Quilt Show

Today I went to a quilt show in Skaneateles.   It seemed like a smaller show than our guild show and definitely a smaller boutique and silent auction, but the vendors had a whole HUGE area and there were a ton of them - all kinds of them - in a huge room, known as the Vendor Mall........and it was Air-Conditioned!!!!
I find fewer and fewer quilts now that give me the real WOW factor, but I am posting some of my favorites here!   (Actually, some of my real favorites were the "Do Not Touch" Quilts made by their guild in place of Do Not Touch Signs!   What a great idea!    I'll post a couple of my favorites of those also.

This is probably my favorite

done by Nancy Bales.....

you could believe you were

actually there.   Cheesecloth

denotes the waterfall.

To the right is an example of wonderful thread

painting

A really neat "town" scene.

To the right, this one probably had

the most viewers, trying to actually

see the woman's face in the shape

of the applique.   Truly a work of

art as everyone had a different opinion

as to how it should look.   It was titled

"Lady" and done by Barbara Ackley.  

Leaf Collage by Kitsie Demmerie

LOVED this!!!!

A batik with a large flower on the left

hand side.......all done in french knots.  

More Detail below.

Some of my favorites of the "Do Not Touch Quilts"

Commissioned Garden Flags

These are 2 Garden Flags which were commissioned pieces that will travel to Italy for a Garden Wedding.    The  parents of the bride are friends of ours and their daughter who is currently residing, performing & recording in Nashville is being married in Italy later this month.   Her  only requests were 2 butterflies on each with a rainbow in the corner.  One flag is totally painted - rainbow and stenciled butterflies, the other is appliqued butterflies and the rainbow is a commercial rainbow patterned fabric that was tucked to create smaller streaks of color.   Details can be seen below!   Congratulations to Marc & Krista!





Painted butterflies


Appliqued Butterflies
 

  Painted and pieced rainbows!


What I learned from this???????   I HATE pricing my work!

RAFA Day

We did sunprinting today at RAFA.   These are 2 images I printed onto transparencies.   The first, obviously is a butterfly and the second is the "Eye of Horus".........backwards!   Who knew!!!!   Oh well, I still like it's "graphicness".   This was so cool - the specially-coated fabric and the transparencies were placed under glass for 15 minutes, then rinses.   VOILA - the result!!!   So cool and so "non-messy".   You can read more at:  http://www.blueprintsonfabric.com/index.php.   Be sure to check out the gallery!!!

Inspiration In My Garden

While deadheading and cleaning in my garden today, a butterfly came to visit!   So, I quickly ran in the house to grab my camera and these are a couple of the pictures I took.




The first of the daylilies that I purchased last year at the Caledonia Daylily Farm opened today.   Isn't the color gorgeous?   I think it is even deeper in person.   I always like taking closeups of the inside of the flowers!

Cloth/Paper/Scissors Flag

My flag for the Cloth/Paper/Scissors Magazine "Create" Challenge.   The base is purple sparkly felt with blue fabric adhered to it.   The butterfly is stencil painted in 3 colors with an angelina fiber bead for the body and 2 sawarski crystals on the antannae.  The lettering is from a "scrapbooking" alphabet and the purple embellishments at the top are from India, courtesy of my friend Priscilla Kibbee who brought them back from her travels.

It's much simpler than many people will do - but it says it all for me.   Purple is my favorite color, the butterfly is my favorite graphic to use in many different forms.....and it does personify "create".   Simple and uncluttered is the way I prefer to work.

Swan Song Before/After

When I was first learning to quilt, my husband bought me a kit with an applique swan in the center, appliqued flowers around it and a batik border.   What did I know about applique?   Nothing....so when I learned about Heat 'n Bond and that you didn't even have to sew it on - I thought I was golden.   I did up the kit, and at a loss as to how to quilt it, just did a stitch in the ditch around the frame.   I recently decided to repurpose or rework the quilt.   Below are before and after shots.   I hope you'll agree that it is much more interesting to look at now.   I love it!

I highlighted the swan with Jacquare Lumiere Paints, used artificial flower embellishments and beads to cover the heat-n-bond flowers, and added free motion quilting where there was none.   The design in pink, although not really clear, is a pattern from Leah Day 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting called "Paisley Flower".   I love the pattern and it was easy to learn to do.

 

Thought For The Day!

Creativity flourishes in solitude!  With quiet, you can hear your thoughts, you can reach deep within yourelf, you can focus!

Today I was inspired during my morning walk around the "track" at Cedar St. Pond.   I had lots of things in my head the last few days, but nothing would come out in the form of a solution to a problem or any creativity.  

During my walk:
1.  I figured how to possibly mount my felted fish to show in the GoArt Show (I might have even found it at our local Michael's)
2.  How to organize my morning to get everything done (and I did);
3.  Which quilt to focus on next for the quilt show in October.

Lunch

On day when several of my art quilt group had lunch together at Applebees, we commented that since you can make art from anything, we should make something from our receipts.   Apparently Elaine was the only one who took the challenge seriously.   Anyway, this is my finished product!  Strips of fabric cut on the curve were woven together and then the receipt was "gessoed" on top.   I got a bit too much gel medium on the whole piece so it is shiny and "pasty" in spots.......but I still like it.  After reading an article about how people were inspired to make an art quilt out of what was in their car and someone had a "fast food quilt", I thought I should finish it.   Two layers of rick rack around the edge finished it off.  If you look closely, you will see that the buttons spell out the name of the restaurant!!!   Pretty cool, huh!

The newest flowers in my gardens - the lilies have started to open.   Aren't they gorgeous.  

The Real Me!

Yup, this is me   - a right brained person (whimsical, creative, artistic) in a left-brained body (black or white; either/or - exacting, detail oriented  - no room for shades of gray).

I created this for our little art quilt group.   We were doing self portraits and I wanted mine to be whimsical.   I've always loved the split-faced portrait (profile - or head-on shot?).  This is full of my favorite things - beads, flowers, butterflies, "funky" buttons, music and bright, bright colors.

Quilt Shows

I went to 2 quilt shows this past weekend.   The first one was Lake to Lake Guild in Rushville.   My favorite quilt was done my Val Schultz, a fellow RAFA member.  

This was the scene she created using her own hand-dyes and just one commercial fabric.   The second picture shows the detail  - cheese cloth in the bottom corner - also dyed.

The last was just a happy "flower quilt".   I love the flower pots around the edge - but neglected to get the name of the quiltmaker.

The next show was in Amherst.   In was a much larger show - almost 300 hundred quilts and of course lots of vendors.   Two of my favorite quilts there were made by the same quiltmaker - Ina Randall.  

One is a "sea" scene and I love all the extra embellishments and bling that she put on the quilt.   It really makes it and gives me ideas on how to finish my fish quilt.


The second was of an owl.   The threadpainted owl was fascinating enough, but then she did an upside down shadow of an owl using tulle.   Just love it!!!

May Tulips

"The earth laughs in flowers. "-- e.e. cummings

I call this posting "May" Tulips because many of the tulips blooming now would not normally do so until sometime in May - not in April.   I'm sure the earth is laughing with flowers because we often think that spring will never come in this part of the country!

Loving Spring!

Just a couple (or so) pictures that I took today - I 'll try to post more tomorrow.   Not that anyone reads these I'm sure, but the spring flowers are so perfectly gorgeous right now!

Spring has Sprung

The weather has been so wonderfully warm and beautiful in the past week or so.   Today is rainy, but they tell me we need the rain.   I, myself, need the sun and warmth and have really enjoyed being able to be outside working in the garden, on the lawns and taking long walks.   The daffodils are from my front yard gardens.   They are springing all over the place, with the tulips giving them a run for their money.

I made a pulpit banner for my husband's church for Easter.   The flower in the bottom right corner is actually printed from one of the daffodils seen above.   There is some threadwork added and, of course, some beads.

RAFA 6 x 6

These are 2 of the pieces that I created for the RAFA (Rochester Area Fiber Artists) donations to the ROCO (Rochester Contermporary Art Center) 6 x 6 display and sale.   Each piece donated to the display or exhibit will sell for $20.   The display will be up in May and bidders may buy at that time.

The piece on the left is called "Blank Slate".   It was inspired by some fabric beads I made in a small group, but as you can see, the fabric beads never made it on the quilt.   The base is 2 fabrics, woven together and there is one bead in the green that says   "Create".   The blank slate is to allow you to dream of how you might create from this point.

The piece on the right is called "SpringTime".   The background is silk habotai which is painted with dyna-flo paints

and spritzed with water to allow them to run together.   The tree has some thread painting as do the grasses.  

The pink beads represent the flowering of the tree in springtime.

After finishing the tree in the above post, I had some painted silk left over so I decided to try stenciling butterflies.   I really love them.   It was a little more intricate than I should have done for the first attempt, but fun anyway.   Now, how to finish them?    Yes, that is a black blob of paint that I accidentally smeared on the background.   Now to give it some artistic definition so it looks like it should be there.