And Now for Something Bold from Me!

If you are in the area I would love to have you visit me in my "pop up" studio at stop 32! This tour offers a marvelous chance to visit and chat with a variety of artists in their "natural habitats".

Come see what the buzz is all about!

A Local Quilt Show

Each year, since 1985, one of the churches in our town has held a quilt show as part of their Country Fair.  I have been invited to exhibit a quilt or two there each of the past several years.  The quilt show is held right in the main body of the church with the quilts hung from the ceiling, displayed on racks and display walls and draped carefully over the pews.

I'd like to share a few photos with you of this year's show.

Here's a general shot. Those first two quilts hanging closest to the camera attracted a lot of attention. My "Little Green Kiwi", one of my round robin quilts is in the front right. In the rear distance, on the middle left, is Echinacea Echoes - a very beautiful quilt owned by me but made by my sister for me for a birthday gift.

Another general shot. The quilt hanging in the front center is "Spool Quilt" by Betty Ratliff. Betty created her quilt using the pattern "Friendship + Strips + Scraps" by Edyta Sitar for Laundry Basket Quilts. Sadly, I cannot identify the lovely red and white quilt in the front right.

I really love this quilt titled "Lancaster Amish" by Gayle Ropp. Her quilt is machine pieced and hand quilted.

I wear a hat to church each Sunday so this quilt, "A Few of Nana's Hats" by Beverly Burroughs, attracted me. Beverly made this quilt in the stack and whack method using a pattern by Sandy Gervais and comments it reminds her of her Grandmother who had a hat to go with every outfit and took a lot of joy in getting dressed up.

A general shot of the right hand side of the exhibition. Yes, that is my Strawberries and Cream in the foreground with, three rows behind it, my Purple Passion.

Oh my gosh, this pair of quilts was amazing. Created by the very talented Cheryl See and based on a favorite childhood portrait this one "Wolf" (above) depicts her Dad.

And this is one "Ceci" depicting her Dad's wife.

The organizing committee for the 2013 Sacred Threads Exhibition created their own personal artist statements under the subject of "Transitions".  This quilt, "Empty Nest" is by Lisa Ellis and was made just after her youngest daughter graduated from high school and was preparing to head off to college.

Another general shot. The quilt hanging in the front right "Glorified Christmas" is by my friend Cheryl Kotecki and features the block "The Right Hand of Friendship" which was one of the blocks in the Barbara Brackman Civil War block of the week online project in 2011 that we both did.

Paula Golden created her quilt "Song of St Lucas" for an exhibit titled "Tales of a Mayan Huipil:ArtQuilts Inspired by Guatemalan Weavings". I enjoyed the color combinations.

Sarah Entsminger (the show curator) created her quilt "Lord, Hear my Prayer" for a person who cannot walk a labyrinth but who wishes to join in the spiritual meditation gained from such an experience. The "pavers" are wool and you are gently kept on the path by the pebbles which are individually attached with thread.

Taking the main focus of the show by being displayed behind the altar is this exhibition "Identity Crisis" by Fiber Artists @ Loose Ends. Each of the eleven members created a quilt focusing on their personal identity.

Here we see displayed quilts from the last two chapters of "The June Bride", a challenge I created for 13 friends which ran from 2011 to 2013. These are quilts from the "Baskets for the Bridesmaids" and "The Bride's Wedding Day Album" chapters. Each member received a vintage quilt block from me and was requested to make a new piece using that block. In the front left foreground is a poster board showing the two vintage blocks that were handed out. The first three pew backs show 11 of the Bridesmaids Basket quilts.

The rear pew and the two hanging rows show 10 quilts from the "Bride's Wedding Day Album" quilts.

And one last shot. Hanging on the left side is "Road to Pushkar" by Carole Nicholas. The center hanging quilt is "Party All Day" by Margaret "Totty" Powers Sos.

The photos shown are taken in an amateur way by me and tend to be of quilts that attracted me. There were many more very lovely quilts in the show this year and had I spent more careful time with my camera and less time gabbing I might have been able to show you more.

 But I hope you have enjoyed this brief glimpse of the show.

Month 10 - Shooting Stars

We are at Month 10 in the Dixie Diary project.  Our heroine Sarah Morgan and her sisters feel they have a ringside seat to the Bombardment of Fort Hudson, on the Mississippi River.

 Although making the block was easy enough (I did it using my own method of creating a long strip of the two colors pieced together and then cutting out four triangles - I meant to photograph it as I went but - oops - I forgot) I'm not sure how interesting the finished result is. My own small challenge is not to repeat any fabrics other than the one pink on white toile which is used in each block. My greys are running perilously low and I might have to, for shame, visit the fabric store again and see if I can't source another couple of grey fabrics for the remaining two blocks.

March 14, 1863, Linwood, East Feliciana Parish

"They are coming! The Yankees are coming at last! For four or five hours the sound of their cannon has assailed our ears. There! - that one shook my bed! Oh, they are coming! God grant us the victory! They are now within four miles of us, on the big road to Baton Rouge. …

[Sarah is mistaken here---what she was hearing was Confederate cannon firing at the Union ships, and some answering fire from the ships.]

 

 

"It has come at last! What an awful sound! I thought I had heard a bombardment before; but Baton Rouge was child's play compared to this. ….We have all been in Mrs. Carter's room, from the last window of which we can see the incessant flash of the guns and the great shooting stars of flame, which must be the hot shot of the enemy. There is a burning house in the distance, the second one we have seen to-night....Gathered in a knot within and without the window, we six women up here watched in the faint starlight the flashes from the guns, and silently wondered which of our friends were lying stiff and dead….

March 15

To my unspeakable surprise, I waked up this morning and found myself alive."

 

I have copy and pasted the above directly from the entry made by Ms Brackman on her Civil War Blog to give you an idea of what was going on.  I just love Sarah's last sentence!

 

With those images in my head I had been pondering all weekend how to pose my block for my usual "fun photo".  Just before I lost the light for the day I remembered this quilt that I had made perhaps 15 years ago for a guild challenge (we had to use that pansy fabric and illustrate "Seasons"). I love to piece star blocks and this was my quilt for the challenge.

The grey fabric showing here as the backdrop is one I have purchased to use for the setting of this quilt top. I'll combine it with another fabric from the same line (Moda's Basic Grey collection) but that is all I'm going to say at this point in time.

Two more blocks to come for this project. That will mean I have 12 6" blocks so my current plan is to create four more which will give me a four by four setting...which will NOT result in a king sized quilt!

Hooray for that.