Back to Rochester (read Gloom) and RAFA

I finally got the Yellowstone piece hung up so that you can see it as you go down the stairs from the third to second floors at the beach house. My email friends helped me find just the right place to hang it. There are so many wonderful empty walls at this house just waiting for quilt art to be hung!! (Of course I have to pass everything by daughter first as she is co-owner) I have to make a new hanging post for one of my pieces from Priscilla (a beautiful Equadorian rug with two stylized cats in exactly the colors of the house on it) but that will get hung up so that you can see it coming up the stairs when I next go to NC.

These are the clever reversible placemats I made with some fabric from Joanns just to see how the process worked. It is basically one placemat with four different sides! I made six in very quick time. Each side of each placemat takes a fat quarter of fabric.

After the glorious days in North Carolina, Rochester and its traditional fall gloom and rain are a bit depressing. The last few days in North Carolina were spent with family and getting the house ready for some renters who are coming down in a couple of weeks. We will be back down again for Thanksgiving and then onto Florida for three weeks! I could get used to warm weather and sunshine without much trouble!

The October Rochester Area Fiber Artists (RAFA) meeting was yesterday and there are always surprises! We had a new visitor who is a dyer (yeh) and teaches it locally and sounds as obsessed as a number of us are! Hopefully, she will bring some of her work to a meeting so we can see what she does. I am always amazed at everyone's slightly different look -- I can always pick out my fabrics from a pile!

This was a piece that Janet Root started in a class with Bob Adams at QBL this last summer. She used his dense stitching technique to embellish this piece. We decided we liked it better than many of his pieces!! Janet is a meticulous worker with a great design sensibility.
This was one of several vessels that were made by a new member. She created the dyed felted surfaces and then used stiffener to make them into vessels. They were all beautiful. They were made with silk and nylon organza and she used a technique she found in a Quilting Arts magazine which utilized RIT dyes. We cautioned her that the RIT dyes wouldn't work on the cottons and rayons (which she had found out for herself).


This was one of three pieces that Barb Seils had begun in Nancy Crow workshops. They will be appearing in our group show in Old Forge NY starting on October 10 through November 11.

In Search of the Venus Flytrap!

Well, Betsey and Sue left on Sunday and Mari and I decided it was time to visit Carolina Beach State Park. We are about five minutes away from this at our beach house. We were truly amazed by the size of the visitor center and the many paths throughout the park. We, however, were on a mission to find the Venus Flytrap.

What I hadn't known before this trip, was that the Venus Flytrap is only found within 75 miles of Wilmington NC. In fact, there are many carnivorous plants within this same geographical area! They like the very acid sandy soil. We were told the Venus Flytraps could be found growing in spagnum moss areas.

Well, we saw lots of mushrooms (which seemed really weird in a very sunny, sandy soil) and cactus but no Venus Flytraps. We even called back to the visitor center to make sure we were on the right path (the Venus Flytrap path) and they told us they were very had to spot as they are so small. We tried the path 2 1/2 times and then gave up! We did spot the yellow pitcher plant in the above photo which is also a carnivorous plant.
We will have to come back in the spring when the Venus Flytrap actually has a flower. I am going to try to coerce Lisa and Warren into walking one of the longer trails in the park also.

This I believe is Orange Milwort which I thought was very pretty. It was hiding behind the pitcher plant.

I don't know what this flower is but suspect from its shape that it is another carnivorous plant.

This I think is a Virginia Meadow Beauty.

One of the many pines in the park with the bright blue sky behind.

Butterflies, Butterflies, Butterflies!!

I believe this is a black swallowtail.

Wilmington should be renamed the butterfly capital of the south! Since coming down here, I have seen butterflies almost continuously but it took a visit to the Poplar Grove Plantation just north of Wilmington to finally get a chance to take some pictures! So I will take this opportunity to bore you with butterfly pictures (and some of the plantation as well). This peanut plantation was originally owned by the Foy family who owned this house and the two miles of land that stretched to the Sound. The breezes that were blowing on this warm sunny day were amazing. We had privilege of seeing an art show at the same time which was resident in one of the outbuildings.

I do believe this is a gecko -- he certainly looks like the spokesman for Geico.

This is probably some kind of locust (it was suggested that it was a desert locust but the coloring didn't look right -- however, supposedly they can change color). These were HUGE -- probably close to 4 or 5 inches long. There were many of these which obviously loved the Turks Cap plants which were growing by the Weaving building.

This yellow moth was also one of many I had seen but they seldom landed long enough to get their pictures taken! I think this is a Cloudless Sulphur butterfly (or moth?).

Another of the many species of butterfly! I believe this is called a Gulf Fritillary. There are some great sites for identifying both wildflowers and butterflies native to North Carolina!
I thought these were such unusual and beautiful lillies.

This was the kitchen in back of the main house on the plantation.

This is the orb weaver spider which is a very large spider with a beautiful very distinctive web. This one was probably an inch long.

Another view of what I believe is the swallowtail shown above although this might be a Spicebush Swallowtail. You can see the more distinctive markings here.

Charleston, Charleston......

This is Mari, Sue and Betsey in front of the Visitor's Center.


After a fun day of hanging out and catching up on life in general, we got up at 5:30 and headed for Charleston SC which entailed a 6:15 ferry ride and four hours of driving! Priscilla had left on Wednesday, we sewed on Thursday so Friday was chosen as the Charleston day. Sue, Betsey, Mari and I (as well as Barbara still in California because she is under the weather) have been internet pals for close to 15 years! We have gotten together in California and NY in the past (but only once had all five of us together).


We didn't have a lot of time to spend in Charleston so we decided that a bus tour would be the best way to see the most of the city in the shortest time so we signed up for the 2 hour bus tour and house tour. We then doubled back and walked through the market and then a very late lunch at a spot recommended by the tour guide (note: don't trust the tour guide for a recommendation!). Charleston is as beautiful as I remember. Mari managed to get a phone book and called a local quilt shop for directions. Then the search was on!! We only had twenty minutes before they closed!! Needless to say, it took getting lost and another phone call before we found the shop. They nicely stayed open for us and of course we just had to buy something! We were all pretty tired by then so headed on home which was longer than going as we both couldn't take the ferry as we were too late and the navigators fell down on the job (giggling I might add by this time).

This was inside the roof of a very old Unitarian Church in Charleston. Freedom of religion was rigorously enforced in early Charleston which prided itself on its tolerance.

This was an example of the fine ironwork throughout the city. The last time I was here was probably close to 20 years ago and there was still a lot of reconstruction going on. There is so much more that has been restored now -- really amazing considering the age of many of these homes.

My family has mocked me for years as the first time I was in Charleston I was totally fascinated with the earthquake bolts and would point them out on every building. Here is an example of one! These were used to shore up buildings damaged badly in a 7.0 earthquake in the late 1880's. They literally screwed them back together and held them in place with these bolts. Many times they were covered with something decorative and they are a clear indicator that a building is more than 100 years old.

Busy Beach Days!

This is Betsey and Mari who along with Priscilla and Sue turned my kitchen counter into our cutting and ironing area.
The first few days at the beach were filled with shopping! Priscilla and I methodically checked out every fabric shop listed in the Wilmington phone book. These included three shops that were primarily home decorating fabrics and two that were unabashedly quilt shops. The three home dec shops were:

Mill Outlet Village (really nice shop with rugs and some discounted fabrics as well as some quilt fabrics), Discount Fabrics (lots of phoney suede really cheap), Fabric Solutions which had even more of the phoney suede in awesome colors. We then hit Summer Breeze which was a very well stocked quilt shop that was also a Bernina dealership. We bought lots there. Then on to Fran's Sewing Circle which was a quilt shop but did contain other dress fabrics as well with some beautiful silks. It doubles as a Viking dealership. The Wilmington shops all got A ratings from us! When we ran out of shops in Wilmington, we went to Jacksonville (NC) and Charleston, SC!

This shot is of Betsey modelling her new purse that she made from fabric purchased at The Cotton Patch in Jacksonville, a shop that was recommended by two club members who had been there. They were right on! We all bought purse patterns there as well as fabric!





I had made up little purse kits before leaving home, mixing one marbled fabric with two matching hand dyed fabrics from my stash. We did a round robin so that everyone got five picks. We then proceeded to make purses from them. This is
Sue and Betsey from Albany along with yours truly!

These are the finished purses. Of course Betsey overachieved and made another from the scraps she had left over! She also made a wallet and you can see the other purse she is modelling.

This was Priscilla and I at a wonderful riverside restaurant in Wilmington -- Riverboat Landing. They have the best salad ever -- the Riverboat salad -- mixed greens, dried cranberries, walnuts, mandarin oranges and then this wonderful white balsamic vinegar dressing -- yum, yum.
Of course, Mari and I had to make sure that Sue and Betsey experienced the same food so we were back two days later for lunch. This time we sat on the balconies overlooking the river -- very cool.


Mari initiated us to the joys of Costco where she has a membership. This was the HUGE key lime pie we purchased which four women can finish off in record time! Too bad you left too soon Priscilla!

The Binghamton Quilt Shows

On the way down to North Carolina, Priscilla and I made a short detour to Binghamton NY to see a quilt show that looked interesting at SUNY Binghamton as mentioned in the last post (there is a link there as well to the show). It was a fantastic show that really contained two shows in one.

There was a gallery filled with Amish and Mennonite quilts curated by Gerald Roy downstairs in the Fine Arts Bldg and a contemporary show upstairs. We just so happened to be there for the Opening Reception! Jack Braunstein was the curator of this exhibit and gave a brief introduction.

Priscilla and I would highly recommend this show to anyone interested in either genre! They are both very different but very graphic and wonderful!

This was the view down to the gallery from the second floor. You will see many familiar quilts.

This is one of Karen Stone's quilts. She has a wonderful sense of color and design.

This quilt was done by Margaret Miller.

Although I was not familiar with this woman's work, Marilyn Henrion had a couple of stunning pieces in this show which was focused on contemporary quilt artists.

A lovely evening with Priscilla's daughter and dinner out capped the evening and prepared us mentally for heading south the next day!

GVQC -The Journey Begins!

What a busy day!! It was the first meeting of our quilt club for the new year and I had the car filled from top to bottom with stuff to take to North Carolina. Our speaker for September was Paula Nadelstern so I decided I would have to take my PN inspired Snowflake Quilt for Show and Tell, even though it had been in a quilt show 5 years earlier (no one remembered it anyway!). To assuage my conscience about showing a quilt a second time, I decided that I would need to machine quilt it more densely than I had so....the day before leaving for NC, I machine quilt away! Of course I discovered that it probably not a good idea to quilt with a 12 pound cat sitting on the quilt. I finally had to throw him out when he decided he needed to play since just riding on the quilt was just boring. He got locked out just a few minutes later!

The meeting was filled to the brim but there were only a few quilts for show and tell which was fine.

This is another magnificent piece by Marcia Eygabroat (http://www.quiltedartworks.com/ ) of her parents. Her mother, Sally Hershberg is a longtime GVQC member. We are so lucky to have Marcia in our club as well as RAFA. She moved up north from down here in Wilmington NC (and actually used to live on the same street I currently have the beach house!) Small world.

This is a very poor picture of Paula Nadelstern's snowflake quilt but it gives you the idea.

Here is my version which was all original snowflake designs (the bigger flakes). The smaller and medium sized white flakes were all silk screened on with white paint after the quilt was completed (and trust me, that took guts and lots of practice on scraps). I also free hand machine embroidered small silver snowflakes all over the background. I added the all over quilting the day before the meeting. If you double click you can see more detail!

After the meeting, Priscilla and I headed quickly out to the car and started on our North Carolina trek. First stop was Binghamton New York which was a little out of the way. There had been a notice of a quilt show which would have its Opening Reception that afternoon at SUNY Binghamton(http://www2.binghamton.edu/art-museum/exhibitions/index.html). Priscilla had contacted her daughter the day before and asked if she minded if we crashed there for the night!

The quilt show was well worth the extra hour of time we used heading south!!! It was two quilt shows in one which was an extra treat. More coming -- keep watching the blog!!