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Janet is the person I have known the longest in the Genesee Valley Quilt Club. She initially told me about the club more than 20 years ago while we attended a class in Albany and found we both lived in the Rochester area. I then ran into her at Quilting by the Lake right before I retired. I attended my first club meeting the next month!
She is a wonderful artist/quilter who works in a variety of styles and is always helping others. She is one of the founding members of the Rochester Area Fiber Artists as well as a frequent contributor to programs at GVQC.
These are just a few of the pieces she has on display at GoArt in Batavia, New York. The exhibit will be up for the next month or so and well worth a visit!
These were all taken the night of her opening reception which had a huge crowd!!
I love to go out to her house and take pictures of all the wonderful birds that come to her feeders!
There is a reason for the name of this quilt. It has turned into one very weird experience! I am supposed to speak on stack and whacks at a local quilt club this month. I have made about every variation of this quilt except or a new one I have seen on the internet. To me, it is one of the nicest of the genre. It is made from a scenic panel and then the stack and whacks that were made from obviously six additional copies of the panel surrounded this central image. I wasn't going to buy any more fabric but found this vase in my stash and I had 16 repeats of it so thought - what the heck!! It was difficult to stack as I usually pin along the edge and the edge had no definable objects to pin through the layers. I did do the pinning and got a very even stack. I then cut it up into 4 inch wide triangles -- 6 of each (or so I thought). As I was auditioning which sides of the 60 degree triangles I would use, I noticed that every other one in the stack was different -- I had three of one triangle and three of the other. I thought I must have put in some of the panels upside down. When I looked a little more closely I noticed -- uh oh. On each width of the fabric, there were two vases and one was the mirror image of the other!! So inadvertently I managed to a unique new stack and whack!! This picture shows the two versions of the vase and the beginnings of sewing the blocks together.
So here all the blocks are done and there is the perfect amount to do this arrangement. At this point I thought it was going to take some math to figure out how to get everything to line up and how much additional fabric I would need surrounding the hexies to have them match up with the center panels.
First I had to decide which fabrics to use for the finishing triangles though. I assumed I would use the green that was surrounding the panels in the yardage -- there were four to five inch strips on either side of the panels.
No, that is just awful!! So won't use the green but may see if I have enough for an outside border or binding -- far away from the hexies!
Next I thought black as that is the background color in the panels. No, definitely not!! The gold in the frame is what the problem is with whatever I decide to do as it doesn't match with any of the flowers in the panel and yet is very outstanding.
I finally decided that this off-white subtle print would work the best. I randomly decided that I wanted about 1 1/2 inches between the hexies and the top and bottom of the panels. It just looked right somehow.
Imagine my shock when I also discovered that I needed 1 1/2 inches between the vertical hexies so that they fit right next to the panel. Furthermore, when I placed the line of hexies next to the panel with its edge pieces, they also fit exactly!! So I ended up not having to doing any subtle fixing to make everything turn out even. I have no idea why this worked but I am not complaining! Now just need to add some stuff to the sides and a border all around and consider the top done. It will probably end up about 44 x 60 when completed. It will definitely be a giveaway one!! It will be a good show and tell for my talk though.
The hexie blocks are three-peats and are certainly different from any other stack and whack I have done!
Today was my first meeting back since back in September. This quilt is the raffle quilt for this year and is just stunning. This club certainly has some master quilters as evidenced by the prizes they have received at various very large shows.
I thought the back was super interesting as well as it was obviously put together a block at a time.
There were 32 Comfort Quilts handed into today and many were just lovely. I just got pics of a few and they are not very good quality so that is why they re smaller than usual. Of course, I ran out of battery before the meeting was over as well so had to resort to my cellphone which just isn't up to long distance pics!!
I got my camera under a bit better control for "show and tell" so these are a bit bigger.
This was actually a smaller wall hanging but I could get a closeup.
This was a stunner done by Claire Welch. I loved it!!
This was a result of the Bonnie Hunter class back in the fall although this quilter chose to do her own thing with the palette. A lovely quilt!
This and the next one were done by the same quilter only she squished the blocks on the second one!
Nancy Levant did this stunning quilt!! It uses Kaffe Fassett fabrics.
This quilt has pictures of cats and dogs all through it and will be used as a fund raiser for one of the humane societies!
Another lovely quilt!
Nice little art quilt.
Tina Somerset was our speaker this month and did a talk on the various elements of design and how she incorporated them into her quilts. It was very dark and she was far away!! The first few pictures were also taken from a distance but shows all the different types of quilts she has created. She is basically a hand quilter and considers herself a traditional quilter turned art quilter. She lives locally and belong to our club.
This was a stunning applique quilt but awfully far away but you get the idea. Tina does a lot of painting on fabric and loads of different kinds of embellishment as well. She hand quilts most but I believe she machine quilted this one.
She did a lot of painting on this one.
The rest of these were taken close up but sitting on a table so I didn't get full images for most but you get the idea!!
This one was English paper pieced. Sounds like she won't be doing any more of that kind! She uses color tools consistently to choose her palettes. She was a lovely speaker. I don't know whether she taught a class as well as I wasn't here but know she teaches and has been well represented in major shows as well as on the AQS Calendar and Quilt Life magazine.
The snowbirds including me were almost all back from our warmer climes! Sarah T is our incredible needlepoint artist and did this as part of a class out west where she spent the winter. She said she learned a lot which is hard to believe as her needlepoint is always beyond stunning!! This was done on screen instead of cloth which I thought was very interesting!!
Another needlepoint piece from Sarah.
Sarah also did this quilt which was a result of a class that fellow RAFA member Janet R teaches. All the blocks use the same components. I did one like this many years ago when Janet taught it as part of our Fall Migration.
Sarah also modeled a jacket she had made.
Here is the back.
Donna showed two flowers that she made from the silk paper that the group made in the last two meetings. I was very sorry I wasn't there for that!!
Donna also showed this jacket that she made out of a very tattered and worn quilt that she bought. She covered the whole thing with organza to protect the fibers. It was absolutely stunning.
Here is the front.
Elaine showed the piece that she made with the silk paper!
Joyce M shared this piece made with her hand painted fabric. She also showed several other pieces fabrics with various surface design techniques.
Deb R shared this piece which I really liked!
Val S did this piece while recovering from two broken wrists!
This is my first showing of what I think I am going to do with some of these smaller mandalas. Here I have used black as the shadow but will probably choose a grey or maybe even a blue instead. Yet to be determined.
The blogs have been sparse as I have returned north and set myself some goals for the summer. One of those goals is to work at least two hours every day getting rid of "stuff". In my first week, I have managed to get rid of 18 very large boxes of yarn as well as a knitting machine -- all to good homes. Unfortunately I discovered even more hand dyed fabric that I had forgotten as well as two more boxes of black and white fabric. I am starting to go through fabric as well and already have six large boxes which I will first try to sell at our quilt club "garage sale" and then will donate the remainder to various organizations. I am also getting rid of a lot of my cookbooks and all my paperbacks as I really only read on a Kindle these days (and have two of those as I filled up one!!).
I also have to finish putting sleeves on some of the ten quilts for our quilt show at the end of May as well as prepare for a talk and demo I am giving to a local quilt club on stack and whack quilts. I am hoping to get back to regular blogging soon!
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