Corinne Schroeder have a “Floral Fling”

This is Aimee Griffin, c0-owner of Overall Quilter, holding the sample for one of the patterns in their fabulous new Floral Fling line designed by Corinne Schroeder. These beautiful designs feature lovely flowers done in bright batik fabrics.

“Corinne walked into the shop one day with three wall hangings she had made as gifts for her family,” Aimee says. “I asked her what pattern she had made them from so I could order them, and she said she had just made them, so the idea of making the patterns came about.” Since then, Corinne has been busy making the samples, and Aimee has been writing the instructions.

So far, the collaboration has produced 12 patterns, and four new ones (including magnolia, cosmos, and poinsettia) are off to the printer this week. Corinne has signed the first 50 copies, and you can get an autographed copy if you request it, while supplies last. 

All the designs have full-sized pattern sheets for the fusible appliqué designs. Some patterns have dimensional flowers. Each pattern is $12; kits are available for $24 to $49, depending on the pattern.

Corinne is now hard at work on a new line called “Birdy Fling,” working with Aimee’s daughter Jessica. 

The new line comes at an exciting time for Overall Quilter. They have decided to close their brick-and-mortar storefront in Indian Trail (south of Charlotte, North Carolina) and start selling online. In about a week, the shop will close its doors and Aimee and her husband Marc will concentrate on adding more goods to the online store. I think they are off to an auspicious start!

My piece in C&T’s new Postcard Collection

I opened up the summer/fall 2010 C&T Publishing catalog today, and look what I found! This is my Purple Phalaenopsis on the cover of “The Art of Quilts Postcard Collection – Nature.” I had given my permission to use this piece in the collection, but I didn’t know they had selected it to adorn the outside of the box! What a thrill. 

This orchid piece is from the series I completed in late 2009 and early 2010; it was part of Fiber Art Options exhibition “Orchids: Sensuality Stitched.”

In this catalog, C&T officially launches its Stash Books, a new line of books to “celebrate handmade fabric arts and encourage the craft sewer to create beautiful authenticity in a time of mass production,” according to Publisher Amy Marson. I have already put several of these on my must have list – including the one on making lunch bags and wraps, and one with darling “feltie” characters to stitch.

Another postcard collection features animals. That’s David Taylor’s  Sir Francis on its box. The Animal series will be available in September, and the Nature series in December. 

North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2011

I hope you are all marking your calendars now for North Carolina Quilt Symposium 2011. It will be sponsored by Raleigh’s Capital Quilters Guild, and held at Peace College on June 2-5, 2011. It’s three days of classes, lectures, and fun, with everything from traditional piecing and appliqué, to beading, surface design and art quilting. I’m very excited that they’ve asked me to teach!

Here’s a list of the teachers they have lined up so far (a few more may be added):

Esterita Austin, art quilts: http://esteritaaustin.com/

Joyce Becker, landscapes: http://home.comcast.net/~jbecker300/

Karen Kay Buckley, appliqué: http://www.karenkaybuckley.com/index.php

Susan Cleveland, piecing: http://www.piecesbewithyou.com/

Sally Collins, piecing: http://www.sallycollins.org/gallery.html

Pepper Cory, piecing: http://www.peppercory.com/classes.html

Nancy Eha, beading: http://www.beadcreative.com/

Rayna Gillman, surface design: http://www.studio78.net/

Susan Brubaker Knapp: art quilts/appliqué: http://www.bluemoonriver.com

Mary Ellen Kranz, digital photography/computer aided design: http://www.quiltingimages.com/About_Us.html

Jan Krentz, piecing: http://www.jankrentz.com/index.php

Suzanne Marshall, appliqué: http://www.suzannequilts.com

Margaret Miller, piecing: http://www.millerquilts.com/home.html

Jan Myers-Newbury, surface design/dyeing: http://www.nancycrow.com/HTML/barnnewbury.html

Leslie Riley, fabric collage/mixed media: http://www.lesleyriley.com/

Sharon Schamber, machine quilting: http://www.sharonschamber.com/

Eileen Sullivan, piecing: http://www.thedesignersworkshop.com

Patsy Thompson, machine quilting: http://www.patsythompsondesigns.com/

Mary Lou Weidman, appliqué/piecing: http://www.marylouquiltdesigns.com/

And no, you don’t have to live in North Carolina to come to Symposium. If you live far away, you can fly in. Raleigh-Durham Airport is just a hop, skip, jump (or taxi ride) away from Peace College. Registration packets will be available in print and online in early January 2011. To receive a printed registration packet then, send  your mailing address and a check for $4 (payable to CQG Symposium  2011) to:

NCQS11

200 Transylvania Avenue
Raleigh, NC 27609

I hope to see you there!

Learn about Lyme

This is Nani Lauriano Luculescu, a.k.a. The Victorious Vixen (don’t you love that!). She’s a crafter I met online who is on a crusade to educate people about Lyme Disease, and to help fund a cure. Her dad has Lyme Disease, so this is personal. 

It’s personal for me, too, because my 12-year-old niece, Grace, has Lyme Disease. She was diagnosed last fall. She had a rash, but it wasn’t the typical Lyme bulls-eye rash, and her nurse practitioner brushed off my brother and sister-in-law’s request for a test and poo-pooed their legitimate questions. She said we didn’t have Lyme in North Carolina. She was wrong.

A few months later Grace was in the hospital for more than four days with infected knees. The doctors there thought she had a staph infection, because her white blood cell count was off the charts. They did emergency surgery to drain the fluid. But after four days, the cultures grew still grew nothing, and my brother and sister-in-law demanded a Lyme test. Grace’s doctor still said it was unnecessary. The test came back positive for stage 3 Lyme, with 8 positive bands. Grace’s case caused Wake County, N.C., to declare epidemic levels for Lyme. This should make Raleigh area doctors more aware of the situation, and more likely to test for Lyme if there is any suspicion of it at all.

If the nurse had tested her, or put her on antibiotics when they first went in about the rash and requested a Lyme test, it might have made a big difference. It took months for her to recover from the symptoms and the knee infection, but Grace is doing well right now. But Lyme is a serious disease that can affect people for a lifetime. And most people know so little about how to protect themselves.

That’s why a group called Lymenaide has produced these public service announcements:

Volunteers like Nani have been sending Lymenaide press kits to TV stations across North America, so I hope you’ll be seeing this PSA soon on your local stations.

To draw attention to this campaign, Nani is giving away one of her fabulous handmade wallets. This is the last in her Red, Black & White Optical Delusion wallet series:

 

Isn’t it fabulous? On Nani’s blog, you can see other PSAs, learn more about Lyme Disease, and leave a comment for a chance to win. You need to do it by 11:59 p.m. on Friday, June 18. Just follow the instructions in Nani’s post. 

Please … do it for Grace.