"Which Path would you Take" wins First Place, Wall quilts at Northern Stars show 2014

As you can see from my last post, I am catching up on my blogging.

The 2014 Northern Star Quilt Guild show was a good show for me.  I have won many second and third place ribbons at this local guild show, but I have wanted for many years to see one of my pieces hang on the 'blue ribbon' wall.  So I was extremely pleased to see this piece do so.  

Lucky for me, the person who brought this piece at the gallery exhibit was happy to let me enter the piece in a few shows this year.  This was the first show and it made me proud.

Besides, this first place ribbon, "Paisley Inspirations" was awarded a third place ribbon in the same category :-).

It was also nice to see a good friend and fellow Pelham Quilters guild member, Donna Chambers, also on the blue ribbon wall for her Umoja piece.  "Umoja, Goddess of the Sea"  won first place in the People, Places category and Best of Show, Small Quilts.  :-).  

The Art of Quilt Making, by the Pelham Quilters at DMA Gallery

I can't believe this is still sitting in draft.  This show was in April.  My sincere apologies, but this has been a crazy year.  I lost my mother in May.  She was 87 and lived a good life, but she was suffering and it wa very hard to see her in such pain.  She is finally at rest and reunited with her true loves, God and my father... The best husband in the world according to her :-).

Once I got myself out of my slump, it was time to focus on my daughter's wedding and her wedding quilt.  She was married on August 31st and was a lovely bride.  But that is for another post.  

So this is a show that 5 women in my local guild, Pelham Quilters, had in a local gallery, DMA Gallery.  Unfortunately the gallery closed shortly after the exhibit closed, but for us it was extremely successful. 

Opening night was packed and then the gallery held a book signing (first two pictures below) for two local authors, that also brought folks in to see our work.   

This is "Umoja, Goddess of the Sea" by Donna Chambers. 

Here is a local artist viewing one of my pieces, "In the spotlight". 

Donna is discussing her artistic process in the making of "Fashionista". 

The curator, Lynnette, welcoming everyone during the opening reception.  You can see my kimono inspired piece "Pathways" hanging in the window, and a part of one of my woven pieces, "Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy" on the easel.   My piece "Sista Chat" is hanging on the front of the pedestal from which Lynnette is speaking.  

The next three pieces were made by guild member, MaryAnn Ciccotelli.  

Here I am, thanking everyone for coming and sharing some back ground on Pelham Quilters, and the five exhibiting quilters.

These three pieces are by guild member, Sandra Parrott.

This is my most recent piece, "Which Path would You Take".  I was very pleased that it sold during the opening reception.

Here's Sandra, in front of one of her small pieces, "Tumbling Blocks".  

To the left you can see a corner of MaryAnn's quilt and on the right is my parrott piece, "Jungle Paradise".  

This is another of Sandra Parrott's work.  She does wonderful small art quilt pieces.  

I know it is late, but I hope you enjoyed seeing our show.  I will have a solo exhibit in January 2015 at Etui Fiber Arts in Larchmont, NY.  

The Art of Quilt Making: Featuring Quilts of the Pelham Quilters (that's me) @ DMA Gallery, Pelham, NY

That's right, I will be one of five fiber artists featured at a gallery exhibit in Pelham, NY.  DMA Gallery in Pelham, NY has chosen to feature quilts of 5 members of the Pelham Quilters in their upcoming Fiber Arts exhibit.  I am so happy to have been chosen to participate.  They even used a part of one of my quilts for the artwork on the evite for the opening reception!

The exhibit will run March 6th to April 6th, with an Opening Reception on Thursday, March 6th at 6pm.  If you live nearby, I hope you stop in for the opening, or at least stop by the gallery during the month.  They are open Tuesday-Saturdays from 1-7pm EST. 

I am so excited!!

Linda M Poole comes to Pelham Quilters - January 2014

The Pelham Quilters may be living through the coldest temperatures we have seen in almost a decade, but we had fun learning some new quilting techniques over the last 2 days.  That's right Linda M. Poole, a fiber artist extraordinaire came to visit from Milford, Pa.  

On Sunday, she taught her workshop, Color Me Beautiful, from her latest book, Painted Appliqué.  The ladies had a ball, learning to use Inktense pencils and paint mediums. Here are a few pictures of us during the day.  The first is a picture of the sample piece we worked on in class.

 

Linda also taught us how to make the perfect oval and fusable bias strips, so we can appliqué our painted butterfly on the background.  Her class handouts are great, it is as if you are given a full pattern with step by step color pictures, taking you through the entire process to make her Color Me Beautiful wallhanging.  

Then on Monday night Linda came and gave us a lecture - Quilts Around the World.  Linda shared quilts by makers influenced by their travels around the world and the various ways we as quilters are inspired to create.  A good time was had by all.  Here are some of the quilts she shared as part of the Trunk Show she shared after the lecture and presentation.  

Pelham Quilters Round Robin 2013 - Here is Cheryl's piece

So in June we brought in our completed round robins for the year to guild meeting.  You can see some of the progress on this years top here.  This is the top after I added my round...

I can't seem to find my picture of it with the last round on it, but you will see it in the picture of the quilted piece. This top was worked on by Cheryl, Donna, myself and Doris, in that order, all from the Pelham Quilters.

Since Cheryl has been ill, I decided to take hers home and quilt it for her.  I hope she likes it...

I tried a new quilting design, which I saw at the Kutztown Folk Festival and Quilt Show.  The quilt was amazing and the swirling design was an all over pattern on that piece, but I used in only in the white sections here.

 I also added some red Swarovski hot fix crystals from Cheri's Cyrstals over the points, to bring out more of the red.  Red is Cheryl's favorite color :-).


The rest of the piece is quilted with designs that just seemed to fit...  a meander in the mosaic, since it wouldn't be noticeable anyway: waves in the white points, swirls in the red points, half feathers in the light blue batik and an outline of the flowers in the darker blue outer border.

I used Aurifil 50 wt cotton in white and 2 different blues for the entire quilt.  Besides being practically lint free, it is nice and fine so it gave the quilt the right amount of texture, without trying to steel the show from the quilt itself :-).




All in all, I think it came out pretty good. 

Cheryl is now doing some light sewing, so I left the binding to be done by her. 

Now I hope she likes it :-).

Cheers!

Lisa Shepherd Batik Tote Workshop with the Pelham Quilters

The Pelham Quilters were very fortunate to have Lisa Shepherd of Cultured Expressions and her wonderful batik fabrics from Ghana come and join us for a Tote bag workshop.  I love working with her fabrics, because they are all one of a kind.

The ladies had a wonderful time and we all were able to finish our bags at the workshop.

Here I am with my bag all finished except for the embellishments.

Here are Cheryl, Millie and Donna with their bags.

I will have to add the picture of the entire group later.  These were pics from my cell phone taken the day of the workshop.  The next day, I took a picture of the group with their bags at guild meeting, but it is on my camera which I don't have at this time :-).

Pelham Quilters Round Robin - 2013 Part 2

ooh la la...  do I have a treat for you!

Our 4 center squares have spent the last 2 months in the homes of their first care givers.  And what loving care did they provide!  I think each piece has been lovingly enhanced keeping the center owner in mind.  Remember, at the end of the Round Robin, everyone gets their own top back, with the center lovingly adorned by 3 other quilters.

So with out further delay, here they are:

 





Donna Chambers had the task of adding to Cheryl Heist flower center.  Donna used her mosaic technique to surround the flower and help it blossom.  Although the picture doesn't it show it (thanks to the light hanging down) Donna's fabric choices are off the hook.  She used a vibrant red to back the blue flower and golden touched gold and blue fabric for her touch of 'bling'.  I get this piece next, but I have no idea what I am going to do with it :-(.












I had Donna Chambers top, which as you might remember was an elegant couple dancing in full formal attire.  Donna has developed this mosaic and texture magic technique which adds so much depth to her work.  Donna always uses a lot of fabrics with 'bling' for added life.  In an attempt to keep the movement of the dancers flowing into my round, I added curves and swirls in an applique border that brought in some of Donna's fabrics, but also utilized some of my own golden touched fabrics.  I pulled the pink silk from the dress out to the corners to keep the colors moving.  Doris has Donna's top next.

Doris Green had my piece.  I appliqued 4 female African dancers, clothed in brightly colored fabric.  As always I tend to lean towards applique and Doris balanced the color and applique with a trapezoid border of the same brightly colored fabrics. I love the blue which changes in intensity set as a thin sashing.  Knowing how much I love swirls, Doris used applique swirls to continue the movement in the pieced border.  Cheryl will be enhancing my piece next :-).

Cheryl Hoist had Doris Greens center.  Doris is a piecer, so her center was an intrigue star made from several blue and yellow print fabrics.  Cheryl used a perfectly executed thin piping to delineate the star and then set it on point using a sold blue fabric to give the eye a rest.  The amount of yellow in the piping is just perfect as a bold pop of color.  As they say, just a little bit of yellow goes a long way :-).  Donna gets to add her magic to Doris's top over the next 2 months.




Wish us all luck and come back in April to see what these pieces evolve to next.  I promise it will be explosive!

Pelham Quilters Round Robin 2013 - Round 1

So we once again started a Round Robin as part of this years guild programs for Pelham Quilters.  This year we are following a slightly different format.  Since there are only four of us participating, we decided to do four tops, where after the round robin we all get our own tops back.

I don't have photos of all four centers only two.  The one I made and the one I work on first.  We each get a top to add a round to every two months.  Cheryl has Doris's center and Donna has Cheryl's.  I'll share pictures of those when it is my turn to work on them.

Here is the center for my top.  I have adapted my dancing ladies to make a group celebration.  Doris Green is working on it now.  I wonder what will happen to it next?

Here is the center I am working on.  It was done by Donna Chambers:

Donna used both her mosaic technique as well as texture magic for the female dancers skirt. Which means I have to make sure I live up to her artistic level...  ouch, not easy to do :-).   I have already ripped out my first attempt.  It didn't measure up.  But my next idea is really working out well.  It has advanced from the paper and pencil phase to the first level of execution.  Hopefully I will get the chance to work on it this weekend.  Wish me luck :-).

Lola Jenkins comes to Pelham Quilters!

As a TQS (The Quilt Show by Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims) Star Member, I get to watch all the available shows.  To be honest I watch some and not others, all depending on how interesting the subject 'sounds', or if I know the featured quilter.  Well, when I saw the intro for the show featuring Lola Jenkins, I almost didn't watch it.  In fact, I think the show had been available for a couple of months before I did.  Boy,  was I glad I did!

First, Lola was a very entertaining guest on the show.  She is energetic and bubbly, with this interesting voice. Yes, interesting is the only way I know how to describe it :-).  But what really got me was her personal story, how she came to quilting and how she tackled each step along her journey.  It is a very moving story!!  Please watch if you can.

But what got me to reach out to her, was when she said she had a goal of visiting every guild in the country.  So I emailed her and asked if she wanted to visit our small, casual guild in Pelham, NY.  She responded immediately, saying she would LOVE to come and that she was presently scheduled to be in NY in September, 2012.  So we booked her, and boy was that a smart move.

Yesterday, Lola taught her Fantasy Landscape workshop to the Pelham Quilters, or at least 9 of us and 3 guests.  We had a ball.  Lola shared her secrets of looking at fabrics with an eye for the scene we have in our minds, vs what fabric as a whole.  She shared the 1/3's principle of design and guided us to our own, COMPLETED, top of the day.

That is right, everyone in the class completed a landscape top and earlier than we had expected!

Let me share with you some pictures from the day....

First, pictures of the quilts she brought with her as inspiration...

This first piece is from Lola's online Art Deco class.  She uses it as a sample for the class.  It is a whole cloth style quilt, with black thread as the basis of the design and then the fabric is "colored" in with colored pencils and other coloring aids.


Each of the following pieces are done using Lola's collage approach.  I tell you, I will never look at fabric the same again!

It is amazing to see what can be done by clipping pieces of fabric from many different pieces of material and pasting it down!













Here are some of the pieces that were completed in this one day workshop...

Barbara and her Apollo Jazz scene.  To you recognize her sky from one of Lola's quilts.  Funny they had a lot of the same fabrics!

Cheryl's piece with her fire sky...




















Donna's, City meets Africa cityscape...  As always Donna listened to the instructions and thought out of the box.  This was supposed to be a 'fantasy' landscape.  I think she captured the essence of "fantasy".

Doris, one of the doll ladies joined us and did a serene, calming landscape...

 Doris Green and her gorgeous water scene. I love the boys running by the river bank.  Sorry Doris, it is prettier than you think....


















Dorothy's inspiration fabric had these gorgeous fall tree's...



















Jacqueline another of our guest for the day, did a wonderful desert scene...



















I love Lorraine's New England scene with a lighthouse and sail boats...



















Here I am with my second Sister Chat piece or as I will call it, Sister Chat II !


















And a former member of Pelham Quilters, Gwyn, a doll maker and Doris's sister as she adds the last rock surrounding the river.

 Now, the queen of landscape collage, Ms. Sandra herself. Her birds are lovely as usual.  Sandra and Donna would ruin the class curve if this was a real art class :-). 

I love June's farm scene.  It looks like a little bit of Tuscany. 

It was a wonderful day, with a wonderfully group of talented women.

A special THANKS to Lola for traveling all the way from Oklahoma City in her PT Cruiser, with her sister Darlene as her co-pilot!