Dear Deer....

While we love to see you out in the wild, we would prefer that you keep off Route 590 at 5 in the morning, especially when you come from the left across 4 lanes of traffic to miss our car by mere inches! A pastoral setting like Marcia's is a much better place for deer and here is one of two we saw this morning shortly after arriving at her house!

It was a very productive day to get started and finish up many things that have been put off for some time by trips, quilt shows etc. First on the agenda was photographic the four quilts I own that were made by Lena Mae Cooke. I had purchased them from her granddaughter some time ago at an antique sale. Three others are owned by the local Rochester Museum and Science Center and of course the most beautiful ones are still owned by the family -- pictures of most of these were in the quilt show slideshow from several days ago. Mrs. Cooke was the second president of the Genesee Valley Quilt Club. I ran into her granddaughter at the quilt show and she indicated that her children were very interested in her grandmother's quilts and that she was putting together a book about them and wanted photos of the ones I had (which she didn't realize I had). So today I took pictures. Imagine my surprise when I spotted dates on two of the quilts in the quilting!! I closely inspected the other two and couldn't find any dates though. One was a lot earlier than I thought.

These first two are a pair of Carolina Lily quilts which are twin bed sized with lovely green swags. These are the two that don't have dates.

This is the detail from one of the two Carolina Lily quilts.
This is my favorite of the four quilts and is appliqued tulips with a blue ribbon swag. It has lovely quilting and a date of 1941 on it.

Detail of the center of the Tulip Applique quilt.

A closeup of some of the quilting as well as the embroidered 1941 date.

This is a fairly utilitarian scrappy basket quilt. This has a date of 1936 quilted in one corner. I had never seen it before today and it took a little inspection to finally see what it was!!

This is a closeup of the basket quilt pictured above.

This is a closeup of the 1936 date I found quilted in one of the corners of the above quilt. It reminded me of similar finds in the RMSC quilt collection! Always fun to find things like this.

Besides getting pictures of the quilts, I also managed to make my new granddaughter a little hat and cut out a dress for her. The hat will definitely go with her grandfather when he visits the family this week. I also managed to cut out four aprons for another family member (Gail, don't tell Bill). I will be dyeing and marbling at least a couple of these.

My last task was trying out a cute little pattern for a purse that I found. It is called the Potato Chip purse as you supposedly can't make just one. Hmmm, we shall see about that!

Purge the Paperwork!

Well, the quilt show is well over but the paperwork remained so Nancy suggested a bonfire was in order! Janet invited the people with paperwork to burn out to her house for a potluck bonfire. And we did have a PILE of paperwork -- I was happy to get mine off my dining room table! Janet lives out in the country in a beautiful old house built in 1835 which her very talented husband has remodeled and fixed up. It was a perfect early summer night -- just cool enough near Lake Ontario -- with even a colorful sunset as a bonus! We stayed far longer than we had intended as Lisa is home for just a couple of days because of awful airlines delays.

Roz and Julie are talking with the wonderful old shed in the background with the quilt square painted on it!



This was the beginning of the sunset looking out from Janet's driveway. Handy-dandy Photoshop quickly dispensed with the electrical wires that were in the fore-ground.
The colors were deepening in this shot and looks like the inspiration for some painted fabric!

The fire was going strong right from the beginning. Ken does know how to set a fire!! The paperwork soon was dispensed with! It provided a little warmth and a great backdrop for a very nice evening with good company out in the country.

Everyone is sitting around the fire. Note Julie is all wrapped up in a quilt of all things!

So Ugly, I Couldn't Give Them Away....

The secret container in the bowels of my basement contains the above plus the following:

Class Dyeing Projects Gone Awry...

What Was I Thinking...

It Seemed Like a Good Idea at the Time....

So That is What Those Dyes Look Like Together (I was Better Off Not Knowing)....

They Said They Were PFD...

Experiments in Purple (or Trying to Find the Perfect Purple).....

Maybe Overdyeing Will Fix This (NOT)....

Maybe Discharging Will Fix This (also NOT)...

Now you know the truth!! I make horrible mistakes in dyeing and have a big Rubbermaid container in my basement keeping them from the world. Occasionally, I bring them out and offer them up for free during classes and discharging sessions. Yes, these are so bad that I can't even give them away!!

But I now know they are the most incredible backdrops for doing marbling!! Marbling on colors is very, very forgiving -- you don't see all the little mistakes that you see on the stark white background. I do use both transparent and semi-transparent paints when marbling over color. If the marbling color is light, I will add a little titanium white which is pretty opaque and which pops the color a little. I also tend to work on analogous colors so I will marble over a purple with all shades of blues and a little purple, red with yellows, oranges and reds etc. When working with transparents, this prevents the uglies (those unpredictable mud colors that happen when mixing complementary colors). I don't like using fully opaque paints with marbling as they tend to slough off more when you are rinsing and leave a bit of a mess.

Today, I alum-ed up perhaps 20 yards of my supreme uglies hoping to transform many of them into nice pieces of fabric!! It seems clear, however, that there could be another category -- Maybe Marbling Will Fix This....

This was a piece of rust colored shiboried fabric -- the color was ugly and the pattern was nothing to write home about. I like its new incarnation.
This was a piece of Joann's "finest" cotton dyed a pale orange and very boring.

This was also from my very early days of dyeing when I used Joanns white Country Classics fabric which was terribly flawed, but it was white! This had been dyed a pale yucky purple.

Same as above. I really like this new incarnation!

Again, same as above, a palish lavender/purple -- very nondescript and the kind of purple you get when the reds and blues don't quite mix. It is much happier this way!

After the Party is Over...

Well, back to posting some random things in my blog if George lets me. He is a mite possessive of his owners and requires their undivided attention. Like many of his step brothers and sisters, he likes to be in the center of the action, wherever that might be. Yesterday, I had to reboot the computer, he did so many strange things to it. At one time he managed to put about ten layers of gadgets on my machine as well -- all of the same calendar... But he purrs so loudly, it's hard to disturb him!!

Our clematis is beautiful this year. We have put in a couple of more colors which hopefully will start blooming next year. These are probably 15 years old and are covered with flowers!

I had to take this closeup of the clematis after the rain. I love the centers and as they age, they become like little furry stems with no flower anymore.

Joe's roses are starting to bloom now as well. Our next door neighbor has beautiful gardens which we have the privilege of gazing at all year!! We provide the comic relief as far as gardening and lawn upkeep is concerned. I prefer wild flowers to grass and we grow fruit trees in front of the house where we get our only sun! Our neighbors are usually pretty tolerant except when the forget-me-nots get a little out of control in late spring. Hopefully the violets will crowd them out over the next year!

I am back to marbling once again but my cold has slowed me down a bit (not too much though!)

And the Awards Go To......

Best Art Quilt in the Blank Challenge by Pat Pauly. This was my favorite piece in the whole show even though it was small. I loved the color and line -- very soothing.

Because there were so many fantastic quilts in the GVQC quilt show and also because my quilts didn't win any, I decided we needed some more awards! (Please keep in mind, these awards reflect only my opinion and certainly take nothing away from the quilts that won the other awards.)

The quilt shown above with the detail below is my pick for Best Applique and Best of Show and it did also win at the show. It is by Shirley Frew.






Best Use of Blank Challenge Fabric in Design


These next two are tied for Best Use of Fabric in the Stack and Whack Technique. The first is by Dorothy Brotsch -- the new queen of Stack and Whack and the second by Barb Sassano.

Best Graphic Design in a Contemporary Quilt

Best Hand Quilting in a Large Quilt by Ann Nash.

Most Prolific Quilter of Truly Incredible Quilts goes to Chris Wickert. This quilt raised money for a charitable organization and is all hand quilted. She had several stunning quilts in this show.

Best Hand Quilting in a Small Quilt by Toni Foster. We expect nothing less from this phenomenal designer and quilter.

Best Machine Quilting on a Wall Hanging by Val Schultz. A lot of the prize winning quilts had long arm quilting by this talented woman. You must double click to see the detail. Pam Peet designed and made the top which is beautiful on its own!

Best Use of Borders in a Quilt by Linda Bachman. I kept going back to this quilt with its magical colors.

Best Adaptation of a Fall Migration pattern to Pat Pauly who is without peer in color and design.

Best Adaptation of a GVQC Class in this piece started in a class with Sharon Craig. The choice of fabrics and the machine quilting done by Jeanne Simpson are stunning.

Best Use of Vintage Fabrics in this quilt by Me. Of course, it was only one of two using vintage fabrics but what the heck!! (Told you I would win something.)

Best Machine Quilting in a Large Quilt by Teddy Ahern. Teddy and Val Schultz are two incredibly talented long arm quilters in the Rochester area and this showed in the number of winners that had quilting by these two ladies!

I didn't even attempt to award any additional awards in the art quilt category as there were just too many to choose from!

2009 Genesee Valley Garden of Quilts Festival

If you double click on the above slide show, you can go and see the slide show in full screen rather than the small ones. There were over 700 quilts and the first 20 pictures are of the show as a whole. I only took pictures of about 250 as many had appeared in my blogs before!

Well, the show was a rousing success and I did my own judging of the different categories and added a few new categories of my own!!! Unlike in the past where we had viewers' choice awards, this year we had 4 guild presidents from around New York as the judges. There were so many hard choices to make as there were many exceptional quilts and some categories had over 200 quilts in them and only 8 prizes for each category. I, of course, did not get any (but don't worry I may award myself an honorable mention in one category as modesty has never been my strong suit). I will also create some new and exciting categories for judging as well (and it is just possible I will win one of those too)!!

Today, however, I will just include some pictures from the show and a link to my Picasa album which will have a HUGE number of photos of individual quilts from this show for those of you who didn't have the opportunity to visit. It is best to double click on some of these to see the details. There were so many stunning quilts in this show, I didn't begin to capture all of them!
This is looking down onto the quilt floor from the balcony of the Field House.

I have always loved doing the Stack and Whacks and there were some superb examples of this and the One Block Wonders (a variation of the technique), so I of course took pictures of most of these. This was a lovely setting with the center stars of what looks like a carpenter's wheel to me.



This was a quilt that won best of show and it will win best of show in my categorization as well. It was a stunning Baltimore Album style that took Shirley four years to make. It is the pattern "Little Brown Bird" and there are birds in most of the appliques.

This was part of our vintage quilt exhibit and is a quilt done by our second Club President Lena Mae Cook. This was not her favorite of the quilts she did though, according to her granddaughter who was at the exhibit. This quilt is stunning!

Another view of the floor of the quilt show looking into the pieced quilts of which there were over 200 full sized quilts! Our raffle quilt is in the foreground. The raffle will go until October 8 when the winner will be named!

RAFA Meeting Last Thursday

Well, we had a very brief meeting of RAFA on Thursday as many of us had to start working on the quilt show. We did have a brief Show and Tell though which included a couple of nice wearable garments from our quilters as well as some quilts from our wearable artist!

This is Pat F posing with her new vest made with her newly marbled fabrics from the Elin Noble class.


This is one of Priscilla's art quilts. She is such a pefectionist, she didn't enter any of these into the quilt show....

This was a piece Priscilla constructed in a class she took with Melody Johnson. I do recognize a piece of hand dyed fabric in there...

After having the brief meeting, I headed off to help with the hanging of the show.

We had 168 art quilts in the show which is far more than ever before. This year we even had our own category which made it much nicer. It became clear after we started hanging the show that we needed much more space. Our wonderful quilt show hanging chairperson managed to come up with an additional 70 linear feet of partitions so that we could spread them out instead of the usual very crowded hanging that we have. It made a huge difference in how the quilts looked although we could have doubled the space again! We have gotten spoiled with our gallery presentations recently!