Lisa White Reber of Dippy Dyes

One of the highlights of this year’s Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival was seeing Lisa White Reber from Dippy Dyes at her booth and also visiting her dyeing class. 

­­­We encountered Lisa at previous shows and officially "met" her at CABS (Creative Arts Business Summit) in Dulles Virginia, March 2015.  CABS is a great summit for anyone who works in any type of creative art medium and wishes to grow their business.  We were able to stop by and visit Lisa in her booth which is full of lovely yardage of many types of fabric all of which have been custom dyed, discharged, printed, folded, stitched and created with many other techniques.

Lisa carries a group of her own custom Thermofax screen designs which we produced for her.

On Saturday afternoon we stopped by a class she was teaching and watched the students use the thermofax screens with thickened dye as well as other techniques she had going on at stations around the room.

 Our VCQ friend Betty Blessin with a piece she created in class.

Another class sample, this one by Abby Geddes, also a VCQ friend.

The show always has an "instructor's row" display; the one below is Lisa's.  (Please excuse the crookedness which is the fault of the photographer.)

It is called "Sir Isaac, May I Present Alma Thomas".  Lisa says "This winter I fell in love with the work of Alma Thomas.  This dye-painted fabric is an interpretation of her paintings, The Eclipse and Rainbow.  A challenge to incorporate the written word onto the cloth led to the quotation from Wordsworth.  And that leads to the thought, what if they met?"

More From MAQF

Today we want to share some of our favorites from the quilt show.  In addition to the show entries, there are numerous special exhibits.  Our favorite of these is by an art quilt group called Fiber Artists @ Loose Ends. Their new exhibit "Wind Chimes" debuted at the Mid-Atlantic show.  It is a very clever depiction of the Elements: Earth, Water, Air, Fire.  Each of the 10 members of the group created a vertical panel for each of the 4 parts of the installation.  The segments are hung from bicycle wheels so that each fiber piece can rotate with the air currents.  It's a different experience to walk among the fiber "chimes" versus viewing art hung on a wall.  Very effective and immersive.   We really enjoyed this exhibit.

The center panel shows the whole exhibit.  The top photos are water and earth.  The bottom are air and fire.

Another favorite was this heavily embroidered crazy quilt called "Elisabeth's Garden: A Tale of a Thousand Threads" by Elisabeth Frolet of Atlanta, GA.  It won Best Use of Embellishments in the Traditional Category.  The embroidery is exquisite, and each block has different sewing and quilting tools stitched into it.  Each square also had a needle and thread positioned in it somewhere.  You could spend a lot of time marveling at the workmanship and discovering the many images.

The quilt above was one of Sue's favorites.  It is called "Craig's Pond" and is by Tina R McCann of Depoe Bay, OR.  It won Best Use of Color in the wall quilt category.  The upper left shows the whole quilt, and the other 3 are close-ups of various parts, but the pictures really don't do it justice.  Click on the photo for a larger view so you can see the quilting.  The stitching with variegated thread adds so much to the coloration.  Also hard to tell in the photo is that the main panel is detached on the sides from the background, only attached top and bottom.

Some other favorites included these above.  Clockwise from top left:
Urban Systems by Paula Golden of Blacksburg, VA, in the Instructors' Row.
Blue Ridge Meadow by Jane Fellows of Batesville, VA.
Quilt it Wright by Mary A Menzer of Virginia Beach, VA. It won for Best Use of Color in the Modern category.
Modern Reflections by Pat L. Delaney of Abington, MA.  This piece is made with silk and has some unique quilting.
The Lookout is by Barbara McKie of Lyme, CT and won a Judge's Choice ribbon. 

Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival 2016

We arrived at MAQF on Thursday around 3:00pm and spent a couple of hours at the show before checking into the hotel.

After an initial look at the prize winning quilts in the main display area, we visited a few of our favorite vendors and chatted with quilting friends we encountered as we wandered around.  Here are some of the prize winning quilts of 2016.

Upper left is called Moonflower by Molly Y Hamilton-McNally of Tehachapi, CA.  It won 1st place in the Innovative category.  Top right is a detail.  Exquisite quilting.

Bottom left is Silk Road Sampler by Melissa Sobotka of Richardson, TX, which won Best of Show.  If you follow the quilt shows, this also won at the Road to California show. The colors are gorgeous and it looks so real, like you could pull one of the pillows right off the shelf.

Top left is Ode to Spring by Margaret Solomon Gunn of Gorham, ME.  It won 3rd place in the Traditional category.  Another with exquisite quilting.

Bottom is also by Margaret Solomon Gunn.  This is called Springtime in the Geisha's Garden and won 2nd place in the Traditional category.

Top left is the 3rd place Wall quilt by Donna Clauer Stufft of Temperanceville, VA, called Together at Sunset.  This piece is very heavily thread painted. 
Top right is Lura's Choice by our online friend Vicki Welsh (Field Trips in Fiber) of Montpelier, VA.  We followed Vicki's blog posts about the making (and quilting) of this quilt.
Bottom left is Winter Fields by Cynthia L Vogt of Kennewick, WA.  It won Best Use of Color, Innovative, as well as a Judge's Choice award.
Bottom right is an Honorable Mention in the Innovative category.  It is Bursting at the Greens by Karlyn Bue Lohrenz of Billings, MT.

More to come over the next few days.

Quilt Show Finds (part 2)

Sue's other quilt show finds include this fabulous rainbow yard of fabric from Frieda Anderson.  We took one of her classes and she had various pieces of her hand-dyed fabric for sale.

She also bought the 3 fat quarters in the foreground - specifically to use with the hand-made batik fat quarter that was created in a workshop at Artistic Artifacts a few years ago.

Another project trying to take shape influenced the purchase of these two osnaburg fat quarters and embroidery threads from Fiber on a Whim.

 Some decorative pins and pendants also made their way into the shopping bag.

A wooden printing block from Artistic Artifacts also landed there; looks like it would work quite well with the screens printed on this piece of fabric.

And last but not least, a stop at the BabyLock dealer in Richmond on the way home is where she purchased a new walking foot for her machine (she managed to break the original) and several spools of Madeira thread - it's been hard to find a particular variegated color that she likes.

Quilt Show Finds (part 1)

On our Facebook page, Elizabeth did a series of posts about her purchases at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in February.  It's true that we often come home with a variety of things, some that you might not expect to see at a quilt show. This year we bought less than usual, but still enjoyed the numerous and varied vendors.  Here's a look at Elizabeth's purchases that she added to her sewing studio, with the exception of a ruler she bought for her charity quilt group to use.  You can read more about her purchases on our Facebook page.

Sue's purchases are shown below: fabrics of course, a book, jewelry, supplies for a knitting project, skin cream (yes, at a quilt show!), a new walking foot for her sewing machine, machine thread, embroidery thread, and an alpaca head band.

Now for some closer looks.  The book Sue bought contains Japanese design motifs - inspiration, we hope, for some new thermofax screens and quilt designs.

 And below, a ball of yarn in some springy colors along with a pattern for a cowl, circular needles, and a few other accessories.  So far, casting on has been done.

MAQF - A Few More of Our Favorite Things

These are a few more of our favorite quilts from Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival.

 California Dreaming by Diane Doran features digitally printed fabric.

Farming Memories by Judy Loope was part of a special exhibit by Textile Artists of Virginia and shows the use of rusted fabric

Hudson Trader is by Colleen Wise and uses a collection of indigo prints.  It is more blue than it appears here.  The close-up below gives you a better idea of the true color.

Misty Garden Path is by Susan Schweikhart and features discharged fabric (the black and tan pieces).

Space Bubbles II is by Lisa White Reber and was part of the "Dare to Dance" exhibit.  This piece was created from her own snow dyed fabric.

Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival - A Few of Our Favorite Things

After four days at the festival, MAQF is over for another year.  Weather was a big part of the adventure this year, with threatened snow helping us to decide to drive down early before it hit, and then extending our stay another night due to ice and freezing rain on the route home.  So as I write this, we are still in Hampton at our hotel until departure tomorrow.  We enjoyed the show and class we took on Friday, which you saw in the previous post.  We saw spectacular quilts, re-connected with quilting friends, made some purchases, and went home with plenty of inspiration for another year.  Here are some of our favorites.

Above & below, Sticks and Stones by Carol Ann Robertson.  The red is from a silk kimono; the close-up shows some of the detail of the quilting. 

 The next 2 are April Journey (Sacajawea) by Shiela Riess, full view and a detail shot.

 Two views of the show - the Artistic Artifacts/Batik Tambal booth, and the prize winners aisle.

 The next is a full view and detail of Robbers Roost by Joanne Baeth.

Below is Sunrise, Sunset by Donna Stufft.

 And Bach Suite: Gigue by Lyric Kinard.

Duluth Trees with Frieda Anderson

We're in Hampton, Virginia for the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival and decided to take a class with Frieda Anderson to learn her method of fusible collage quilts.  The project we made is called Duluth Trees.  Frieda provides a kit of her hand dyed fabrics with gorgeous, saturated colors. Her method of assembly uses wonder under fusible (805) so we started off by fusing it to the back of our two largest pieces of fabric, both gradated from blue to green, one bright, one darker.  From there, we started cutting large rectangles that would be the background of the trees, and added some shorter pieces at either end.

We also learned how to make "stripey" units to add interest.

 Here's Elizabeth working on her background arrangement.

Above is Sue's background arrangement.

 This is a display of Frieda's many designs - aren't they spectacular?

This is one of her class samples of the project we were making.  This one is heavily quilted.  The other had very little visible quilting - either method is very effective.

Sue was adding the green triangles to the pine trees, Elizabeth's piece is the one at the bottom of the photo.

 Sue's piece is all fused and ready to be "sandwiched" with batting and backing.

 Thanks for a great class, Frieda!