Quilters By The Sea Guild November Meeting - Roxanne Lessa

It was a lovely program today with Roxanne Lessa (Roxanne's Blog and Website).  Her quilts were just beautiful and I look forward to the class tomorrow.  She is teaching some fabric painting but almost all the quilts she showed had lots of hand dyed fabric so I want to know if she did the dyeing as well as the painting.  I thought this was just a beautiful piece.  Although the class will feature raw edge applique, this piece uses a different technique -- one she learned from Carol Bryer Fallert.  It sounded a great deal like the technique I learned many years ago from Nancy Murty -- kind of a form of machine applique with invisible thread and using a hemming stitch.

Her lecture was on basic color theory and very thorough.  Years ago I taught a very small class at a local quilt show on color theory and her approach was just about identical to mine.  Because I had to fill a bit more time, I did an exercise with my group.  I gave each pair of two (there were about 16 people I think) a packet of solid fabrics and had a color wheel on an easel.  Their assignment was to identify the colors which sounds simple but definitely isn't as there just aren't any pure colors  and of course  you are dealing with tones, shades and tints of the standard hues.  I think almost everyone in the group went out and bought a color wheel!  It is very helpful when you are trying to determine what complementary colors you might deal with or implementation of any of the other arrangements (split complementary, triadic, etc.)  Even now I occasionally take mine out when I can't quite visualize the components.

This was based on pictures she took at Bryce Canyon.  She uses paint to do some additional shading and highlighting.  It was a beautiful piece as all of hers were!!

 This was a study of Crepe Myrtle, a definitely southern tree.

I just loved this piece -- it is just so fluid and of course the colors are fantastic!

I will save all the Neo-natal and Show and Tell quilts for another blog -- there were a lot!!

Tomorrow, though, I will be off in class and will take my camera of course!