UFO Busting

It's time for my (Sue's) monthly UFO busting report for February and a link to Vicki Welsh's page.  Again this month I did not complete any UFOs.  Sewing time was in short supply as I was busy with other things like income tax, retreat/meeting planning, purchases for bathroom renovation and spending several days at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival.  However I do have one new start and made progress on another hand stitching project.  I won't share the new start just yet - it's my challenge entry for our retreat at the end of April - but I can show the almost finished "mock mola" that I've been working on. 

This is from a workshop I took in March of 2015.  You can see I'm almost finished filling the background.  Then I just have to decide what I'm going to do with it!  It could become part of a quilt, a piece of wall art, a pillow top - who knows.  Fits right in with the "slow stitching" movement and has given me something to work on when I go to my church quilt group, where we do only hand stitching, or knitting, or cross stitch


March will probably be another month with no finishes, though I may get the challenge project done.  I have another piece to make for my art bee group for the beginning of April, so if I find time to do it, that will be another new start. 

Starting UFO count: 11
New projects started this month: 1
Projects finished this month:0
UFO count at end of month:12

Winter's Last Hurrah?

We got a dusting of snow over night that was lovely on the trees but not much on the grass and none on the roadways, and started melting quickly.

But it was enough for Sue to scrape off her deck railings and table to try a couple more pieces of snow dye.  After seeing Elizabeth's mandala results, she was inspired to try a few more herself.  So after consulting some folding tutorials, she went ahead with 2 pieces that were approximately 22 inches square.  One was folded and rolled, the other was folded and then banded.

The rolled piece was placed in a plastic cup.  A little bit of snow was placed on top first, then the powdered dye, then more snow to fill the cup.  The dye colors are elephant gray, watermelon, and turquoise.

The second piece was placed on screening over a pan, again with a small amount of snow, then the dye (baby blue, coral, and indigo) and more snow on top.  The snow was very wet, making it great for packing, but not so great for sprinkling a thin layer. 

We'll see tomorrow what the results are.

February Snow Dyes

These are the last snow dyes that Elizabeth made from a President's Day snow storm. Mother Nature missed the chance to give us another wallop of several feet of snow by sending us 2 inches of precipitation in the form of rain and soaring temperatures the following day, melting away all the snow. 

For several years, Elizabeth has followed a group on Facebook called “Addicted to Tie Dying” (note the misspelling of dyeing in case you search for the group).  There are some amazing artists in this group who produced all sorts of designs on clothing as well as fabric.  She has been following posts for mandalas for some time now and finally decided to buckle down and try a tutorial from the “files” section of this group after being inspired by Sue’s attempts as well as some mandalas that Vicki Welsh recently dyed.  She also folded and cut out a zillion paper snowflakes with the kids at her school that week so the folding part was starting to become rote.

Beginning with some small fabric squares she first folded these two eight-point mandalas.

 Next she tried a six point one.

The last two squares she did a more traditional tie dyed circle reminiscent of many tie dye t-shirts you might see.

Being emboldened by her small experiment and with enough snow left for one more, she cut a 48” square and made this.  She thinks it would make a nice backing for a wall hanging or a whole cloth quilt for some free motion quilting practice.

And it looks like Mother Nature may provide one more opportunity for snow dyeing this winter, as snow is predicted tonight into tomorrow morning, just a couple of inches.  We'll see if its enough for more dyeing, better get the fabric soda ashed just in case!

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.

Caribelle Batik

Elizabeth and her family went on a Caribbean cruise this past holiday season.  They were on a small 600 passenger ship called the Ocean Princess.

One of the many stops was Saint Kitts and Nevis.  While there, Elizabeth, her mother Barbara, and sister Becky went on a tour to Romney Manor where a small batik factory called Caribelle Batik is located.  These batiks are definitely inspired by the Caribbean and thus have a different look than Indonesian or Indian batiks.  Here are some photos of the tour.

The artist was ill that day so they didn't see a live demonstration but the store had a nice display of all 12 steps in the process of waxing, dyeing, waxing again, dyeing again, etc.

 First 6 steps.

Last 6 steps.

The shop was full of lovely items handcrafted on the island using the batik fabrics produced by Caribelle.

Outside was a clothesline with pieces blowing in the wind of a sunny winter's day.  It was a beautiful sight but if we return we will take our own taxi so that we can linger longer.

Yardage and scraps for quilters.