VCQ'sCelebration 2024

Virginia Consortium of Quilters (VCQ) sponsors a 3 day retreat every 2 years that includes 2 days of workshops with nationally known teachers.  We meet at the 4-H Center at Smith Mountain Lake near Roanoke, Virginia.  What an idyllic setting!  It's a great place to get away for a few days to pursue our quilting hobby, enjoy comradery and long-time friendships, and appreciate the outdoors.  A bonus is that there is no cooking involved - just go to the dining hall for buffet meals!  This year's event was held April 18-21, and this is the first of several posts.  This one is dedicated to sharing photos of the facility.  Other posts will feature show & tell and challenge quilts, and the 2 classes that Sue participated in.  Elizabeth was unable to attend this year because she was otherwise occupied on a 30-day cruise to Fiji and other stops in the Pacific!

Looking from the patio of the activities building towards the lake.

Building on the right is the Taubman Conference Center and Hepler-Jamison dormitory.

View of the activities building, which includes the dining hall and auditorium.

At the lake; the gazebo is new since we were there 2 years ago.

Chairs along the shore.

An area of the grounds I had not visited before - a 3-hole golf course.

We also had some very lovely sunsets.

Wouldn't you like to join us in 2026?

Burke Quilters Unlimited Spring Retreat

In March Sue was fortunate to attend her local guild's spring retreat. (Burke chapter of Quilters Unlimited)  It was held in Winchester, VA at a Hampton Inn - we take over the ballroom to set up for approximately 50 quilters to come and sew for 3-5 days, depending on schedules.  It's a great way to make progress on multiple projects without having to stop for housework and other tasks.  (of course, those who are still gainfully employed get to take a few days off from work.)

Sue worked on several projects - one finish, one make progress and a new start.  The "finish" was a Hunter Star quilt, approximately 30" square.  This was started in an online class with David Sirota in February in which he teaches his method of foundation piecing and also his trick for matching points.

It is quilted with concentric circles.  These are 1/2" apart, using the machine's seam guide to keep the circles even.  Maybe next time she will space the circles further apart?  Not difficult, but a bit tedious.

Another project was a quilt top called the Harrisonburg Quilt, so named because the pattern is based on an historic quilt owned by the Virginia Quilt Museum in Harrisonburg, VA.   The Virginia Consortium of Quilters sponsored an online sew-in over the winter holidays on making this quilt, and Sue has been working on it ever since.  Of course, she decided to make the queen size version which is why it is still a work on progress.  But, all the rows and sashing are now joined, and the next step is making and adding the border.  Then find a long-armer to quilt it!

The fabrics used are almost all batiks, with a few commercial prints mixed in as well.  The background is mostly Moda Grunge.  

A third project that she got started on is in response to a challenge from the Virginia Quilt Museum.  The project is called Stitching together History and commemorates the 250th anniversary of the state of Virginia in 2026.   The museum wants to select 250 quilts from all submissions and feature them in an exhibit as well as a book to commemorate this anniversary.  Quilts should fit into one of four categories - Unfinished Revolutions, Power of Place, We the People, and Virginia Experiments.  Sue chose as her topic Loving v. Virginia, the Supremes Court decision that made interracial marriage legal in Virginia.  A portion of her original design includes foundation pieced Virginia Reel blocks, and that is what she worked on at the retreat.   More on this project in another post.

Here are a few more pics of the group with quilters hard at work.

Next retreat will be in fall.  Does your guild do something similar?

QuiltCon 2024

 A few weeks ago, we attended QuiltCon 2024 in Raleigh, NC.  QuiltCon is the annual convention sponsored by the Modern Quilt Guild.  

There were many wonderful quilts (too many to share here) and we will highlight a few.  You can see lots more on our Facebook page. Here are some of the prize winners.

Anechoic by Janice Reimer of Vancouver, British Columbia, won the MQG Excellence Award.

Cloudy Night Sky by Yvonne Fuchs of Tehachapi, California, won Best Machine Quilting.

Overprint by Betsy Vinegrad of Short Hills, New Jersey, won 1st place in the Windham Artisan Cotton Challenge.

Best in Show winner is Ginny Robinson of Chapel Hil, NC, with What We Will Use as Weapons: A List of School Supplies.

Mulberry Swirl by Kelly Spell of Hixson, Tennessee, won 1st place for Minimalist Design.

Reconceived by Jennifer Candon of Harvard, Massachusetts, won 1st place in the Improvisation category.

These are just as few of the many wonderful quilts at QuiltCon.  You can see all the winners on the Quilt Con website here and more photos on our Facebook page - search PGFiber2Art.

Spring 2024 Exhibits

Well, it's been a few months since our last post.  Hope you've been having a productive start to the new year!  Here at PGFiber2Art we are pleased to share 2 opportunities to visit quilt exhibits if you are local to the DC area or just traveling through.  First is quilts Inspired by the Nation's Capital, an exhibit and accompanying book by Donna DeSoto that is now on display at the Barns of Rose Hill in Berryville, VA through April 27,

Sue's quilt of Gunston Hall is part of the exhibit and she was excited to see it along with the other quilts that are so much more impressive when seen in person as opposed to photos.  There are so many details and textures that simply are not picked up by a camera.

All the quilts are excellent but here are a few other favorites.

Smithsonian: Mary Livingston Ripley Garden by Diane Herbort

Lorton Reformatory by Etta McFarland

US Capitol by Miki Willa and Wahington Monument by Susan Bynum

Riverbend Park by Anna Wilard

National Mall Area by Barbara Kauffman

The book showing all the quilts also serves as a tour guide for Washington, DC and is available from Schiffer Publishing and also on Amazon.

The second exhibit is called Sew to Speak by SAQA Regional groups (Studio Art Quilt Associates) on display at BlackRock Center for the Arts in Germantown, Md through April 21.  In this exhibit, 32 fiber artists from the Mid-Atlantic area show how they express themselves in their textile art.  Sue also has a piece in this exhibit. 

Untold Stories is a tribute to her father's World War II service.

My Mother has Alzheimer's. These last five years. is by Carly Mul.

Winter is by Sarah Entsminger

Sailing Under Watchful Eyes is by Suzette Coppage

The catalog cover features Anxiety No. 12/Traumatic brain injury by Judy Kirpich.  The catalog is available on Amazon.

Take some time during the warming spring days to visit either or both of these exhibits!

Quilt Retreat

Sue recently enjoyed a quilt retreat with her local guild in Winchester, Virginia.  Approximately 50 quilters spent 4 + days sewing on their individual projects in the conference room of the Hampton Inn.  This is the first retreat Sue has attended in over a year, so it was quite a job to gather projects, supplies, travel sewing machine, and other miscellaneous paraphernalia!  But once arrived and unpacked, it was nice to be able to sew, leave the sewing space, and go upstairs to the room whenever desired. 

The photo above is courtesy Jim Watson, the "official" photographer for the group.  Though she only worked on 2 projects, a good bit was accomplished.

First on the agenda was adding a decorative blanket stitch to the edges of the orange peel shapes on this quilt top.  Now that that task is complete, it is ready to be layered and quilted.

The other project she worked on is making more blocks for the Harrisonburg quilt.  Ten mew blocks were completed to add to the 12 done previously.  That leaves 8 more to go, for a total of 30.  The plan is to make a queen size quilt.

In addition to the 12-inch blocks, she also made 9 cornerstone blocks - the small nine-patch blocks you see in the photo above.  They will be placed where the sashing strips between blocks meet.  The center square-in-a-square portion of the block doesn't take long to stitch, but the outside section with half-square triangles is what takes the most time.

At each retreat we also make charity blocks - each participant made 2 - to be used in making quilts to donate to charity.  Another activity is making lottery blocks.  Everyone who participates receives a ticket for each block contributed.  The blocks are divided into groups and winners are drawn from the tickets.  Sue was lucky this time and won a set of 19 pumpkin blocks!

The top photo shows some of the blocks she won.  The second photo is a sample quilt made from the pattern.  Sue's plan is to make a table runner and maybe a small quilt with the blocks. 

Above is Sue's friend/roommate Kathy and one of the projects she worked on.  Again, thanks to Jim Watson for the photo.  It was good to be at retreat and see all the wonderful projects everyone worked on.

Custom Screens

One of the services we provide is making custom screens from images that our customers provide, and we love to see images of what they do with the screens.  They can be from original drawings or photos, or any image that you have a license to use or is in the public domain.  One of our current customers, Lois Gaylord, has given permission for us to share some of her work for which we made Thermofax screens. 

Lois actually has 2 Etsy shops that you can visit for more pictures of her work, one is Lois Gaylord - Weaving Oneness through Spiritual Art and Textiles; the other is Weaving Oneness.  The first shop features textiles celebrating Jewish life.  The second shop features items of a spiritual nature.

Below are some photos of items that we made the screens for.

 

 

It looks to us like the screens worked well and that Lois does lovely work.  Please visit her Etsy shops to see more of her work.

What images do you have that could be made into custom screens?

Playing with Photos for Thermofax Screens

This is an edited version of a post from 2016. 

Have you ever considered how you might use your own photos in your art quilts or mixed media work?  There are several products available to create photo transfers.  You can also print photos on sheer fabrics like organza to create a different effect.  Some people use photos as the basis for a landscape or portrait quilt, using it to make a pattern for piecing.   At PGFiber2Art we like to use photos as the basis for Thermofax screens.  We use Photoshop Elements to turn photos into black and white images that are suitable for screens. 

This zinnia image is a good example of how many different ways an image can be manipulated for different outcomes.  Excited by the "what if", we created several variations of the same image that might be used together. 

Photoshop Elements is a powerful program and has many filters that can be applied to a black and white image.  Below is the black and white image of the flower with the background removed.

Once we have gotten an image to this point, we start applying filters from the Filters menu.  There are lots to choose from and it just takes some time playing to see what you like best, but usually we settle on one.  Each filter also has its own options that allow you to adjust things like darkness, contrast, details, etc. so the possible outcomes are many.  Just for the fun of it we decided to apply different filters to this flower to illustrate the options for students when teching this technique.  And that's when the light bulb went on and we realized that this could be a cool design element.  Here are 5 different filters applied to the flower image.

These will be made into screens in a variety of sizes, and then the fun with fabric and paint will begin.  Can you visualize how multiple variations of the one image will work together?  What images do you have that you think would make a good Thermofax screen?