All My Bags are Packed, I'm Ready to Go...

My bags of quilts and Show-and-Tell stuff are packed and ready to take on the short car trip to Greensboro, NC and tonight's meeting of the Piedmont Quilters' Guild.

I've got the BFS full of quilts. What, you may ask, is the BFS? It is my latest version of the Big Fat Suitcase (Substitute another word for Fat, if truth be told.) Whenever we go on a road trip, my husband packs the car while I am still trying to pack my stuff, and he likes to put my big suitcase in first. So, it's always, "Jeanne! Is that BFS ready yet?!

I'm also taking a tote box full of little samples of art quilt supplies, like Shiva Paintstiks, Tsukineko inks, Angelina fibers, and other stuff I like to use. My lecture topic is, "Evolution of an Art Quilter."

I've got a clear acrylic box full of my Mini-Moo bookmarks to hand out, a laptop, projector, and will stop on the way to pick up my handouts that I sent to the Staples on-line copy service.

Now I've got to get myself ready and maybe polish my nails, then I'm off!

Getting ready for this lecture has provided a thoughtful time of reflection for me on my progress as a quilter over the past 28 years!

Two More Fabric Postcards

Magma

Serenity

Both of these cards were constructed the same way. I fused a fabric base to a piece of Timtex, a stiff interfacing. Then I fused a laundry sheet pre-painted with metallic Lumiere paints, using Misty Fuse. Then I had fun adding either bits of ribbon or bits of foil and some Angelina fibers. Since the dryer sheets were kind of "holy" after painting, everything was fused to the same base of Misty Fuse (covering with parchment paper.) I stitched through everything with metallic threads, using decorative stitches on my machine. Then, out with the heat gun for a little blast of melting action. That's when the orange piece began to look like molten rock! After fusing a fabric or watercolor paper to the other side, I zigzagged around the edges about three times, changing thread colors on the orange piece.

I got my entries mailed in to MQX for the spring show, and will have to wait and see if either Something "Girly" or "Carolina Woodland Spring" gets juried in. My first attempts at a juried competition! If you plan to show a quilt at Machine Quilters Expo this year, the deadline for photo entries is January 15.

Carolina Woodland Spring is done!

Here she is, folks! The final version of Carolina Woodland Spring.

I spent a good part of my afternoon yesterday sewing my green silk ribbon artistically around the outer border, only to rip it all out twice. Finally I asked my resident art consultant, of which there is only one in the house, if he thought it looked better with or without the ribbon. Answer was a decided "Without." So, no extra ribbon. I did add some beads to the outer border of green squares.

The spring green binding is a Ricky Tims hand-dye fabric.

If you would like to see other pictures of this quilt in progress, scroll up to the Search feature and type in green trapunto quilt or Carolina Woodland Spring. I have been working on this thing since last spring, off and on. In fact, I made the pattern for the dogwoods after scanning real dogwood blossoms from my back yard.

This quilt includes

• cut-away trapunto (the dogwoods, trillium, and little white flowers in the white side borders)
• color trapunto (the light green background is lime green fleece showing through the white batiste top
• pieced squares of green fabric including dupioni silk, hand-dyes, hand-painted, and commercial cottons
• free-motion quilting on my Gammill Classic
• painting of quilted motifs with Tsukineko inks
• Embellishment with Swarovski crystals, beads, and embroidery floss

Thanks for looking! I am filling out my entry forms for the Machine Quilters' Expo show. It is not until April, but the show is juried this year, and entries are due on January 15.

Project Updates

It has been a busy few days here at McBrayer house. Here is a list of updates and quilty news:

I have been gathering up more quilts for the show-and-tell part of the lecture at the Piedmont Quilters' Guild on Thursday. I now have Emily's Mermaid quilt ( shown above with the mermaid herself), her new fiber shawl, and the white wedding quilt. I think each of those items has a good story to tell, especially the white quilt which survived the fire that destroyed their apartment building.

I got a lovely e-mail from Bonnie McCaffery, thanking me for blogging about her vid-casts. Isn't the Internet great!

Another surprise e-mail came from the creator of the delightful Strawberry Shortcake Gingerbread House at the Grove Park Inn, which I wrote about in my post of November 27. Turns out that she is a cake maker with a lovely website called E.B. Cakes. If you are within 100 miles of northern Georgia, you have a wonderful resource for specialty cakes! Thanks for contacting me, Elizabeth, you are a true artist.

My sister-in-law Phylis took her kitty quilt, Golden Memories, to work with her, and I may have a commission to do a chihuahua quilt for a co-worker! If they agree to the price, anyway.

I am almost finished with my green trapuntoed quilt, Carolina Woodland Spring. I have cut the border into an undulating wave, bound it with a hand-dyed spring green fabric, added beads and crystals, and took it to my bee Thursday night for approval. They all liked the changes and embellishments. One of the nice things about a support group like a quilt bee is soliciting their opinions on your work and ideas. I showed them the quilt and my apple green hand-dyed silk ribbon from Waechter's Silk Shop in Asheville. I got the thumbs up on adding the ribbon to the outer green border with beads and perhaps some white Angelina flowers. I am still trying to soften the effect of the green squares in the outer border, which seem a little strong next to the delicate trapuntoed areas. So, I will try to do that today and post the picture of the completed quilt. And, it will be ready to unveil at the Piedmont Quilters' Guild on Thursday night.

I spent a fun afternoon browsing Michael's and Jo-Ann's on Friday. Michael's had a sale on all ribbons and yarn, and I stocked up quite a bit. I also got some children's paintbrushes, which have a built-in gripper in the center. Great for little hands, great for older ladies' hands with some arthritis! Then on Friday night, I happily added embellishments to my Mini-Moo business cards to turn them into glittery bookmarks. I will probably hand these out at the guild meeting. Unfortunately, my computer is not recognizing the memory card slot at the moment, so I can't post any new pics until I figure out what's wrong. Edit: Got it working and adding photos!

Saturday afternoon we went to the NC State- Presbyterian College basketball game, which was quite a dud. We won, but State only scored 50 points and was behind at halftime against a team which is 1-18. I am dreading the game next Saturday against our arch-rival, #1 ranked North Carolina. If State does not play at a higher level, UNC will eat them up and spit them out.

Art Quilting Pod-Cast

If you are like me, you get excited about every new product or technique that someone has used to make a beautiful art quilt. After I see a quilt that is gorgeous, watch a video, get a book, or see a magazine article, I purchase the product...and then it sits unused until motivation or need provides the impetus to actually use it. This seems somewhat wasteful, but it has served me well when the mood has struck! For example, after seeing Marilyn Badger make her Magical Ponchos on Simply Quilts episode 1110, I ordered the silk tops, Angelina, and water-soluble stabilizer immediately. Then about two years later, I got it all out and produced my beautiful fiber shawl when I needed it to wear to a wedding.

Another example of products I purchased after a Simply Quilts episode are Tsukineko inks, Fantastix markers, and stands. I was inspired by the talented Lura Schwarz Smith and her Faces in Fabric episode. I also ordered two sets of her DVD's. Well, I have yet to complete my portrait quilt, but I use these inks constantly for other projects, including:

• painting quilt labels-those fabric markers dry out so fast, but these inks do not!
• coloring quilted motifs, such as on Spring Greens and my other trapuntoed quilts
• adding details to picture quilts, such as Change of Season and Golden Memories
• painting fabric
• re-coloring faded quilts and decorative flags, such as the Fourth of July quilt
• creating artsy backgrounds and images for fabric postcards

Anyway, the reason for today's post on this topic is that I just watched Linda Schmidt on Bonnie McCaffery's ladest Vid-Cast. Have you checked these out? They are short, free video segments featuring Bonnie interviewing various quilters. Linda is a fabulous quilt artist who uses many products to achieve life-like dimension and texture. She also teaches classes online at Quilt University. Take a look at this Vid-Cast and see if you aren't eager to sign up for one of Linda's classes, purchase some Puff Paints or Tinzel or Misty Fuse!

Getting ready for Greensboro

It is down to crunch time, as I now have one week to prepare for my stint as guest lecturer at the Piedmont Quilters Guild in Greensboro. The topic is "The Evolution of an Art Quilter." Getting my photographs ready, researching quotations, compiling a list of products and resources...so many things to think about! I did think ahead to order some Mini-Moos which I will hand out. I want to get a fancy hole punch and some fibers to add to these to make bookmarks. Of course, I would like to finish Carolina Woodland Spring to take along. (See December 29 post.) I was planning to make a quilted jacket to wear, but doubt that will happen. I started taking my art quilts off the walls at home to bring for show-and-tell. Two of them did not have labels, so yesterday I dragged my still-ailing self upstairs and created one for Color Me Happy and Summer Jewels. These are not too inspired, but they look pretty in person with their sparkling crystals. They don't lay too flat because of all the dimensional quilting in these thick quilts.

Why I Make Quilts-Part 3

Happy New Year! I hope this year will be a good one for you.


We visited the "grands" for Christmas, always a great photo op! My daughter-in-law had switched out the children's bedrooms, and the Lily-bug quilt was still mounted on a rod in Avery's bedroom. So, while I was there, I sewed a sleeve on Avery's quilt and hung it in his room. While Lily's quilt was temporarily off the wall, I took the opportunity to watch her enjoy it. "Watch" being meant very literally, since it is full of hazardous buttons and yo-yo-s for a little girl to pull off. To my surprise, the first thing she did with it was turn over each corner. Miranda said she was looking for the picture of us which I had on the label!

She also did some up-close exploring of the little sparklies on her quilt. This is the little girl who puts everything in her mouth, so she was not allowed to explore to her heart's content. When they were at my house for the Turner Christmas dinner, she ate one of the black felt circles on the inside of my kitchen cabinets. When I tried to get it out of her mouth, she bit me! I told Miranda what she had eaten, she reassured me that she had already eaten all the black felt circles off the kitchen cabinets at home! Of course Big Brother had to get in on the fun!

Still not feeling 100% today. And not because of any overindulging on New Year's Eve! We spent New Year's Eve at home by ourselves for the first time ever. Must say, it was nice! We watched the Bourne Ultimatum on DVD and then Dick Clark's New Year's Rocking Eve. Poor Dick Clark- America's oldest teenager really looked old this year.