Back to Rochester and Our May GVQC Meeting

 After a horrendous two day drive from North Carolina back here to Rochester, I finally got home Wednesday afternoon. (I had torrential rains for hours each day which is really  unusual -- almost whiteout conditions and I thought I had avoided nasty driving by coming back so late.)  I had really wanted to attend our quilt club meeting today as I hadn't been here in so long and our big quilt show is at the end of the month.  It was good to see everyone again after such a long absence and nice to hear how many have followed my adventures in my blog.

Our quilt club donates a very large number of "comfort" quilts to various organizations in the Genesee Valley.  These next two pictures illustrate just a a couple that were shown this month (they were moving them too fast across the stage!)

There were a number made with this pattern.

Next came "show and tell".  This was a quilt made as a result of a class taught at Patricia's on circles by our own Janet Root.  Really liked the quilt!

 This is one of several purses shown that were made as a result of a class taken last month with  Marlous Carter.  

Loved the colors in this quilt made with Kaffe fabrics for a new grandchild being born in New Orleans which accounts for the bright colors!

This was undoubtedly my favorite for the day made for a daughter who was leaving the nest and going to California.  A fire destroyed all the baby pictures so mom tried to include important events in the quilt.  It was really nice and very symbolic!!

Hopefully it will be in the aforementioned quilt show.

Our speaker for today was Valerie Goodwin who spoke on her architectural background (she is an architect and now a quilter as well).  Her work integrates her love of architecture and stitch and her quilts are wonderful!!  She uses all different kinds of maps as her inspiration and starting point.

Her website is:  http://www.quiltsbyvalerie.com/.  You can see examples of her work there.  I only included a couple of pictures here.

You can also "like" her on Facebook and looks like she is a fairly frequent poster.

This was a stunning quilt which is drawn from images of Manhattan.  These are complex and layered quilts which frequently now include painting.

In her slide presentation, she showed many examples of student work -- she teaches a fiber class in her architecture curriculum.  There was some awesome work from her students which shows what a good teacher she is.  This was just one class project.

Her book will be published in September and can now be pre-ordered.

I was way way in the back of the room and the only way I could see her slides was literally to use my telephoto lens to take pictures and then blow them up on my camera to look at while she talked.  Both Marcia and I enjoyed the talk more when we could do this!!  I was not familiar with her work but Marcia had seen several of the pieces before in pictures from major exhibitions.