Pat & Mike

My parents would have been married 51 years on June 25th. Cancer took my mother in November 2002, and an assumed heart attack took my dad 9 months later. They were 61 and 66 at the time.
I love this picture. Their whole wedding album is a story....a moment in time recorded on June 25, 1960.
Michael Joseph Darcy was a handsome Irish immigrant with a  thick brogue and a twinkle in his gorgeous blue eyes, attending a dance at the Irish Center in South Buffalo, where he met Patricia Elizabeth Dolan!
It is interesting to see ones parents as young hopeful newlyweds. We all have been there. It is by design I suppose that hope springs eternal while young. Thus we insure the cycle of life. All stories have their endings...my parents had hard times for sure, but what ran deep, a constant undercurrent, was a true love. I am reminded of that when I see this picture.

I have been busy. But the things I have completed I can't show you! I mentioned the HGTV Flower picture challenge a while ago. We had to take this picture...and do whatever we wanted, no rules! My kind of challenge.

All I can say is that, yes, I did interpret it.. my way! Pics emailed to Thearica. I think there are 17 women signed up. The due date is July 4th. It will be judged and gift cards awarded to various online quilt shops. How cool is that? Thearica has the magic southern accent and persuasion when it comes to getting vendors to sign on!

I love Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth infamy. Her aesthetic is to reuse, rescue and repurpose old fabrics. She is all about hand work, which continues to be what feels good to me. I signed on to take one of her workshops. It is an interesting delivery of audio, video, pictures and paragraphs of the way she attains her precious, unique and comforting pieces. There is something that hits home for me in Jude's approach. I love old fibers and fabrics as evidenced from my treasure trove of linens, wools and silks from years of scavenging at Salvation Army! Tonight I made a very small weaving from leftover bits of  a Judy Robertson hand dyed. It is approximately 4" x 9". I love it already! (No pic yet.)

I have learned:

1. XXX Hot Salsa.  Delicious.  Addiction. But tomorrow......oh. You know. 
2. "Cathedrals" by Jump Little Children. Weird name for a band. Cool song. 

Guild Meeting Fun!

 I got to revisit my Iron Quilter piece when Louise brought it to the NYS Quilters Consortium luncheon my guild, Museum Quilt Guild, hosted this past Wednesday!  The meeting was a success!

I made this mini quilt for AAQI's online auctions. "Slipping Away" is dedicated for my friend Charlotte's 59 year old brother, Joseph. He was diagnosed 18 months ago with Alzheimer's. Her father was also diagnosed with Alzheimer's. (A woman collects them at these quarterly meeting and takes care of getting them where they go)

These are some of the others....

This is a panoramic view of our fun day with people from near and far!

Guild meeting today! Always a highlight of a month for me. John Roll, our resident and sole male quilter, headed up this Military Pride quilt making project. We were asked to come up with some way to commemorate regional heroes, men or women that have and are serving in any branch of the military. John and his committee created this wonderful quilt that will record names, branch and years of service. Next Saturday our local paper, The Batavia Daily, will feature this quilt in an article! This is one of the reasons I love my guild!

Mary Lee showed us her life size Jesse quilt. Jesse is her son and obviously a champion wrestler. This quilt won 3rd place in GVQC's huge show! These pictorial quilts are her special niche and she has mastered the technique. If she doesn't submit these to Lark books, who is searching for picture quilts for a future publication, I will!
Martha, our teacher for the jacket workshop I took the last two meetings, finished her jacket! It is beautiful. I love the mola piece on the back. Priscilla Kibbe always has an array for sale.

Paula Schultz, from Cottons, etc. in Wampsville, NY, was our program today. She brought with her an inspiring selection of garments. Some have won various awards in national shows! The orange/pink outfit above is made entirely of silk.

Her Matisse influenced jacket. It is made with the same Vogue Geoffrey Beene pattern as the jacket she is wearing. Of course it is discontinued!

Cool pintuck weaving inserted in this vest.

For my CQ friends...a crazy pieced jacket! The back was a tone-on-tone black with a random patch sewn on.

I LOVE this jacket! Paula started a Runway Addicts program at her shop 5 years ago. The group produces garments and accessories using items and challenge parameters doled out a few times each year. How fun is that? Some of the interesting items they had to incorporate were ear plugs, scrubbies, buttons, belts, ties, keys and stamps. I want to do this!! Anyway...this jacket is a remix of a wool blazer. She cut it down, added fabric at bottom and needle felted with a machine, the wool circles.

This vest is constructed of wool bits and broderie perse type applique.
We all were truly inspired to create, which is what Paula's purpose is in this show. She loves what she does. She loves to inspire people to create. She has today! Thank you Paula for your light today!

I meandered around my limited gardens, if they can even be called that...but I am taking liberty with the definition! I need to spend time weeding again. Is there a better way to weed? I kneel on my achy knees and dig with a trowel, then pull. Ugh. Not what I want to do on a weekend.

I have a few projects/challenges I have made some progress on.
I can't talk about the HGTV flower challenge as it will be voted on. I am liking where it is going though! I may be 1/2 finished. July 4th deadline.

My textured page for Art quilt group still needs disk beads sewn on and finished!

I am expecting a little package from Nicki next week. I will have to incorporate the 5 elements into a CQ piece that will also be voted on on the HGTV message board, so no pics of that in progress either. I will be able to show you what I have to use though!

I have purchased 2 great old sewn binding books at Sally Ann's. I will be using one very soon to begin my altered book for our next RR project with the AFF's. This is a non-mostly-fabric challenge and one I have wanted to try to do for years. Fun!

I am sure there are others that escape me at the moment, but there is nothing like a deadline to motivate me, so I know I will get them in order!

I have learned:

1. Old measuring tapes were 5/8" wide making it easy to check your seam allowance when sewing garments. Great idea.
2. Clarence Clemons, Bruce Springsteen's celebrated sax player, has died after suffering a stroke earlier this week. The Big Man. He was the epitome of cool. 
3. I need to find time to make it to this exhibit at the Rochester Art Gallery before it is gone July 3rd. 
4. I won't tell you the total of my fines at the library today but will say I am sure I bought a book or two for the shelves! I needed to get the book on Altered Books out so....
5. My studio is painted!! I am ready to move all my stuff upstairs. I guess it's time to call in those old sawhorses from Ryan. Pics soon!
6. Funeral homes have come into the 21st century. Last night my daughter posted a link  on FB to the slideshow of pics of her friend Mo that died last weekend at the age of 29, in a motorcycle accident. Maureen left three young daughters behind. The picture/slideshow unleashed a deluge of tears for all the pain the family has and will endure. 
7. I have been sucked in by The Voice. On demand. 

Allentown Art Fest-ivities.....

Allentown Art Fest in hotter than expected Buffalo yesterday. Very few new and interesting artists. The more entertaining aspects of the day were on Allen Street, like this installation piece. I believe it was by an art teacher with students. All bike tire rims, connected and strips of fabrics woven randomly. Cool.

Violinist. Dinosaur.

Art by Blair was doing this graffiti art thing which was apparently sponsored by Ford. Not sure if painting the car was next.

And lunch at Fat Bob's. Lauren, Bob, Melissa and Cameron, joined Carol, Sandy and myself for delicious BBQ!

I must be getting old because I was so tired and achy after 4 hours walking around yesterday. I was happy to be an example to Sandy that all her aches and pains are not necessarily from her medical ordeal over the last 2 1/2 years....we are getting old! Seriously!

Not feeling 100% today made making this Nook cover a slow go. (not sure if it is sickness or just all the bad news and work stress manifesting physically.) A young man at work, one of my favorites, asked me to make his Dad a Nook cover for father's day. I knew today was the only day I had to work on it, so I printed out the directions I bought from Birdiful Stitches. I had hacked my way through making one of these a few weeks ago but didn't have the dimensions right for the Nook. I felt more confident have her instructions and pictures to guide me.

This is the front/back cover. Ted had definite idea's he wanted incorporated in this project. He found his dad's emblem from his Marine unit, emailed it to me and I printed it to a nice canvas and fused to front. He wanted the cover to be red and the Marine fabric inside.The back cover design came about when I noticed errant threads showing under the red! I fused 2 bits from the Marine fabric my friend Jody hunted down in Chicago for me, right on top of the offending threads.

Inside.

I have learned:

1. Very sad news this morning. Melissa's good friend Maureen O'Grady died in a motorcycle accident last night. She leaves 3 daughters behind. While I never knew her I am feeling the loss for Melissa and Maureen's family. So much bad, sad news lately. Makes a heart heavy.

Link to All Iron Quilter Info...and Pics of Awesome Quilts from GVQC Show

http://www.cs.rit.edu/~kar/ironquilter2011/

Since I couldn't say it better, click on this link to a great explanation of Iron Quilter and great pictures Margaret Reek's husband Ken took throughout the competition. As a participant I didn't get to look around much and appreciate being able to see what went on while my eyes were cast on my own piece in the machine!
You will also see pics of the entire 20 quilts made in 3 1/2 hours. They are very impressive. In retrospect I regret not buying at auction, to benefit Gilda's Club, a couple pieces.
I really liked this one by Kris Gedeon. She is in the Twin Cities Quilt Guild I just joined. She chose "Dreaming" as her theme. I have to find out her process. It's cool.

One other person chose "The Diet" too. I liked what Jeanne Simpson created. It stands on its own.

GVQC also had on display a small Hoffman Challenge exhibit. It was a garment/accessory challenge as opposed to the quilt display. This beaded bag was great.

And for my Crazy Quilting friends...this bag. I have some friends that do really good work. Challenge winning work!
This quilt show actually had over 1000 pieces, big and small, on display! Wow, it was overwhelming. So much beauty and creativity to take in. I know many of my friend left feeling the same way! There were traditional, art quilts, wall hangings, garments, special exhibits and attractions like Iron Quilter and a runway show of Priscilla Kibbe's intricate impressive garments. I had Priscilla come to Museum Quilt Guild last year with this trunk show.
Here are a few quilts that I especially liked.

Marcia Decamp. She is a very accomplished art quilter.

I don't know who made this. Thought I would be able to read the labels, but nope.

Pat Pauly's Diamond Ring challenge quilt. Love those screen printed circle's. 

This little quilt is so cool! The background was thin scraps of strips woven together with yo-yo's. Kate Martin was admiring it with me and mentioned how "Carnival" it looked! Yes it does! (Carnival is the guild challenge this year. Apparently some people don't understand)

I had a very small bit of fabric in this show....literally...the slice of Convulvulous at the 2-4 o'clock. My art quilt group tackled this group project last year. I used the snippet/tulle technique.

I wish I had a better picture of this. It was gorgeous. "Fire" by Caris Burton. 

My friend Martha's original design using Jane Sassaman piecing technique. I love this quilt. She should market the pattern!

I love all the little line piecing. I want to try some of these improvisational little bits.

My friend Elaine's original design using a photo printed to fabric. It has dimension and as her style, wonderful emachine quilting. It is a gorgeous piece.

My friend Mary Lee's life size picture quilt won3rd prize! Her son Jesse is the big guy. Around the left side and top Mary Lee sketchy stitched various wrestling moves. It is truly awesome. She really has a knack for capturing faces and her use of value is masterful. We have a program in September scheduled for her to share her secrets and techniques with us....workshop after. Looking forward to learning about this!

The woman that made this quilt had many pieces displayed, all using this large photo printing. I love her quilting. I want to know how she has this done. Apparently she sends images to an online company that prints them this large to fabric. So cool. What possibilities in that!

This traditional pieced quilt is such a strong graphic piece. I would love to say I made this! Beautiful.

This is for my HGTV friends that have all caught the "Twister" bug. 

The best use of ties in a quilt ever!

And this number that was in Quilter's Newsletter in 2007. Love it.

These were just a few of my favorites. It was a spectacular show. 

I have a few projects that have deadlines in the next month or so. 

1. A quilt for Alzheimer's auction. I am stitching and beading a CQ pieced bit with Kaffe Fassett fabrics. 
2.   My page for Art Quilt Group. We took a picture of our choosing and isolated a small area to recreate in a 12" x 12"(approx.) page of texture. So far I have needle felted with my embellishing machine, added some big beads and machine quilted. I still have to sew on some disk beads to finish that up.
3. Alter a book. My AFF group is moving on to our next RR. We will take an old book and begin the round by setting the them/tone of our own book. Each of us will complete the front and back cover and start the inside. Cool fun! So many idea's. 
4. Thearica, on HGTV message board is hosting a challenge to interpret in any way, the flower picture above. I have a base pieced. I have a couple idea's for the flowers. I love that this challenge has NO RULES~. Due July 4th.
5. I have signed on to Nicki's CQ Summer challenge. She will be mailing out 5 bits of lace that we all will incorporate into a CQ piece. We will be keeping them for ourselves in the end, which really allows your to think of your own aesthetic. 

So as you can see I will be busy! This with the wedding creating that will be pressing come August. I have to come up with a great fabric flower, rhinestone brooches, ribbon bouquet and corsages that will not be ordinary. No worries!

I won Iron Quilter! (mini-post)

http://quilterb-bethsblog.blogspot.com/

I participated in GVQC's Iron Quilter competition, held in conjunction with their huge, awesome quilt show at R.I.T. this weekend. 20 women came....10 themed categories announced at 10:00 AM (eg: frivolous, dancing, childlike, poetic, joyous, etc...and the one I chose, "the diet") I really chose the diet because it seemed less abstract. I felt with the other themes you really had to invoke a feeling. Not impossible, but not possible for me in 3 1/2 hours!

I want to blog about the process with pics my friends are supplying me with. I look forward to telling you the day-story. Soon.

I haven't downloaded pics yet, but my friend Elaine alerted me to Beth's Blog and a post with pic of my piece ( and couple others) and good explanation of the the competition. I will quickly say I had a BLAST with the whole process!
AND I won a Bernina Bernette 82e sewing machine!
Thank you to GVQC for an unforgettable experience and the new machine!
More to follow....when I have more time....and patience downloading my pics....!
I would like to thank my friends that stopped, stayed and cheered me on Saturday!

Cool Piece from GVQC quilt show...special exhibit

This is part of a special exhibit at the GVQC Quilt Show at R.I.T. in Rochester. I love this. I have always liked collage style anything. The mix of materials is exciting to me. I will try to get the makers info and the name of the exhibit tomorrow.
Here is a close up of some hand stitching.

(Weird. I thought this post was "lost" Friday night. I see is appeared here at some point! )

Multi-Media Book RR

Time flies, full of overworked employment, maternal obligations and rotten weather! In this span my laptop also got virus-ed on Friday the 13th. After a $100 trip to the PC Guy, I am clean, but my camera wasn't cooperating with said laptop...not able to download pics. My friend Jody spent an hour on my PC, from her home near Chicago, trying to get me ready to go. Seems my laptop does NOT like my camera, like the PC Guy told me! Now I have a card reader (learned something new today) that my SD card goes into to extract my pics. We bypassed the camera. So....now I can post a new pic! Thanks Jody for all your advice and time. What she knows about computers is like a foreign language to me.

I have been so excited to share my finished (almost) book from the RR I participated in with some of my most talented friends. When we were all together in Charlotte NC, we gave each book back to its owner...a reveal! I am so thrilled with mine! This is my cover. We each made our covers and back covers. It was to provide a direction for each person working on it. I included a slew of upholstery fabric samples, thanks to my friend Anne who gave me a treasure of books to work with. (I used a silk book to make my CQ purse). Each person used some of them in their pages.

Colleen worked her magic on this page. I had prepared canvas to be the substrate of each page and they could paint it the color of their choice. This page is a cool green, coupled with pink and this awesome beaded cabochon. Colleen makes gorgeous jewelry with these cabochons. I feel honored to have one in my book. The second pic is of the backside. She used a vintage apron and embroidery to complete her page. Colleen's aesthetic is similar to mine, so we are guaranteed to like what each of us do.

Nicki's pages began with a "friendship tree". I love how she used her favorite color (blue!) and  created this wonderful rendition of a tree. She dyes lace to sell on Etsie and you can see some of her lace bits here. Her reverse side uses a cool dyed  doilie and stitching, combined with some fabrics I included. Love these pages. Thanks Nick.

Denise has a very under-stated elegance to her designs. I loved her cover and back-side for her book.  She used a felting technique she learned at Quilt Market.  Her second side uses a wine cork cut into slices and stamped with the word "dasein" which means simply, to be alive, to be a being. Love these.

Jody was inspired to use the fabrics included in the box. I love the stamped bird (the bird thing...love it) and she incorporated Scrabble-like tiles since she knows I love the game! She used the leather-like bits to really come up with the perfect pages for my book. Thanks!

This is the back cover I made. I will gather my pages together with discounted bracelet chains I picked up at Michaels. This was the perfect combination of people and talents. We all worked well together. So well, we are gearing up to do an altered book RR. We have included our friend Charlyn in this round. It promises to be exciting! Altered books in entirely different. We will each start with a book...a real book... a book destined for nowhere. The front and back covers will be our starting point. Cannot wait!

My little art quilt group dabbled in a technique from Susan Carlson's book Serendipity Quilts. Using watered down glue and paint brush we glued bits of scraps to create a design. Our first attempts are very basic, but oh, so fun! I used a bag of scrap verbiage fabrics my friend Mary Ellen gave me a few years ago. It was truly soothing and relaxing just gluing bits to background fabric. I encourage you to get her books and try this out. Really fun!

I look forward to trying this technique out and making some fish from her first book, Free Style Quilts.

My body aches after another day of weeding and planting. I still have weeds waiting for me in the front garden. Tomorrow is another day! Can't wait to see the petunia's root and take off. Hope it fills in the front and all I have to do is deadhead the bunch.

I have quite a few projects in queue. First and foremost is a Nook cover. One of my favorites at work asked me to make a Nook cover for his dad for Father's Day. Ted actually found the emblem for his dad's Marine unit and emailed it to me. I copied it to fabric today...which was a trial and error. Some of the prepared sheets I have were affected by humidity and jammed my printer. I ended up using the canvas prepared fabric I bought at Office Max. It went through printer without jamming. I love the canvas and the emblem looks great. He asked for a red cover with emblem on front. After a plea to some quilty friends, Jody went out of her way to find me some Marine fabric at her Hobby Lobby in Chicago; mailed to me right away, received yesterday. The Marine fabric will be inside the Nook holder. I kind of came up with this myself based on a picture from a blog. It will incorporate triangle tabs that hold the Nook inside. Peltex will give it some rigidity. Thinking of elastic to keep it closed. Tomorrow will begin with me making this Nook cover happen!

I have also signed on to interpret this photo into a quilt of some sort. Hhhh.mmmm. So many idea's.

Michael is unofficially graduated from St John Fisher. He saved 3 credits for the Fall to return to play his last year of eligibility on the football team. The ceremony was held in Rochester May 9th. Kudos to Fisher for moving the ceremony swiftly along. 1000 graduates=2 hours.

I have learned:

1. So You Think You Can Dance started up this past Thursday. I have predicted  Melanie Moore will win. 
2. Really...Scotty? American Idol. Haley all the way.
3. D'onfrio returns. Criminal Intent. 
4. John Steinbeck's Travels with Charly is a quick read about Steinbeck's excursion with his poodle Charly in the early 60's. I looked a couple of times at the publication date. Some issues were still relevant  almost 40 years later. 
5. Cameron is gay. Melissa's future BIL. He's 18. Cam has known for a long time. Melissa let him be what he is. What a gift. 
6. Major Magic's memories. The pizza joint with games and animated life-sized animals singing songs. But it was all about the tickets! Tickets to "buy" a prize.