Quilt Camp Day 2

Thursday, August 16 was our first working day of this year's quilt camp even though we consider it day 2.  After-all, we were playing with thermofax yesterday as we introduced the technique to a group of local quilters.  We went back to our roots of the first quilt camp ten years ago and some of the techniques we did those first few years.  Starting with low water immersion dye we did some half yard pieces in the colors of the rainbow and some fat quarters in similar color palette but from different dyes.  They need to "batch" for 24 hours so you will need to come back to find out how they look.

Elizabeth made a gelatin plate, old style, with Knox Gelatin in a disposable metal tray.  This is how we did it a decade ago before the reusable Gelli Plates came on the market.  Sometimes it is good to return to something organic, so after the fat quarters are dyed she will do some gelatin plate printing.

Sue thermofax printed some fabric she dyed at a previous quilt camp with a new screen and discharge to create these two lovely pieces.

Elizabeth had a white t-shirt and after a soda ash soak the t-shirt was sprinkled with Wisteria and Robin Egg Blue dyes put through a very fine strainer onto the wet fabric.  As the tiny dots of dye started to spread out she then put a layer of ice cubes over the top.  It too will need to batch to help the dye set, time and temperature are the two important factors when batching.

Sue also traced a pattern for a wallet onto the back of cork fabric in preparation for making a sample for an upcoming class.

In this photo you can see both the cork side and the backing side.

Today we will be at the World Quilt Show in Manchester, so check back tomorrow for some photos from the show!

Thermofax Printing with Country Village Quilters

Wednesday afternoon we led a program for the Country Village Quilters in Moultonborough, NH.  Our friend Terri Sontra (Purple Moose Designs) is a member of this guild and asked us to do a technique program for them.  After a short business meeting, we provided background info on thermofax printing, demonstrated the process, and then turned the ladies loose to try their hand.

We had a group of about 18 ladies, and though art quilting and surface design is not their typical form of quilting, they were eager to give it a try.

Sue demos the printing process.

Cleaning screens.

Printing away!  We limited the screens to a north woods theme - pine cones, pine sprigs, ferns.

Some participants had backgrounds in other types of painting so did not hesitate to dive in.

One of the finished pieces.

This was a lovely quilt we saw as part of the guild's show and tell.

We had a good time teaching about printing and the ladies all appeared to enjoy learning something new!

Quilt Camp 2018!

If it's summer, it's time for quilt camp!  For the 9th year, Sue and Elizabeth are at Elizabeth's lake house in New Hampshire for a few weeks of crafting and creativity.  We arrived at the lake around dinner time on Monday after a 2 day trip from Virginia.  We would have gotten here sooner except for making a few stops in New England.  One was at Shelburne Falls, MA, to see the Bridge of Flowers.  Elizabeth had seen it before, but Sue had not.

Built as a trolley bridge in 1908, it connected 2 towns on either side of the Deerfield River, but was abandoned in 1928 when the trolley fell out of use.  In 1929, Antoinette and Walter Burnham had the vision of transforming it into a flower bridge, and the Shelburne Falls Woman's Club led the effort to make it a reality. 

Over 500 varieties of perennials and annuals are planted and tended by volunteers to ensure continuous blooming throughout the seasons.  It is a lovely spot and well worth the 8 mile drive off the interstate.

Another site to see in Shelburne Falls is Salmon Falls, where a section of the river is damned off, exposing granite with "potholes" worn into the rock over time. 

  Some of the potholes are visible in the photo above (the two dark spots in the lower right).

From Massachusetts we drove on into Vermont for a short while before heading east into New Hampshire.  In Keene, NH, we stopped off at New England Fabrics.

This is a large store in an old mill building that is at least half or more home decorating fabrics and an upholstery shop.  They have a nice variety of quilting fabrics as well as fabrics for garment sewing, and more notions similar to a generic sewing store.  After making our purchases we had lunch at a nearby restaurant and then continued on to the lake.

On Tuesday, Sue needed to make a trip to a CVS - the closest was half way around the lake.  Since we were making the drive, we decided a stop off at Keepsake Quilting in Centre Harbor was in order.

Just small purchases here, but it's always fun to stop in and look.  They have recently been bought by the family that owns Pineapple Fabrics, so now there is a Pineapple Fabrics store next door in what used to be a yarn shop.

After returning to the house, we started the process of setting up the garage "studio", which meant cleaning up and organizing a bunch of stuff to reclaim the work space.  Not quite finished, but almost there.

Since the rain seems to have moved on, Sue decided it was time to get back to her morning walk routine.  Here is the view from the dock this morning.

This afternoon we did a program on thermofax printing for a local guild - more on that tomorrow!

SNaP - SAQA Regional Group

Studio Art Quilt Associates is a national group that promotes the art quilt, and has regional groups throughout the country that usually encompass neighboring states.  The regional groups, in turn, have "pods", narrowing down the geography so that members can meet in person.  The Northern Virginia pod, known as "SNaP", meets on the 4th Saturday of the month.  Some meetings feature a member as the "spotlight", others might involve a field trip to a museum.  The July meeting last Saturday featured Lisa Ellis as the spotlight speaker.   Lisa is an art quilter who teaches on the national level, and is also past president of the national SAQA group, as well as director of Sacred Threads, a biennial quilt exhibition with themes of spirituality, healing, joy, peace, inspiration and grief.  She shared a series of quilts she has been working on based on the cathedral window.

Lisa was inspired by some traditional cathedral window quilts made by her grandmother to explore this technique and develop a machine method for creating the traditionally hand sewn windows. 

"Radiance" was made using this method; it debuted at Houston International Quilt Festival in 2016.

"Midnight Blooms" was also shown at IQF in 2016.

"Windows for Yvonne" was made for an exhibit honoring Yvonne Porcella, founder of SAQA, who passed away a few years ago.  This one was made in colors favored by Yvonne and also using her trademark checkerboard fabric.  You can see more of Lisa's quilts on her website; she did share 2 quilts from this series that will appear in Houston this year.

In addition to the spotlight speaker, we also revealed some challenge quilts based on the theme "maker's mark".  The idea was to make a 12" square quilt based on how you make your mark on fabric, whether that be through dyeing/printing your fabric, a particular style you have developed, machine and/or hand stitching, or any other interpretation of mark making.  Seven participants shared their challenge quilts.

Most involved hand stitching as part of the mark making process.  Other techniques include screen printing, leaf pounding, crazy quilting, digitized stitching, embroidery. In the picture above, can you guess which one is Sue's?  If you are a follower of this blog and our thermofax screen business, it shouldn't be too hard!

This one didn't fit in the group photo.  It includes some pieces from a leaf pounding workshop prior to the June meeting.  The next group challenge is due at the end of September and is to be inspired by Gustav Klimt, an Austrian painter of the Vienna Secession movement who was greatly influenced by Japanese art.  Hmmm...time to put the thinking cap on.

To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia

Over the weekend Sue spent some time museum hopping in DC; one of the exhibits she saw was called "To Dye For: Ikats from Central Asia" at the Sackler Gallery. 

The exhibit features ikat wall hangings and robes made in nineteenth-century Uzbekistan as well as ikat-inspired clothing by Oscar de la Renta.  Ikat designs involve a very complex dyeing technique sometimes called "binding clouds".  The items in the exhibit were overwhelmingly red; other colors included yellow, green and blue, as well as areas left white.  The process involves binding warp threads to create a resist, and multiple dye baths of dyeing and over dyeing to create the complex patterns.

The piece above is an extremely rare 22 foot long strip of velvet, probably produced in Bakhara between 1860 and 1910.

The cloth was created in strips which were sewn together to make hangings to decorate interiors.  Joining the strips would create new designs, and sometimes they were purposely not aligned.

The ikat strips were also used to make robes.  These boldly patterned coats signaled a person's rank in Central Asia. In the display above, the items with arms extended are the Asian items; those with arms down were designed by de la Renta between 1997 and 2013.

If you are in the Washington, DC area, the exhibit runs through July 29, so there's still time to see it.  You can find more information on the Smithsonian's website here.

Small Projects

Last week Sue used some studio time to make a few small projects that have been on the back burner.  First was a zipper pouch that she bought a kit for in June at the Quilters Unlimited quilt show.  The vendor was Bucklebee by Me (bucklebeebags.com) and the pouch is called the Skipjack Zipper Pouch for Washable Paper.

Washable paper (which appears to be the same as Kraft-tex, if you are familiar with that product) is a hybrid-textile product that looks and feels like leather.  The paper is wet and scrunched to give it the crinkled look.  Allow it to air dry before cutting the pieces.

These are the cut pieces.  Sue used a piece of hand dyed/screen printed fabric for the contrast trim and lining.

This is the beginning step of joining the outside bag pieces to the zipper.  The bag is fully lined with the fabric.  This was a fairly quick project. There was a little confusion with some of the directions but overall it seems to be constructed as intended.  The paper is rather stiff when it comes to turning the bag right side out, especially the corners. It helped to wet the bottom edge to soften it in order to get the corners pushed out.

Another thing Sue's had on the project list for a while is to make something using cork fabric.  As a first project, she decided to make this simple wallet which is a free downloadable pattern at Sallie Tomato.

It turns out the cork is very easy to work with and is actually very soft.  This is also an easy project, which took a bit more than 2 hours including cutting out the pattern and fabric.  The inside has 2 slip pockets, 6 card slots, and an ID pocket.   There is no storage for coins, however.

Sue will likely be teaching a class using cork for this project at Artistic Artifacts  in the near future - stay tuned for more information!

Studio Work

Wow, hard to believe it's been a month since our last post.  Time to catch up!  Elizabeth is off traveling in Asia, so this post is from Sue about what's been going on in the studio for the last month or so - late spring/early summer.  April was a really busy month for me, so May and June were intentionally slower as far as projects go, plus during both of those months I spent time in PA with my mother.  Is it really almost mid-July already?

One thing I did was to finally finish my spiral quilt from Susan Carlson's class at the QU show 2 years ago.  This is done with Susan's fabric collage method; all the pieces are held in place with glue, then covered with tulle and quilted to hold it all in place.  All the handwork, including binding, label, and sleeve is now done, so there's one quilt I can put in next year's show! 

In June I took a second class on quilting with rulers; it was actually day 2 of the class I first took in February.  I went with the intention of getting more practice with the rulers I already had, but of course we were able to try other rulers and I ended up buying more - no surprise there.  I took along a quilt top I had found in my studio clean up earlier this year in the hope that I might use it to practice on.  I found that I liked the overall design that could be done with the apple core ruler and started quilting in class, finishing up the binding last week.  I'm not sure what this pattern is called - its a piece that's been around for a good 10 years or more!

Here's a close up of the apple core quilting pattern.

June was also the month when spring postcards were due for my swap group.  Our theme this time was "perchance to dream".  Since I recently found out that I will have a quilt on exhibit at Houston this year, I decided to highlight that as my dream come true.  Here are the 6 postcards I made - a city skyline with the word "Houston" screen printed on top.  Elizabeth and I will be making our first trip to Houston this year!

I have also been trying to finish a quilt top called Paint Chips that I started in Karla Alexander's class at VCQ's Celebration retreat in April.  I got all the rows together in May, and finally finished adding the borders yesterday. Now to find some backing and work on the quilting.

And last but not least, my regional SAQA group issued a challenge due the end of July to make a 12" piece that illustrates "making your mark".  I'm working on mine, starting with thermofax printed fabrics and adding hand stitching - mark making in progress.  Here is a sneak peak.

It helps to catalog here what I've been working on.  Sometimes it doesn't seem like much, but then I look back and see I've done more than I thought.  Now to get back to some other started projects!  And maybe some new ones too!