Gathering Up the Goodies....

Well, I finally had to make some headway into getting all my hand-dyed "solids" together as I had promised our guild that I would provide some fabrics for our Diamond Anniversary quilt -- yes, our quilt club will be celebrating 75 years of continuous meetings in 2011 and we want to make a special raffle quilt for that year. My hand dyeds were spread all over the place including hiding away in project boxes matched up to commercial fabric for some unknown quilt design! Janet G. picked up 27 yards from my stash with a promise that I would do some gradations of other colors if they need them as they get further along in design. It is going to be a Baltimore Album type of quilt designed by club members.

I must say that looking at the pictures, it looks like I have a relatively modest bunch of fabric but pictures do lie!! Besides this "solid" bunch, I have a couple of very large boxes of prima donnas (those ones that are shiboried, dye painted, snow dyed, salt dyed and sprinkled with colors). Even the boxes of solids look much larger in person and I swear it would be hard to find a color that I don't have at least a 1/4 yard of! I may have to go back to selling a bit of this but at least now I know where my future dyeing efforts should be made (I must add that I have a whole bunch of yellows and oranges already set aside for a lillies quilt I am working on so they don't even show up here!). Anyway for your viewing enjoyment!


This is the box of reds, purples and some oranges and yellows.

This was my blues and greens boxes. All those folded over pieces are full yards with 1/4's and halves hanging about on top. A lot of the greens are also in my lillies box right now meeting up with the yellows and oranges. (I can never have enough greens.)

This was my "neutrals" box. Each of those thin slivers is a full yard of fabric! Lots of grays and browns here. I get a kick out of the browns as they definitely change color dramatically when the light shining on them changes from daylight to incandescent light.


These are the ones I called my earthtones -- as you can see, they are a bit on the warm side. As before, each piece is a full yard at least.


I must say that looking at all this, I think I am going to concentrate on doing some simple brights the next time I do dyeing although I can't help mixing up some earthy greens as well. And here am I also hoping for a bit of snow (no stones thrown at me please) before we head south for awhile! I am anxious to get back to my snow dyeing!

Old Forge - Oh My!

Looking out over the Middle Branch of the Moose River in Old Forge.

While hanging our show, we had the wonderful opportunity to not only do a little sightseeing in the area, but also to see the Northeast Quilt Show which was opening yesterday and goes through the first week in November. I was very impressed with the quality of the quilts. In addition to our own RAFA show and this NE show, there was also a show of New York Studio Art Quilters Association quilts (Priscilla and Marcia were represented here) and an embroiderers guild show so there was lots to see!

More fall scenery by the Moose River

This is a view looking down onto the show as was the picture.



This was a quilt by Mary Knapp which was inspired by Escher drawings. It is called Visual Perception and contains her hand dyed and overdyed fabrics. Fabulous!

This quilt was designed by Diane J. Evans by using a technique learned in a Ricky Tims class. It is called Color My World and is just stunning in person.

There are tons more quilts in the show and I highly recommend you visit if you can. Also make sure you visit the nice little Black Bear quilt shop in Inlet NY which is just ten miles north of the show!

From the embroidery show.

This is Marcia Decamp's SAQA piece.

I will put up a Picasa album after the show is over for those of you who missed it. It will contain some of my favorites.

Old Forge Art Center RAFA Show!

One of my pieces -- Memories of California which was designed from several photos I took on one of our California visits. It is completely pieced and uses some of my hand dyed and hand marbled fabrics. It is about 32" x 40" in size and I am selling it for $900.



For the past two years, the nice folks at the Old Forge Art Center have invited us to use one of their galleries for a display (and possible sale) of quilts made by the members of our art quilt group Rochester Area Fiber Artists (RAFA). We were delighted to return and hang our 29 quilts again this year. Fourteen of our fifty members participated this year and we had a number of quilts that have not been seen before! We are a very eclectic group and the challenge was to pull all the diverse styles and colors of quilt art together into a cohesive exhibit! We think we did pretty good!


This is the view from the door looking in on the left hand side of the gallery.

This was what I called the blue corner. It contains my Pelican, a piece called African Splendor by Pat Berardi and a magnificent piece by Janet Root called Idania's Wheel.

This was the view of the right hand side of the gallery.

This is a piece by Val Schultz called Hints of Spring.


This is a piece by Mary Wieser called Disturbing Zebra.
This is a piece by Elaine Ross called Longwood Water Gardens and has a lot of dimension.

This was the black and white wall which has two pieces by Sarah Terry on top based on Zentangle drawings. The two pieces on the bottom are called Butterfly Flower by Elaine Ross and Blue Grandma by Brenda D'Angelo. You can't see from the picture, but grandma has blue eyes but this was about the only picture Brenda has seen where she looks happy.

October GVQC Meeting

It has been a regular frenzy of activity this week getting ready to hang quilts at the Old Forge NY Arts Center Gallery. Our RAFA group has been invited for the second year to have an exhibit up there so 30 quilts were documented, photo'ed and packed. Janet and I first attended the October meeting of the Genessee Valley Quilt Club. Our featured speaker was Mary Diamond who is from the Ithaca area of NY and makes wonderful unique art quilts. (She was in the Iron Quilter competition the week before!)

The above quilt was probably my favorite from "show and tell" as I just loved the colors!

This is Barb Brummond holding a quilt that is very unlike her usual pallette but isn't it nice! I think she said it came as a kit or she never would have done it!

These next three quilts were all the works of Mary Diamond who does a wonderful job of using representational images in a very unique style! She taught a one day class on faces on Friday and is teaching a class on thread painting today.

This quilt, also by Mary, is a three piece quilt and you can see the size!

Had to take a picture of this snowball "I Spy Quilt" as it was really lovely and may become my pattern of choice for baby quilts in the future.

This was a lovely very simple quilt by our master quilter Ann Nash. She said you could put anything together as long as you surrounded it with black sashing!

After our meeting, Janet and I headed to the "north country" hoping to see some autumn foliage along the way (we did).

A good night's sleep in a quaint Adirondack cottage prepared us for getting read to hang the show on Friday morning.

The Tompkins County Quilt Guild Greater Ithaca 2009 Show

Along with the Iron Quilter competition, the Ithaca guild had a very nice quilt show. I took quite a few pictures of ones that are especially of interest to me which includes a wonderful assortment of scrap quilts and stack and whacks. I have ceased making the stack and whacks after getting totally addicted to them and making at least 25! I still like to look at some of the wonderful fabric choices that others make though. I do love symmetry. There were several other really spectacular quilts in the show but mine is but a small sampling and hopefully someone will tell me which ones win the Viewers Choice awards.


I thought this quilt was just spectacular and had my vote for the best large quilt!! It was based on a Kaffe Fassett Museum quilt and it was this lady's FIRST quilt! Oh My!

This was a beautiful medium sized contemporary quilt.

Again, this was a lovely scrap quilt and I thought the best of the scrap quilts in the show although I thought they were all very nice.

This last one was one of three "stack and whacks" that was in the show and it was inspired by molas. I thought it was a wonderful fabric to show off this pattern!!

I loved this one called Fireworks that was made as a gift to a couple.

The link below gives you a brief view of the quilts. If you double click on it, it will take you to my Picasa site where you can see all the quilts full sized!

The Iron Quilter Challenge at the Greater Ithaca Quilt Show in Ithaca

Well, it was up at the crack of dawn to meet two friends to make the journey to Ithaca to see the Iron Quilter Challenge as well as to visit the quilt show (and needless to say the vendors). It was a long drive but we got there in plenty of time to see the kickoff for the challenge. The ladies were already psyching each other out trying for the crowd and emotional advantage!


The Challenge rules were announced precisely at 11 and the ladies had three hours to come up with a finished quilt any size over a foot by a foot. They would have ten minutes to grab fabric from a table that had been covered. The challenge theme was announced "to curve and not to curve". The ladies had been allowed three fabrics of their own to bring as well as embellishments of any kind and thread of any kind.

While everyone was still relaxed and happy at the beginning!

Diving for the fabrics!

Pat psyching out the competitors! She wins the prize for being able to work the fastest while still maintaining the psychological edge -- a real crowd pleaser!! Her trash talk with Priscilla, Maureen and Mary Diamond really kept the mood fun!

The audience awaiting the results!




After grueling sessions with the judges questioning every aspect of their pieces, the winner of the judged part of the competetion was announced -- Susan Clark from Ontario Province in Canada! She also won the raves of the viewers who also picked her as the best (Viewer's Choice) so she went home with two -- yes, irons! Her quilt probably best embodied the spirit of the competition -- using the fabrics on the table. She had only brought some black fabric with her as her own fabric.

If you want to see a lot more pictures including pictures of all the quilts in the competition, go to my Picasa site -

http://picasaweb.google.com/Elizabeth.Brandkamp/20091004IronQuilter#

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.