Monday, October 30, 2017

2017 Quilting Day of Sharing

The North Carolina Twin Rivers Quilt Guild hosted this year's Day of Sharing which is a gathering of women from about a dozen quilt guilds throughout the eastern part of North Carolina.  We met in a fantastic facility in New Bern, NC.

This is their guild raffle quilt and a real beauty!

There was a ton of food for both breakfast grazing and lunch grazing.  I didn't need dinner that night!

The first hour was a presentation of Electric Quilt Version 8.  We were the first in the country to see this according to the speaker.  The new version in full won't be available until next week after Quilt Market in Houston.  He did have the Upgrade though which I did buy.  I had not intended to buy it but they have changed the interface dramatically so I went for it -- especially since he sold it discounted!!  I also bought a book that had pictures of everything that is contained in the libraries.  It will be much simpler than paging through online!


Below are the raffle quilts from several other guilds.  I didn't get pictures of all of them and some pics weren't too good.

My Google album of all the pictures is at Day of Sharing Album.  Just click on the link and it should take you there!!


Asheboro Quilt Guild -- can you believe this incredible quilt -- easily one of the most beautiful raffle  quilts I have ever seen!!
 Carolina Pines Quilt Guild.


 Coastal Carolina Modern Quilt Guild

 Gate City Quilt Guild

Greenville Quilt Guild.

There were quilts of every genre here including some art quilts, modern quilts as well as traditional wall and bed quilts.  I don't have any of the names of the people who did these quilts and I sincerely apologize for that.  They did encourage picture taking though!

How is this for a wonderful whimsical wall hanging.

This was a beautiful wall hanging.

Another somewhat whimsical very colorful wall quilt!

 I rally liked this Storm at Sea which is well hidden in the fabric choices and placements.

 I really loved this one.  I might classify it as a "modern" quilt but don't know whether the quilter considers it as such.  Loved the colors and movement.


 Beautiful pineapple log cabin.

Although this is a fairly simple design, I loved the color choices.


 A lovely sampler.


I loved the colors in this one.  I was in the last row so this is a little blurry!

 This was an incredible appliqued quilt.  A closeup is below.  And look at the quilting!!




Another relatively simple pattern with really lovely colors!!  I think living so close to the ocean and having all that Carolina sunshine really affects the palette down here-- it certainly affects my use of coclors.

I finally got a good picturee of this quilt made by one of our Guild members -- Betty Van Sickle.  She made it to commemorate her husband's trans-Canada motorcycle trip this summer.  

These next two are by another Guild member, Becky Bucci!!




I loved this wall hanging with the frogs!!

These next two were one woman's interpretation of a bargello quilt.  I thought it was very clever.  She took a large panel type print and interspersed the bargello strips.  Depending on the fabric, they look very different.





Friday, October 27, 2017

Butterflies and Bags!

The Monarch butterflies are making their annual visit here on their way south.  Our neighbor's Bottlebrush bush was just covered with them this morning.

Here you can see one all the way open posing.

Monarch and friend.

Closeup of the Monarch from behind.

The wasp nest on our porch that no longer is....

I have been making these cosmetic/medicine/electronics bags which are 5 x 9 inches and lined with hand dyed fabric.  I will hopefully be selling some in a couple of weeks along with some of my purses and totes.  These were all made from marbled fabric that I did down here last spring.  There are instructions elsewhere on the blog on exactly how to make these (Instructions for Cosmetic Bag.}.

Thursday, October 26, 2017

October QBTS Meeting

Jaleena Hudson was our presenter for this month and shared many of her scrappy quilts.  This is her maple leaf pattern.


This is a rug she did using scrap strips.
Here is a wreath that she did with a styrofoam wreath and five inch squares.


This is made of strip pieced blocks.  The strips are all random and different widths as well.


This is made of half square triangles and was the subject of the workshop she conducted two days before.  I would have taken the workshop but I really am not a fan of half square triangles as there is so much trimming!!

Here are just a few of the pieces done in class.  The finished one is my friend Dianne's!!

There were probably 20 neo-natal quilts shown all around the room.  It was not conducive to picture taking!  

 As usual, there was a lot of show and tell.  It is amazing how prolific this group is considering there are about half as many members as my Rochester group.  This was from our Flavin Glover class.  Beautifully done!!


This was a beautiful blue and white quilt.

As usual I don't have any names. 
I really liked this scrappy quilt and will save it in Pinterest for future reference!


Wonderful whimsical log cabin. 


Really pretty wall hanging.


Beautiful colors!


Loved these flowers!


Great fun for Halloween!!

I wish I could have gotten better pictures of a lot of the other quilts but was just too close and at an odd angle.  Some day I will figure out where to sit!!


Monday, October 16, 2017

Some New Ice Dyed Pieces

This is an arrangement of nine of the 12 small pieces that I did using the grass green, ultraviolet and basic blue.  They were all a little dark for my taste although they were pretty evenly dyed.  I should have used some yellow in these but thought the very light grass green would work.  I usually stack them a bit deeper as well.  I don't think there were more than a couple piled on top of one another this time, so there were six or seven of the small pieces, one larger one and two drop cloths for each of the two bins.  Usually I have 2 large, 2 drop cloths and 12 to 16 of the small pieces which eats up a bit more dye.

 This and the next piece are both the 23 x 23 inch pieces.  There was one in each batch.



 The next few were the smaller pieces and I thought were the better of the bunch because they were a little lighter.  I do like the ultra-violet and will use that color again.  It is a pre-mixed dye which I tend to shy away from and have used blue-violet in the past but think I like this purple better even than the pure color grape.










The next four were my "drop" clothes.  This was a top layer one.


This was on top of the accordion folded ones pictured below (and my favorites as well).


I think this is a bottom.


Another top with the color clearly delineated.

 These last four were easily my favorites of the day.  I have had a terrible time trying to get even folds on larger  pieces of fabric so did four fat quarters for a start to see how they would do with the technique I planned to use.  The technique was to according fold and then twist around and set them standing up as I suspected that I would get the most even color this way.  I also applied the dyes in stripes across the buncles rather than the random spoonfuls I used on the other two bins.