Thursday, November 1, 2007

A Day at RAFA

Well, we are getting ready for our show at the Rochester Area Council for the Arts later this month so it was nice to see all the different pieces all ready to be hung. Our leader on this process has been the inimitable Pat Pauley who is a fantastic artist/designer on her own and who has prodded us to be more professional in our approach to our arts. Her passion for art is definitely an inspiration for all of us.

I didn't take my camera today but did manage to get done the Yellowstone II piece and for the first time ever in a quilt, am anxious to get to the quilting part as I know it will be much improved by this step. I did manage to convey what I wanted to with this piece. It is larger and more complex which is what I was going for. I liked the first piece for its simplicity but I really wanted to take it further and I accomplished this. I am feeling definitely a need to try something else with this particular composition. I learned new things with the second piece. Most prominent was that I should keep the sketch and the composition itself relatively simple and then play with the different areas without committing myself to specific elements in the drawings. I like piecing my own fabric and using close values for some background areas but using lots of different fabrics. The next thing I want to do is to use more complex fabrics as well. Using my own mottled hand dyes is nice, but there is not the variety of textures I would like to have, some of which are only available from a practical standpoint in your local quilt shop. I love the work of Ruth McDowell and the group today talked about trying to get her for a five day class some time in the next couple of years and that may just happen. She uses very complex fabric and I am not sure I am there yet, but would like to move in that direction. Anyone who has seen my stash, knows that it will not be a problem to find the appropriate fabrics!!

We had two new members today as well and that is always exciting. One is a dyer that I met on Dyerslist. She does phenomenal work with mandalas -- as good as anything I have seen available anywhere. I am so glad that they opened up the membership again. I know she sells on Etsy.com but don't know her screen name right off hand.



Our Mickey finally was awake long enough for me to get his picture on our sofa.

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