Happenings

Yesterday I taught a new lecture/class at the local quilt shop called Green Ideas for the Studio. It's an information-intense lecture with a lot of samples which focuses on these principles of green living: reduce, re-use, re-purpose, repair, maintain, preserve and recycle.

The information ranges from basic tool and machine maintenance, to reasons for shopping locally, plus some information on putting every size of scrap from our quilting studios to good use. The ladies who came to the lecture seemed to enjoy it.

Today I again have a heap of class samples in the dining room...

...and I'm hoping to reduce this pile by mid-day today.

It has been weeks since I've had time to work on an actual sewing project, so you know that I'm more than ready to sew. I'll be finishing some quilt tops and sandwiching my black and blue circle quilt in anticipation of entering it into a show.

Bill has been busy in the rust-dyeing corner of the garage and created these two pieces this week...


Part of the anticipation about sewing has to do with using these beautiful pieces in a wall hanging. I've had my eye on some rusty architectural features around town that may look beautiful in a photo transfer/rust dye piece. Believe it or not, there's a covered wagon in town that I think would look beautiful with rusted fabric. Stay tuned.

Georgia Quilting

Second try on this blog entry...Let's see if I can post with photos.

The Georgia Quilt Council met on Saturday for its Spring Convention and we had some wonderful speakers: Jan Krentz, national teacher, Anne Anderberg, Georgia's gem, and Douglas Mabry who gave us a report on the progress toward a first-ever Georgia quilt museum.

The museum will be called The Southeast Textile and Quilt Museum. Mr. Mabry has done extensive research into the location and naming of the museum and gave us plenty of information about his findings. More on this as it develops.

Jan Krentz brought her beautiful quilts for a trunk show and talk on her progression as a quilter. You'll recognize her diamond lilly pad quilt which was used for the front cover of one of her books.

Anne Anderberg also gave us a trunk show of her beautifully detailed quilts. I love Asian circle quilts, and especially this family crest quilt.

This is another of Anne's quilts with amazing detail.

I don't want to push it with the blog today after having a hard time with it for days. TTYL

Computer & Blog Woes

I'm having a hard time getting a blog to post, so this is a quickie until I figure out what's wrong. It's been a bad computer week around here. Wish me luck.

Fiber Arts

Meg Manderson gave a trunk show program for the Asheville Quilt Guild on Tuesday. Here are some samples of her lovely work...

Anyone who has been to Lowell, Massachusetts recognizes the location of this quilt's subject. Meg did a beautiful job with this quilt. The colors were stunning.

Meg was working with Angelina fibers in this piece.

I love the colors in this last piece.

What's New

This past week I visited a wonderful new quilt shop in Buford, Georgia (northeast of Atlanta just off of I-985) which is a little over an hour from Athens. I'm hoping to be able to teach there sometime in the near future and this trip was made to "sell my wares". The shop is called Georgia Sewing & Quilting and it's worth a visit.

On the gloomy side...

...tax season is here, and I'm terrible at anything that involves accounting. I rarely make New Year's resolutions, but this year I had to decide to become better at my business accounting. It's slow going. It came as a shock to me when I started my fiber arts business in 2008, that I (promoter of budgets, money-handling whiz, B+ college student in Differential Equations) was a total dunce with business books. Humm.

So, this week I cleared the design wall in my studio to give me some incentive to finish the dreaded paperwork. Progress, not perfection. There has been some progress. Pray for me.

Quilt Show Ribbons

Quilt show ribbons can be quite a lot of work to make, but for our quilt guild show this past weekend, one member made the ribbons on her embroidery machine. They were so cute! Every entrant who won a ribbon got the pin to the left with a button for each win in the color of the ribbon. My pin hand three white buttons for three Honorable Mentions.

For my friend Sandy M., here is a photo of our collaborative quilt with its ribbon (top left). It was in good company, as it hung right next to the Best of Show quilt.

This was the first win for my "Moonlight on Water" string quilt, below...

This quilt is heading to Asheville, NC next week to become the sample quilt for my June "String Quilt Blocks" class for the Asheville Quilt Guild.

This quilt (which you've seen several times on my blog before) did not win a ribbon this time, but you know it's my favorite. This is a photo of my son in Afghanistan, printed on fabric in poster form in four pieces. I painted the lower half of his body and gun, and fused most of the rocks around him. There is a lot of paint on the rest of the quilt too. This quilt is now retired and will hang in my studio.

Vendor Booth Days

We need a little more color here...

We have been enjoying the Cotton Patch Quilt Show (see previous blog for a link) this weekend just south of Athens, GA at the Oconee County Civic Center. The show floor plan is wonderful and we have plenty of fine vendors. I have three quilts (no new ones to post) and a post card in the show and have won three Honorable Mention awards.

Our hand-dyed fabric booth is doing very well. All of Bill's wonderful booth inventions (stands, wall, displays) look great, and his Ruler Racks are selling like hotcakes.

Yardage is selling well, but the best seller has been the basket of hand-dyed scraps, 5" x 18", or the equivalent, for 75 cents per piece. I dyed yardage pieces with an extra 8" or so of fabric so that I could have 5" wide cuts plus string cuts from each piece. The string cuts are for string quilt class kits and for my own quilts this year. It seems to have been a good plan.

One of the other vendors calls that circle piece on the wall the "fried egg" fabric. haha The tiny rolling "desk" we found at the Habitat for Humanity thrift store is working perfectly in the booth.

Here is the next big idea for our booth from my hubby, Bill...

This rust-dyed piece is called "Clam Baked in '68". Isn't it great?! He's placed it onto a frame board and will frame it when his idea jells. Can you tell he's a vintage hippie? He doesn't like the term "old hippie". ;-) He is a social butterfly and is in his element working the booth with me this weekend. More on the show later...