A Pieceful Day at Marcia's

The day was wonderful and the company grand! It has been awhile since the three of us have gotten together to sew, eat and gab. Two projects wended their way into my bag and called out to be worked. One was a bog coat I made with some of my hand dyed fabric but which didn't have a front band on it. So that is almost done now and I will finish the stitching on it tonight.

The second is some homework to do before attending a Ruth McDowell workshop in Massachusetts in September. A couple of the other art quilters in our RAFA group are attending in July and they had received their instructional letter already. One thing that is recommended BEFORE attending the workshop is that you work one of the pieces in one of Ruth's books using the techniques she describes. So I decided to do the water lillies from her latest technique book. It is lots of curves and I love curves and will probably do a piece with lots of curves.

Today was spent tracing her drawings onto freezer paper and putting appropriate marking on them. I am almost positive I will like working with a fabric pattern better but I am willing to give this a try. I know the better part of the work shop will be taking our photos, blowing them up and creating the drawings that Ruth has already done in her books. This will not be an easy task I am sure.

I have admired Ruth's work for 25 years so this class will be a real treat, whether or not I use the techniques on an ongoing basis. She was one of my original inspirations for creating something other than traditional quilts.


This is the back of Priscilla's new jacket. We three decided that we liked the look of the two molas. The bottom one is all beaded so now Priscilla feels she has to add beads to the top one.

This is the front of the new bog coat. The band is Hmong embroidery from Laos. The fabric is the rayon/linen mix that I get at Joanns dyed with Procion MX dyes.
This is a closeup of the fabric in the back of this jacket. I really like the colors which were a combination of intense blue, some turquoise and navy blue with some sun yellow dribbled on first.

Dualing Blogs!!

Well, maybe I will be the first one to get some pictures out from our day at Marcia's. The dualing blogs refers to the fact that Priscilla Kibbee (Priscilla.kibbee) and Marcia (DeCampStudio) both have blogger blogs as well as me and we are always putting up similar pictures from our days working together.



It was a great day. Marcia is on the home stretch with her jacket (and we nagged her that she HAS to have it done by the next time we see her in a couple of weeks). It is down to her much disliked hand stitching (a lot of whining there).

Priscilla is at the very beginning of an ice cream treat jacket that has a mola on the back with a pelican giving an ice cream cone out. I didn't get a picture of that so hopefully Priscilla will have one on her blog.



This is the Yellowstone 2 piece totally quilted and bound. Photographing it in Marcia's studio shows up the stitching nicely. Double click on the picture and you can see the stitching closer.

I did take my Yellowstone 2 piece out for show and tell as Marcia hadn't seen it finished and I did start it in her very studio last fall. I primarily worked on the slash and burn project which is very different from the original concept.



These are the first pieces. I have since moved all the light green pieces up to the upper left hand corner. I am envisioning some sort of abstract flower images in the lower right. It is at the point of deciding what it want's to do and I just follow along guessing at the direction it is taking.


The best part of the day was Marcia's "show and tell" of her two weeks at Nancy Crow's barn. You MUST see her blog(http://www.decampstudio.blogspot.com) to see some of the pieces she has been working on. She shared her progress plus personal pictures of some of the class pieces (which she can't show in her blog). It was just great!

A Warm Summer Day at Marcia's

Well, I finally got around to adding the beads and trims to my flowers from yesterday so here they are all dressed up and ready to go somewhere.
My first chore of the day was to baste the two sides of the Extreme Sampler Depression Sherbet quilt. I am going to machine quilt it in two pieces I think. I am still toying with some hand quilting as well. Suki of course decided she had to sit on the only part I hadn't finished pin basting!
These were some absolutely fantastic batiks that Priscilla had gotten in Napal many years ago. She had piles of them and will be making them into a quilt. Some of my hand dyed fabric is currently in the background but will be replaced with something else.
Well, Marcia finally put up pictures of her incredible orchids on her blog so I took some pictures with the new camera and include one picture for your viewing pleasure. She has a number of varieties and colors and they are all in full bloom and this one even smells nice!

Marcia is really making progress on her jacket. She has it sewn together now and just has to put in the lining and put on the bands in front (they are just sitting in the picture).

We almost got a smile out of Marcia!! Warren says she must be sick and tired of seeing us and is escaping to Ohio -- say that isn't so, Marcia!!
This is a jacket which Priscilla affectionately calls "just your basic blue jacket". It is gorgeous and you really should double click to see the detail. It has some wonderful beaded trim as well as the Seminole piecing and Hmong embroidery. Priscilla has been working on this one for the past month and it is just stunning -- one of my favorites!!

It was a most productive day for me as I managed to get both sides to the Depression quilt basted and got my second Yellowstone Angel Terrace piece basted as well. I used some of the new Fairfield cotton/poly blend batting but I think as soft as it is, that it shed cotton which was getting on the backing and making the basting very difficult as the tape would just not hold it down. Well, we shall see as I plan to quilt the heck out of it anyway!!

After the Jacket Class

Well, we spent another wonderful day at Marcia's studio working on our jackets. We had a smaller group this time and Priscilla was working on a jacket rather than spending all her time teaching us. We all made a lot of progress, I must say.



Donna is definitely making progress on her jacket here. Here are the fronts partially sewn together. It is really shaping up!


I couldn't resist taking this picture of Donna working on her jacket. She got a whole lot accomplished on this one day and I am sure will be done in no time.



She even managed to get quite a bit of the piecing finished on the back which exceeded ever her expectations.


This is the beginnings of Priscilla's jaguar jacket. I fell absolutely in love with the panel which Priscilla found on ebay. We all loved the colors that she is surrounding it with. It is such a nice shade of blue and she found so much to match it from her stash. We all very much encouraged her NOT to put those drop dead gorgeous beaded pieces on the jacket as then we could swoop down on them. She didn't fall for it and will probably include some of them on the front. They were stunning but then the whole jacket is stunning.


This is pretty much how the jacket back looked at the end of the day.



Here is the front of Marcia's jacket. She spent a lot of time moving one of the patches in the front so that it would show -- that is the tricky thing about clothing -- some places just don't show when you put the clothing on! The jacket is really shaping up and should be very elegant when finished -- especially with all that black pieced work.


Well, here is the final picture of the front of my jacket. I am relatively pleased with the changes that I made. I had already finished the back as well.


However, after getting home and now seeing this picture (taken from Priscilla Kibbee's blog - http://www.priscillakibbee.blogspot.com/), I realized that having the black at the bottom of the back would just not do!! It made the jacket look like it was short in the back sooooooo. I got home and first undid the lining (which I had sewn in after adding all the interfacing which I had managed to forget before) and then undid the stitching holding down the middle piece. Everything is flip and sew so it builds out from this center piece. I then put in a couple of strips. I am still not totally happy as the bottom strip only shows about 3/8 inch but at least it is a bright color so the jacket shows its length. I then reassembled everything and of course forgetting the shoulder pads yet again. I will slip them in through the armholes as I refuse to take out the basting a THIRD time!!!

More Jacket Pictures

Well, I have included some of the pictures of the various jackets that were made in the class. Everyone's approach was very, very different and you learn as much from that as the class itself. It is always good to see what advice Priscilla is giving to others.



Julie Brandon was working the fastest in the class and had this luscious batik plus some of her own shibori dyed fabric to work with. Julie is a prolific doll maker and I was waiting to see a doll face apear somewhere!


Instead of going with lots of piecing, Julie went with embellishing the beautiful fabric with lots of couched yarns and then added some appliqued embellishments on both front and back. This is one of my favorite vest/jackets -- like the one I made in the first class.


Here is Julie trying on the jacket so that she and Priscilla can do the last minute fitting.



This was a beautiful vest that Jeanne was working on. She decided to limit the piecing she did and concentrate on decorative stitching as well. She added bronz cording between panels which just spiffed the whole vest right up a notch!



Donna spent most of her first day having Priscilla guide her through the fabric selection process for several jackets to be made. Donna chose a wonderful Japanese panel for the back of her jacket and by Day 3 had a good beginning on the front of the jacket.


This is the front of Donna's jacket. She is going to be sewing like crazy next Tuesday when we again meet at Marcia's.



This is our wonderful host Marcia's jacket back with the wonderful batik and Guatemalan trims. She is doing a lot more embellishing and piecing than she did with her last garment.


This is the beginnings of one of the fronts. Double click on the picture and you can see the intricate black "close value study" she has done here. She spent lots of time sewing strips together and then cutting apart.