Saturday, April 27, 2013

Blue Skies!

I don't have the right size stretcher bars for my new pieces, so I am painting on the floor again. But at least I am painting. I have three more Haybales in Vermont started, here are two. They are each from different perspectives and orientations. I used two different fabrics for all three, using an almost solid blue for the sky. That worked out better than the floral, but now there is a seam through each of the hay bales, which I don't like. I do have the grass mostly painted in, they just need a little touching up. 




Monday, April 22, 2013

Happy Earth Day!

Climate Change, 2012 42"x48"

This was made with Ugly Fabric (fabric really not suitable for, well, anything) and most of the paint was leftover wall paint. It symbolizes my frustration with "deniers". Please consider celebrating Earth Day by eating plant based meals whenever you can. It's the easiest way a single person can make a big impact. And now I will get off my soap box.

Our guild, Northern Lights Quilt Guild, held their biannual quilt show last weekend. We have such a talented group. The majority of them are traditional quilters, and wicked talented ones at that. Joanne Shapp was the featured quilter here, too. She also displayed her other work, ones not in the Crop Circle series. The contrast in styles was amazing - either wild, crazy and super colorful or very controlled, meticulously piece and monochromatic. However, they were all very much Joanne Shapp Quilts!


I'm sure more, and much better quality photos will be posted on our guild website, so please check there to see the work of our talented ladies. I'm just going to share one more because it was geeky! My husband amused himself by translating the binary and he's pretty sure it says "Invictus, I play the game". 





Friday, April 12, 2013

New England Quilt Festival

I'm at MQX or I guess it's the New England Quilt Festival, now. MQX has such a nice ring to it, so it's hard for me to make the switch to the new name.

I took classes on using Art and Stitch all day Wednesday and Thursday morning. It's a powerful program that you can use to digitize almost anything and then transfer it to your long-arm to stitch out. One class was digitizing TTF fonts. I am really excited to try that out.

The quilts on display are fabulous! There's everything from newbie machine stitchers to the OMG-How-Did-She(or he)-Do-That???? quilts. I love seeing them all!

Mara Novak won first place in her category. She did all of the machine stitching (again, these photos were taken with my iphone!). I should get some detail shots today, yes? It is really stunning how she used the threads to bring out the piecing. She made the star in the center appear bigger and the paisley motif in the border is all thread.


And Joanne Shapp is one of the featured quilters!!! She has done many quilts based on crop circles and they are gorgeous. meticulous. And she is so passionate about the subject. She is speaking at the dinner tonight and I'm really looking forward to it. I am so excited for her, she really deserves this attention.


This quilter, Melissa Sobotka, I don't know, but it blew my mind. Even looking at the photo it looks so three dimensional. There is some photo transfer, but most of it is applique.
a slightly out of focus close up:

I am having a lot of fun this week at the show... I might make reservations for next year before I leave if it hasn't sold out already :)

Sunday, April 7, 2013

SAQA regional meeting

Margaret Sheehan, our local SAQA rep organized a meeting that was held yesterday for SAQA members in NH, VT, MA and ME. (and apologies for the quality of the pictures... these were taken with my cell phone which is much slower than what I'm used to! Timing is everything)

Judith Reilly gave a talk about how she frames her quilts. This photo shows Margaret holding one of her pieces framed in the same manner. It's a deep frame with the quilt mounted on two layers of foam core so that it loos like it is floating. 

Valarie Poitier gave a talk about becoming a PAM (a juried member of SAQA). One of the requirements to become a PAM is submitting 10 pieces that show a cohesive body of work. Valarie says you may need to have as many as 50 under your belt before you have your 10. (she didn't bring her show and tell, but she showed some of us a sneak peek of a work in progress with pictures from her phone. I am definitely going to keep an eye on her blog to see when she is exhibiting!) 

I have been a big fan of Michele O'Neil Kincaid's work for years, but I really love this one! 


And Maryann Gallaher, who is an up-and-coming fabric dyer! The green back ground of this piece is her hand dyed fabric and Jody Scaltreto thread painted Maryann's sweet kitty. Oh, how I wish I had a better picture, maybe Maryann will send me one??

There are more pictures here http://saqanhvtme.blogspot.com/2013/04/april-6th-meeting.html do have a peek!