Fabric Postcard

                                                  I made my first fabric postcard using Timtex.

It's a fun way to use up scraps and just play. As long as it is 4 x 6 inches and addressed correctly on the stamped side, it will go through the mail. There's lots of you tube videos and tutorials online to guide you.

PIQF 2021 Part 2 - Some of My Favorites

 Here are a few of my favorite quilts from PIQF 2021. 

Great textures and colors.

Closeup

Great color palette in the one above. 

 I'm a big fan of complementary color schemes.

Love the colors and textures in this one.

Check out how the artist used lace to add texture to the waves!

Love the negative/positive balance in this one and the watercolor effect.

This is called Missouri Barn by Le Ann Hileman.  She did a great job of 

choosing slices of fabric to show the colors and textures of aged barn wood.

Wonderful clouds too.

I liked these little compositions put together to create a larger one.

I apologize for not being able to credit all the artists who made these.

Pacific International Quilt Show

 My friend Joyce and I went to PIQF last weekend. Usually this show is very well attended, wall to wall people.  Instead of fighting crowds of avid quilters looking for  just the right fat quarter of fabric, there were hardly any people there.  It made it very easy to take photos of the beautiful quilts that are always in attendance there.

Our Cutting Edge Quilt Group had a special exhibit entitled "Personal Journey with Racism". Each member created a quilt to express their individual experience with encountering racism. Below are some pictures from that exhibit.

On the left is Gay's quilt called Boxes and Kathy's called "Strange Fruit", based on the song

 sung by Nina Simone and others about black bodies hanging from trees in the south.

Mine is on the left, entitled, "I'm Just Trying to Fit In" about racial integration in schools in the 70's. On the right is Jeanne S.'s showing the ratio of Blacks to Whites

 in places she has lived and hopes for the future.

On the left is Paula's Quilt about her growing up in racially mixed Detroit and on the Right is Andi's about Redlining, which is a racial discriminatory practice in which lenders systematically

 denied loans to people of color.

On the left is Sara's, which is a very moving piece regarding the discovery in old family wills,  that her ancestors owned slaves for generations.  

On the right is another one of Jeanne S.'s about Asian Hate.

More Sun Printing

 My good friend Phyllis sun printed over

 a blue and grey lovely printed top which had silver and gold

cranes images. You can see a little bit of one of the crane images

 poking through on the right top corner on the photo below.

She printed with some of her maiden fern leaves which created a lovely design.

You can see it on the left side of the neck opening in the photo above and

in the photos below.

Sun Printing in the Studio Barn

 Been having fun creating sun prints in the studio barn with my friend Phyllis. 

 It's been very hot in Paso Robles lately, which is perfect for making sun prints on fabric.

 I'll post again soon to show how the fabrics turned out.

New Quilt Finished

 Just finished a new quilt that I started years ago in a Rosemary Eichorn Class offered by my Almond Country Quilt Guild. The class was on fabric collage and using a multitude of ways to alter your fabric. I'm talking melting it, painting it, tearing it, gluing it, you name it!

It's hard to tell in the photo that the clouds are slightly three dimensional, as are the silk roses appliquéd to the painted gold felt.  We used a heat gun to distress the acrylic felt and the painted it.

Ice Dye Fun in the Studio Barn with Friends

 Recently I had some friends from my  Cutting Edge Group come over to do some parfait ice dyeing, which is a process where you stack one piece of fabric over another adding dye and ice to each one and squish them into a container. As the ice melts the fabric get bits of dye from the pieces above and below them. 

Above is my  table with lots of tools and materials and a sample piece.

Here is a shirt I made for hubby.

My friend Kate gave me a lovely piece of silk to dye.

Above is a piece I folded and clamped prior to dyeing.

The piece above was just gently scrunched up and dyed.