quilting retreat

This past weekend Judy, Javada and I joined 19 other ladies for a quilting retreat at Pennyrile State Park. As you can see, we actually acomplished some quilting in among all the time spent chatting, eating and laughing. Yes, that is Ann as seen from the back in the second photo. We willl all have UFOs that are much further along than before to show at the next meeting.

Roxanne

And We Have a Winner!

The Ice House recently hosted their 2010 Impressions art show. Roxanne F. entered her original quilted piece called "Images of Seasons Past." I'm pleased to say she won first place in the Mixed Media category.

The genesis of this wallhanging came from a class that Roxanne took last year at the Paducah AQS show. The class was taught by Esterita Austin and Roxanne learned to do fabric painting. From there her own creativity and talent led her to create the Images of Seasons Past. I have seen this piece in person and it's stunning. It looks 3D and has the appearance of a painting rather than a fabric piece. Roxanne used her machine to quilt it, and, as always, did a lovely job with it.

Here is what she had to say about it in a previous post:

This is a detail shot of the leaf. It is thread painting on organza using washaway stablizers. The branch is painted batik using Lumiere paint by Jacquard. The background fabric is a SkyDyes piece I got at the Paducah show in April. The free motion quilting is leaves in different Superior Threads.

Congratulations, Roxanne, for winning first place! I wonder what your next piece will be.

If you click on the pictures in the post, you can see an enlarged photo that really shows all the details. (I'd love to place pictures throughout the post at the appropriate spot, but so far I haven't figured out how to do that. SIGH!)

Finally Fall!

October in our corner of Kentucky means cooler temps and much lower humidity levels. It's a time to begin to plan ahead for the upcoming cold weather months and all the quilting we can get done then. Our October guild meeting had us coming together again to enjoy each other's company and talk about quilting. Show and Tell was a bit sparse this month, but the work was lovely nonetheless. Frances showed a cute tree skirt of many many diamonds. Roxanne finished her wool applique of pumpkins and other fall items at long last. I shared my progress on the Cherry Blossoms applique wallhanging, but didn't take a picture of it so you'll just have remember what it looked like.

Karen Allen of Paducah was our guest for the evening. She presented a very nice program demonstrating how to make a variation on the Cathedral Window quilt. The "windows" in this one are elongated rather than the more normal square. By using a bright print fabric and a black background, the finished effect was very Christmas-y and very pretty! She came on Saturday, the 30th, to conduct a class and workshop in this same technique. Several quilters met to make blocks, chatter, and generally have the fun that quilters have whenever they get together. Our bunch is a creative one and they were already figuring out ways to change this and tweak that and having table runners and couch throws and the like from this nifty pattern. I wasn't able to take the class, but I did come by for a bit to take some pictures and see how everyone was making their own Cathedral Windows. I'm posting pictures from the meeting and the class for you to enjoy.

Kim

Finally...A New Post

We are back to having our normal meetings at our normal time in our normal place, so....it's time I caught us up again.

In August we got settled into a new year of quilting fun. As always, it is good to get together as a group since during the summer months we can all scatter hither and yon. By September most of us are back at home and settling in for the fall/winter months. Our meetings are mostly planned for this year and we've got some fun times to look forward to. Our community service project this year will involve 2 local hospitals. One will be accepting small quilts for babies who pass away. These can be given to the parents to keep or to bury with their wee ones. The second hospital is asking for quilts ranging in size from large crib to large youth sizes. They will be given to children with serious illnesses or injuries to help comfort them. Alice will be collecting these and will even machine quilt them for us. How nice is that! As the year goes along, we will be bringing the tops (or finished quilts) in for Alice to take to the hospitals.

Our word for the year is applique. Ways to prep it, ways to do, and anything else we can think of to do with applique. Already we have seen Brenda and Fran show us how they prep their pieces for the applique work they do. And both of them do wonderful work! Soon other members will demonstrate ways to do their applique. Hopefully I will have pictures of that, too.

Below I will post some pictures from our August and September meetings. I hope you enjoy looking at them. Well....no...obviously blogger has other ideas and I'm not sure I can rearrange the pictures. So, instead I will say: ABOVE I posted some pictures.....lol!

Kim

Changed back to the original dates

Let's just see if I can spell this out without getting anyone confused. Remember how we always meet on the fourth Monday of each month at the Library for our guild meeting? Well, miracles do happen, we are back on schedule and we will STILL be meeting on the fourth Monday of each month at the Library for the rest of the year !!!!! So, get out your calendars and erase the changes you might have made and be sure you have us down for our original-regular dates.
Roxanne

Hot Summer Days Make Good Quilting Times

As always, our summer months of June and July are our guild's annual Sit n Sew meeting. Those of us who can come by for a day of quilting, talking, and, of course eating. After all we have to keep up our strength so we have energy to sew and talk, right? Below are pictures of from our June and July sit and sews. We were are small group at each one, but good fun was had anyway. Later on I will try to go back and add captions to the photos, but for now I'm technically working at my "real" job, so I'd best get back to it. Enjoy the pictures!
Kim

Sit and Sew

Hi ladies,

Just wanted to let you know we had a great time at the library yesterday, Monday, July 26th! Lots of talk and yummy pizza! That's all it takes for me to have a great day! :-)

Brenda