A Sad Time

I don't usually write about family on this blog however, I am breaking that rule tonight.

This is my lovely ninety-one year old Mother-In-Law.  We have spend the last week moving her from her home of over thirty years to a residence.

She is healthy, takes less medicine than I do, but her family heritage has caught up with her.  Out of eight siblings she is the only one left.  Her sister past away this year at 99.  They are a long lived family.  Unfortunately the whole family has suffered from dementia.  Fortunately, it doesn't come on until late in their life.

Last year she was a vivacious woman, working at church, gardening doing her own finances, etc.  It hit quickly.  We are saddened but she has given so much in her life time.  It's now time for her to receive.

Gram, as we call her, kept almost every card she ever received. She kept clipping from newspapers and magazines.  Most were about gardening or recipes but the more personal ones were about love.  It will take us a long time to clean out her home.  As with most people her age, she kept everything, just in case. But, no matter how much we have to do we will never repay her for what she has done for us.

I've Been on the Road Again

Cleveland Park Event's Center

I recently presented programs at the Landrum Quilt Guild in Landrum, SC and at the Piedmont Piercer's  Guild in Spartanburg, SC.

I forgot to get permission from the Landrum Guild to post photographs so I will just say that it is a great guild and the member's there were very receptive. 

We ran into a little problem with electrical supplies but we made do.  I was very sorry that the members were not able to get the full benefit of having all the photo on screen.  They meet in a wonderful old restored school house that acts as a community center, thus the lack of electric outlets.

On Tuesday evening I presented a program at the facility shown above and what a great place to have meetings.  The room was equipped with two pull down screens with the projector in the ceiling.  The Center provides someone to do the hookups for both projector and audio.

I hope I'm getting this correct, this beautifully decorated cake was made by one of the guild members.  It was as good as it looks

.I presented my new PowerPoint presentation The Many Ways to Fabricate Faces. I think it went well. 

The Piedmont Piecer's are not a large guild but as you will see in the photos to follow they are a prolific guild.

Diana Pickens is one of those prolific members.  These two pieces were made for one of the guild's many charity projects.

Believe it or not but these two quilts are made by the same pattern.  Doesn't the choice of fabric make a big difference?

quilt # 1

Teresa Sparks, on the left, is the guild president.  She and Renee Dugan are also very busy making quilts.  This is one of four they showed that night.

quilt # 2

I believe they said that these were from a class at Piegon Forge.

quilt # 3

quilt # 4

This Gee's Bend type quilt was made by Sandy Ceremuga.  I hope this spelling is correct.

 I don't know the name of this pattern but it's really cool.  It was made by Nancy Curry

Judy Mathis models this lovely blouse she made out of batik. 
She is holding one of her shoes that she covered with matching fabric.

how cute is this?

The elastic part of the shoe snaps off.  After allowing for the stretch in the shoe fabric she added this piece of batik to match her blouse.

I enjoyed doing the presentation at both guilds.  It's always fun to go to a guild other than your own and meet these people who have so much in common.

Art Quilts Lowell 2012: Music

The MusicMaker: Uncle Dave

I found out today that The MusicMaker was accepted in Art Quilts Lowell 2012:Music at the Brush Gallery & Artist Studio.

The exhibit will be open August 9 - September 13, 2012.  A reception will be held Aug 11.  The exhibit was juror-ed by Karey Bresenhan co-founder of the International Quilt Festival.  How cool is that?

I met Uncle Dave Sturgell about twenty-five years ago when I interview him for an article for Bluegrass Magazine.  My husband went with me to the interview and we ended up staying the whole day.  He and his wife offered to make tomato sandwiches for us for lunch.  He spent the day telling me about all the beautiful instruments he had made.  One of his pride and joys was a guitar made for Johnny Cash.

Uncle Dave couldn't read a note of music but could play the most beautiful music ever.  My husband took the photograph that I used for my inspiration for this piece.  I included that photo on the book shelves.

I also found out today that my friend Bonnie Outllette had two pieces accepted, Bette and Elvis. Aren't these fun?

Elvis by Bonnie Ouellette

Bette by Bonnie Ouellette

June Meeting of HiFiber Art Group

Marge Edie hosted the HiFiber meeting yesterday and presented a program, along with Dawn McEntyre on bas relief.

The pears were appliqued with fill behind them to get the bas relief look..  Marge made the leaves separately by sewing two pieces of fabric together, slitting the back piece and turning inside out.  She then sewed them down through the center.

Marge then demonstrated using ink pads and a stencil brush to add shadows to the pears.

Dawn and Marge then did an exercise on using three pieces of yarn with a z or s twist.  These three pieces were twisted until taunt and them doubled to get the effect seen on the left.

In May our local guild had Ellen Linder for a workshop on double reverse applique and Making an instant abstract quilt.  Beatriz Ruez made this tasty looking apple.

This is Beatriz' abstract quilt

This is Penny Little's quilt from the class.

Beatriz must have spent her month in her sewing room as she brought many finished pieces.  This is her piece from a prior Notan presentation.

Bea also brought her silk scarves dyed in Bonnie Oullette's class.  The one on the right was made by using men's silk ties and transferring the dye to the silk scarf.   Bea also brought lots of fabric that she dyed in Bonnie's dyeing class.

These are Penny Little's scarves from the tie dye transfer.

Penny Little did some experiments with Sharpies and alcohol.



















Plenty of inspiration until next month.

What Do you Think?

Study for Sheldon's Church

I've been working on a series of computer manipulate photos that I am printing on fabric.  Sheldon's Church  is one of these images.  I decided to print a small image (13" X 17") that had a slightly different design to see how I wanted to quilt the finished piece.
 
Ghost of Sheldon's Church

This is the original idea but after I did the study,   I felt that I liked it better.  Ghost seemed to be a bit to symmetrical.  In the mean time I decided to enter Study for Sheldon's Church in the ITAB International TECHstyle Art Exhibit.  I received a thank you but no thank you reply to that exhibit.  Ususally, I don't question my pieces even when they have been rejected from an exhibit but I have had questions about this whole thing from the beginning. 

I took both the pieces to my Focus meeting and as I was showing them I just placed the small one over the larger piece.   I was about to take it down when I stepped in front of the design wall to look at the two together and it flashed through my mind that "this doesn't look too bad".   I was also beginning to get vibes from many of the group that there was happening between the two pieces.

Am I just looking for a way to salvage these pieces or should I just chalk it up to experience?

Any comments would be appreciated.

Granddaughter and Creativity

Our granddaughter, Sydney has been studying pioneer days at school.  They were suppose to put together clothing to wear to school as a student would have dressed during that time.  Sydney went into her Mom's closet and found a blouse and skirt.   With a little help from Mom, it was tucked and pined until it would stay up around her tiny waist.

She then found a crocheted place mat, that was made by my Mother, and used it as an apron.  The lunch pail (AKA sewing basket)  was a Christmas gift from Nana and Papa.  I sent the little bonnet to her when she was about two years old and living in Sydney Australia.  It's a little small now and was a little large then, but it works. 

Mom was brushing Sydney's hair and started to put a rubber band in the pony tail.  Sydney looked at her and said "Mom I don't think they had rubber bands back then."   Allison asked her what they would have used and she said "ribbon".  So ribbon it was.


I've written about Sydney in my blog before. She is one of those rare children who would rather go to her room and pretend or find little scraps of fabric to make a dress and bonnet for her bunny than watch TV or play games.  I find that very refreshing.

Focus Art Group May Meeting

I've finally gotten around to posting about my fiber art's group May meeting.  There has been lots of family things that have been occupying me recently and my mind is on many things.  I've come to realize that I just can't multitask any more.

I've also been doing a bit of procrastinating.  I need to do the quilting on several pieces to get them finished.  I'm having a bit of machine problems so I'm moving from one project to the other.  Soooo
I decided to stop working and do a little computer work.

Dillman Sorrells is a new member of Focus.  She told us when she first joined the group that she had been heavy into making wearable art.  However, she had sworn off buying anymore patterns.  Well....she saw this pattern and just had to try it out.  It turned out lovely,

Dillman also brought this abstract piece and this cute spider piece that she's been working on.  The meeting was almost a month ago so that's about all I can remember about this piece.  I apologize to my fellow members.

Dixie Hayward and Jane Hall are writing a new book on foundation piecing the pineapple pattern.  I think this little piece is planned for the book 

Since I've mentioned Jane Hall here I might as well insert this photo I took Sunday when the Focus group took Jane and Dixie to lunch.  Diana Pickens wanted Jane to feel special so she had this sign made for her.

Ellen Linder taught two classes at LMQG last month.  Donna Barnhill who is our 2nd. VP and in charge of workshops made this abstract during the class.  Ronette Askew, gave Donna this piece of fabric and look what that good deed got Ronette.

Donna had to be real stingy to get enough fabric for both pieces.  She even had to go in behind some of the pieces of fabric on the first piece.  Lucky Ronette. This quilt was made by Janet Ginn for a lucky granddaughter who just graduated from High School

Marge Edie is going to be teaching Bas Relief (I think that's what it's called) and this is an in progress piece.   The lucky members of HiFiber will learn this process this month.

These two scarves were made by Donna and Marge.  They learned the process at the last HiFiber meeting.  This is silk tie transfer to a silk scarf.

Sybil Radius made this lovely little piece.  Her quilting is wonderful, I'm envious.

Sybil's daughters went to Paris and she wanted to make them a small piece to remember the trip.  Sybil chose an aerial map of Paris.  What a neat idea. 

Veronica Moriarty brought this piece.  I love it, and one of the things I love is the the uneven edges.  Veronica is going to give it a go, can't wait to see it finished. 

This piece is also Veronica's.  She used on of Diana's techniques for piecing stripe fabric. 

I believe I remember that veronica told us she has put this piece away and forgot she had it.  Can't you believe that?  She does beautiful needle turn reverse applique.  I'm glad she found and finished this piece.  

Well I hope I haven't forgotten anything, it has been a while.  I did have a few pieces at the meeting as well but, that's in my next post.

The Stripper

The Stripper top is finished!  I've had several days this week that I could devote to finishing the top of The Stripper.  It always feels good to get that part finished.  However, the hardest part, for me anyway, is the actual quilting.

I hang the finished piece on my design wall for a while just to look at it as I work in my studio.  This helps me come up with ideas for the quilting design.  It also helps me put off the inevitable, the actual quilting.

I've posted on this blog, many times, the problem that I have with getting started on this part of the journey.  Maybe I think that some day I'll be able to finish a top and get right to the quilting part without be intimidated.

Panel one

 

Panel two

Panel three

Panel four