Supporting your Local Quilt Guild

A good way to support your local quilt guild is to donate a mini-quilt or two to the mini-quilt auction.  The guild is able to raise money on it and you know your work will be loved by a fellow quilter or quilt appreciator.  If you buy one yourself, you will acquire some small but wonderful work by fellow members you know.  Below are two I donated, After Harvest and Focus on Ficus (Fig. 1-3), and one I purchased, Considering 3 (Fig.4), by guild member, Sylvia Weir, whose work I love.  I happened to be in a felting workshop/class with Sylvia some time ago and while shopping the Vendors, she picked out the fabric that went around the felted design in  After Harvest.  Focus on Ficus was created from random bits of painted, monoprinted, and deconstructed screen printed fabrics.  It was difficult to tell how Sylvia constructed her collage.  I think it was surface design with other fabric bits sewn on.  The whole of it was wrapped with a shimmering see-through fabric.

After Harvest      14"x 14"                          Fig. 1

 

 

After Harvest - Detail                                   Fig. 2

 

 

 

 

Focus on Ficus  7"x10"          Fig. 3

 

 

 

 

 Considering 3                    Sylvia Weir 

                                                     Fig. 4

Golden Triangle Quilt Guild Show 2014

Yesterday I attended the Golden Triangle Quilt Guild Show in Beaumont, TX.  (Figures 1-2).
Judges for the show were NQA certified judges Nell Smith (Texas), Cindy Erickson (Midwest) & Madeline Hawley (Georgia).  They made a difficult job seem easy.  I scribed for each of them as the show was setting up and admired their professionalism.  I scribed in many different categories because I only had one entry while other members had multiple entries in various categories and we were all exempt from scribing in our own entered category.

Guild member, Karen Stone (shown below with my favorite of her quilts - Fig. 3) was the shows' featured quilter.  Other personal favorites are shown below (Figures 4-7).

It was no surprise that Judy Beskow blew away the competition in the Small Art category with her fabulous I am a Rock Star (there is my wee entry hanging next to hers and looking rather puny - Fig. 8).  So, I was very surprised indeed when I saw that Nell Smith selected Flowers for Elizabeth for her Judges Choice award (Fig. 9).  Elizabeth was thrilled for her Grammy when she heard the news.

Golden Triangle Quilt Guild Show 2/8/14    Fig. 1

 

 

 

Christine & Virginia Viewing Quilts     Fig. 2

 

 

 

                                                   Fig. 3

Karen with her quilt & my personal favorite

 

 

 

Kisses      Melissa Tweedel                           Fig. 4

 

 

Vinyasa       Melissa Tweedel                 Fig. 5

My pick for Viewer's Choice

 

 

Light Houses at the Beach        Fig. 6

Cathy Lempa

 

 

 Plaids&Things  P.J. Broussard  Fig. 7 

 

 

Art Small                                                       Fig. 8

I am a Rock Star along side Flowers for Elizabeth

 

 

Flowers for Elizabeth                   Fig. 9

Quilt is the property of Elizabeth Fahrion

 

 

   

The Art in Fiber 2014 - "Connected" Now Open

Below is a photo (Fig. 1) of some of the participants present at the opening of The Art in Fiber 2014 at the Copper Shade Tree in Round Top, Texas.  Salt 'n Pepper, fabric and acrylic composition, featured in the 12" x 12" grouping on the back wall in photo is shown in close up below (Fig. 2).  Also shown below are photos of my finished theme pieces, Perspectives:  Two Sides of the Same Coin (Fig. 3-4), and some other work (though not all) currently there (Fig. 5-7).  Work shown in Figures 3-7 are composed of dyed/painted coffee filters and paper towels.

FiberVoices and Out of Bounds "Connected" at the Copper Shade Tree (Fig. 1)

Photo - Cheryl Johnson

 

 

Salt 'n Pepper          12" x 12"                    (Fig. 2)

(Shown on the back wall in the photo above)

 

Theme   8" x 12" (Fig. 3)

 

 

 

Theme     12" x 16"                (Fig. 4)

 

 

 

Two Bananas                   4.5" x 6.5"          (Fig. 5)

 

 

Three Pears              4.5" x 6.5"                  (Fig. 6)

 

 

 

Peach  4.5" x 6.5"               (Fig. 7)

 

 

 

Cabins Across Time

The Golden Triangle Quilt Guild in Beaumont, TX, is having their quilt show this coming Friday and Saturday, February 7 and 8.  We have two art quilt categories this year which is especially exciting and I can't wait to see the entries.
Also, a few antique and old quilts will be turned on a bed and each viewed while their story is told.  My quilt and its story is shown below.  The photo was scanned from an old print taken in 1997 with a throw-away camera so the quality of it, I'm sorry to say, is not good.

Cabins Across Time                          64" x 64"

Pieced by:  Quilter Unknown

Hand-quilted by:  cmf

 

 

I bought a log-cabin quilt-top at International Quilt Festival in Houston, Texas, in 1996.  The vendor said it was from the 1890's. The fabric was very brittle to the touch.  It seemed fragile almost to the point of being useless.  I batted it with unwashed 80-20 cotton/poly and used a new, unwashed, reproduction fabric on the back.  I began hand-quilting it in 1997.  With every stitch, the fabric would shred away from the needle.  I did not know if I would get a quilt out of it at the end but I continued quilting it over a 3-month period until it was done.  At that point, I decided to wash it and dry it in the dryer thinking that the thread would shrink, the batting and backing would shrink and the small rips around each stitch would shrink.  It worked!  When Jane Hall, a nationally known quilter able to date old fabric, saw it, she said, "Connie, you know what you did?"  I said, "No", imagining I had ruined its value.  She said, "You saved the life of this quilt-top!"  Because it was pieced by an unknown quilter around 1897, according to Jane, and I quilted it in 1997, I called it Cabins Across Time in honor of my connection to the unknown piecer and the 100 years between us.