April GVQC Meeting - Guest Speaker Caren Betlinski

We had a lovely presentation today by one of our RAFA group members -- Caren Betlinski.  I first met Caren in a class at Quilting by the Lake (QBL) quite a few years ago now.  It was a dyeing class she was taking to see if she would indeed be interested in doing that herself rather than buying hand dyes from others.  Lucky for we dyers, she chose to buy from others including me!  Anyway, she has developed over the past fifteen years a wonderful style and is known for her thread painting.


This was Caren's very first quilt which was a series of counted cross stitch pieces she did and then was in a quandary about what to do with them.  She consulted at a local quilt shop and they finished this up for her.  She declared she thought she could do this herself and thus a quilter was born!!  

She quickly moved from very traditional to these more contemporary interpretations of simple patterns.  Her wonderful use of color is obvious here.  I should add that she was an oil painter for many years and taught special education (and used to use a lot of art in these classes).

Again, one of her very early quilts.

Before too long, she was back to her roots in oil painting, creating landscapes but this time with fabric.  This is the first of her appliqued landscapes.  

This was one of my favorite of her pieces -- abstracted flowers with lots of quilting.

This is the first of her landscapes where she has begun to use some of her trademark thread painting.  Look at the lilies in the bottom of the wall hanging.

Although the image is a bit skewed, you can see her total transition to thread painting in this wall hanging of hollyhocks which are totally done with thread!


I believe the leaves are still appliqued but may be wrong about this.

This is one of several leaf pieces, appliqued and heavily quilted and detailed.

An Adirondack scene.  Caren has spent a lot of time in this region of NY and many of her quilts were inspired by pictures she has taken there.

I particularly liked this more modern piece she did after a QBL class fairly recently.  The next picture is what the back looked like!

This is the raffle quilt for the Webster Quilt Guild which will be having its show this spring in Webster, NY.  I thought it was a really beautiful design!!


There were a number of lovely quilts in our usual show and tell (a quilt show in itself) but since I was participating, the camera stayed back at my table.  Caren certainly provided a lot of eye candy though with the well thought out presentation of her quilt journey.  Caren has been juried into a number of prestigious shows including Quilts=Art=Quilts and Paducah among many.  She teaches thread painting classes locally.