Simply Outlandish

 Look!  It's another quilt, one I finished this very week. (Oops, did you fall of your chair in astonishment?)

Every April, the retreat that I attend features a challenge, and this year the challenge was to use plaid fabrics in some significant way.  I had a bundle of bright plaid fat quarters in my closet, from who knows where -- probably a quilt show some years back. (I have a hard time resisting a happy bundle of fat quarters charmingly tied up with a ribbon.  They're just so dang appealing!)

I cast around for something to do with the plaids, and remembered a pattern I'd pinned on Pinterest some time back.  It's called Suburbs, from Cluck Cluck Sew.  It felt just right -- and it was available for immediate download upon purchase. Perfect! (They have a paper version too, in case you're wondering.)

Upon reviewing the pattern, I realized that the pattern resulted in big houses -- something on the order of 8.5 x 11 blocks.  But I only had little fat quarters of fabric, and I'd been picturing little houses.  I pulled out my trusty graph paper and worked out a scaled down block, so my houses could be roughly 5x6 inches.

And away I went. It was fun making the houses and I liked using all of the plaids together.  And I'm calling it "Outlandish" because plaids make me think of Scottish tartan, which makes me think of kilts, which was connected to a weekend of binge-watching the "Outlander" series when cable tv provided the Starz network shows free for a week, which I was watching when I was in the midst of making this quilt.  Well, it makes sense to me.

I did a basic outlining with a few vertical lines to quilt the houses but toward the bottom I couldn't resist decorating a few a bit differently.

This is likely to be a donation quilt.  But I finished it in time to show it for the Plaid Challenge reveal, and several people asked where they could get the pattern so I sent them over to Cluck Cluck Sew.  Maybe there'll be a few more little villages at the next retreat!

Cropping instead of cutting

 

What you see here is what has become of this piece of painted and stencilled fabric so far.   I cut up the fabric, fused and stitched it onto a ground, and have applied a few more birds and some machine quilting.  I decided to work extra big, figuring I'd sort out the final size and shape later.  

So yesterday, after folding and pinning for a while with the thing up on the design wall, it occurred to me that taking a photo and playing with different crops would make this decision so much easier.  I just LOVE my digital camera.  

So I started with a basic ordinary crop.

How would it look with less green on the sides but more on the bottom? Hmmmm.

What about square?

 Maybe even more green at the bottom?

Maybe off center?

Perhaps a tight crop that cuts off elements ....

So far, the second one down strikes me as a balance I like but it's ordinary.  To my surprise, the last one with cut off bits has the most energy to me. I will mull on this for a while.  What do you think?

Back from the Ranch

 

So remember I told you that I had to use that cowboy fabric in a challenge quilt for my ranch retreat?  Well, here's what I did.  

I started thinking about how, at the Bishop's Ranch site of our retreat, our group is known as the "Ranch Hands."  And that led me to think about what a cowboy would expect if he heard that the female ranch hands were putting on a show, which led me to suspect that he would NOT show up for a quilt show.  So I settled on the idea of putting a confused (and disappointed!) cowboy in the middle of one our show-and-tell shows.

Over the years at ranch retreats, I've taken tons of pictures during our show and tell.  I started working with photos in Photoshop, to scale my friends up to a size that would work in proportion to that rather large cowboy.  Once I had the images scaled, I printed them onto fabric with my inkjet printer.  I still find my inkjet printing results to be pretty muted in color no matter how I boost the saturation before I print, so I took Tsukineko inks to paint fresher, brighter colors onto everyone.  That cowboy is pretty garish (not to mention, ORANGE) so I was trying to make the colors a bit more compatible with his tones.

Then I fused everyone into position -- arranging the quilt show was the most fun part, I think -- and then stitched it all down with monofilament thread.  And yes, I put myself in it:

That's me, holding up the black and white quilt.

I even fired up the embroidery part of my machine and figured out how to add the caption, which reads "Tex heard that the ladies at the ranch were putting on a show... but this wasn't what he imagined."

The quilt was a big hit when we revealed our challenge quilts -- but I'm most pleased that I've created a wonderful souvenir of my great friends and fun times at the retreat.

Ten Cents!

If you haven't tried a) watching one of Interweave/Quilting Arts' video workshops, or b) downloading a digital workshop to watch from your computer's hard drive, then TODAY is the day.

Interweave is offering two digital download videos for TEN CENTS each.  That's two hour-long workshops for twenty cents! 

One if the video pictured above, Lyric Kinard's "sampler platter" of surface design techniques.  The other is Malka Dubrawsky's video workshop called "Shape Shifting: Using Shibori to Mimic Pieced and Appliqued Designs". 

 
I've seen Malka's shibori workshop and it's great instruction.  I've just downloaded Lyric's on surface design and will look forward to watching that one.  It's really easy to download these... and practically instantaneous.  C'mon, it's twenty cents.  You won't be sorry. 

(I'm not affiliated with QA or Interweave, just a big fan of the dvd workshop and delighted at getting anything for ten cents!)

Workin' on the Ranch

I have just come back from another amazing quilting retreat with friends at the Bishop's Ranch, here in Sonoma County.  Yep, again.  Aren't I lucky?!  I go with a regular large group each April and October.  But this year, the folks at  Bishop's Ranch decided to host an "open" quilting retreat to allow anyone who is interested to join in.  Because it was a new event, there were only seven of us.  But it was an intimate, restful and productive time.  Four of the other women were good friends, and the remaining two are now new friends!  The Bishop's Ranch is a lovely place and makes for a great retreat site.  If you are interested in getting on the Ranch's mailing list to receive information about next February's open retreat (dates are not yet certain but it will be in February and will run from a Sunday evening through Thursday afternoon), email me with your info and I will forward it to the ranch folks.

I got a lot of work done!  I made big progress on the sage/blue/brown 12x12 quilt due March 1. Sorry, can't show you pictures!  But it's almost done so that felt great.  And I took the opportunity to make a dent in the scraps and UFOs taking up room in my closet!

 I made blocks out of a Moda jelly roll that I found for sale at half price after Christmas.  They're Christmasy fabrics but not in-your-face Christmas, with cheery colors.  I think I'm going to sash these blocks with red and white stripes or polka dots and make some sort of couch throw.  Or maybe I'll donate it.  I'm not sure.  But sewing the blocks (using a pattern from the Moda Bake shop called "Whirly Wheels", here) was easy and fast.  They reminded me of wrapped backages with ribbons and pinwheel bows!  I was having so much fun with these that both Karen and Ancella made a set of blocks with fabric they just happened to bring along.

 
 I made serious progress on a Kaffe Fasset quilt (called Postcard Quilt from his Quilt Road book).  It's a quilt that starts with one center block and then has pieced borders going around it.  It makes for some fussy piecing but I love the richness of it.  This is about 36 inches square right now, and the finished quilt will be 84x84 inches so I have a way to go!

Remember those 4 inch and 2 1/2 inch strips I'd cut out of leftovers from another quilt?  I never did figure out what I'd cut them for -- so they have become large diamonds, like so:


 

 
And I assembled a One Block Wonder quilt that I cut and started a few years ago when some friends and I were enthralled with the one block wonder magic: 

I say it every time, but I'll say it again:  There is nothing like spending time with wonderful friends doing what you love to do.  I'm eagerly looking forward to the April retreat.  But before then, I'd better get to work to get these projects finished!

Waxing Nostalgic

Last week I spent a lovely day learning about Encaustic Collage from my friend and amazing artist Lisa Thorpe.  Lisa is the artist in residence out at Bishop's  Ranch, the retreat center where I go for my quilt retreats each year, and during every retreat we ooh and aah over the artwork Lisa has hanging in the retreat center's dining room.  I've loved seeing how Lisa has worked with encaustic collage, so when she offered to to teach a class, a bunch of us jumped on it.

So, 6 of us (including Miss C, my daughter) found ourselves in the ranch's art studio on a cold windy day, surrounded by scraps of paper and old photos and the warm smell of melting wax.  Lisa walked us through the process, and we had a very fun day of creating and exploring a new art process.

Basically, the process involved starting with a plywood base, building a collage with paper elements, painting a wax mixture over the top, then adding texture by pressing objects into the surface and rubbing pigment into the lines to emphasize them.  Sounds easy, but it's clear that it takes some practice to work with the wax so it comes out the way you want it to.  There's also the totally unpredictable effect of the papers blending into each other, so what you see when it's dry is not necessarily what you'll see when the wax is applied.

I made several small pieces that day, but my favorite is the one above which features an old photograph of my grandmother, grandfather, and my dad as a little boy.  It sits on a page from an old Italian grammar book that I inherited from my grandmother, so there are some lovely memories in here for me.  I realized, after the fact, that I have a heavy hand with the wax and that I applied it too thickly on all of my pieces so part of what I liked about the collage was obscured.  It's too foggy and blurry.  I'll know better for next time.

It was so fun to see what everyone made, and how we approached our collages so differently.  Miss C worked away happily (an art field trip to break up the homeschool week) and produced some amazing collages.  It's good to learn something new with friends.

Lisa's a great teacher, by the way, as well as a talented artist.  If you are in Sonoma County, you can see her artwork currently hanging in Ravenous, a wonderful restaurant in Healdsburg.  (Two reasons to go: great food and great art!)

Happiness with Helen

I have had the loveliest week!  I told you that my good friend Helen was coming to visit all the way from the UK, didn't I?  We had a nonstop week of quilt and art-filled fun.  So, what did we do, you ask?

Well, I greeted Helen at the airport and welcomed her to San Francisco by accidentally subjecting her to a 3-hour-and-45-minute stop in the middle of a massive traffic jam (Welcome to California!) on our way home.  I had somehow managed to forget that it was the start of Fleet Week, the Blue Angels were flying over SF that afternoon, there was a breast cancer awareness marathon taking place in Golden Gate Park... the result of which was traffic stopped dead as we tried to cross the city to get over the Golden Gate Bridge.  Helen did get to stand up in the car, upper body half out of the sunroof, to take pictures of the  Blue Angels.  And of course we chatted nonstop.  Here's one of Helen's Blue Angels shots:

We headed out to Bishop's Ranch for the twice-yearly quilting retreat I attend with a wonderful group of friends.  I was not surprised that Helen was very well liked -- she fit right in.  I have to confess that I didn't get any pictures of Helen actually sewing, but I can attest to the fact that she got an amazing number of things done.  She also took time to enjoy lounging on the pavilion's porch, enjoying magazines and soaking up the vineyard views that are so wonderful there.  ("I'm not just at a great retreat," she said at one point, "I'm at a great retreat IN CALIFORNIA!")

 

(Note the stunning green shoes....)   Helen was inspirational to be with -- she saw quilting ideas everywhere.  On the way to the ranch one morning, we stopped so Helen could photograph a local barn for the quilting line possibilities.

The weather was warm enough to eat dinner outside most nights, which seem quintessentially wine country:

(Oops, didn't realize when I took this that the camera was set for artfully shallow depth of field.)  That's Pat M, Eleanor hiding behind her, Helen, Pam M, and Mary Lou. 

From the ranch, we headed down the peninsula to see Pacific International Quilt Festival.  It was interesting to get Helen's take on an American quilt show -- she was surprised at how the vendor booths had so many little bundles of fat quarters and patterns.  But we spent a day and a half cruising the booths, admiring the quilts, and generally having a grand time.  Helen was quite pleased that we continued to run into people she knew from the ranch retreat, so she felt like she kept bumping into friends.  

And from there, we headed to San Francisco for a day of relaxing.  From her last visit to California, Helen had fond memories of visiting the National Park Service's Warming Hut, a small bookshop and cafe located almost under the Golden Gate Bridge.  Since it was a gray, drizzly day, we returned there loaded up with our books and magazines and journals and spent several wonderfully peaceful hours sitting there sipping hot beverages, watching the people, and staring into space.  

After a typically San Francisco dinner at an old restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf (cioppino for me, petrale sole for Helen), Helen retreated to her hotel and I headed home to Sonoma County.  Helen had a shopping day planned before she flew out, and it was time for me to resume my Mom and Wife duties back at home.  

But what a delightful time we had!  If this is how much fun 2 "Twelves" can have together, imagine when more of us get together! 

So now it's back to real life -- but with some delightful new fabrics (I got some new Kaffe Fassett prints for a new quilt for our bed) and other goodies.... I'll do show and tell soon! 

Fun, fun, fun...

Thank you SO much to everyone who commented and emailed me about my recent post.  I was reminded yet again how wonderful of a place the Internet can be, and I appreciated your support so much.

But I am glad to report that I've had a "reset" of my emotional and creative energy button!  I've been off that my usual retreat at the Bishop's Ranch with a wonderful and fun bunch of women.  And the exciting part of this retreat is that Helen -- my dear friend and talented artist and a fellow Twelve -- crossed the Atlantic Ocean to join me at the retreat! 

It was no surprise that Helen fit right in, chatting and sewing and wandering to see what other people were making, and oohing and aahing with the rest of the group.  Helen says that she now has mastered the American inflections on the squeals and gasps when a new quilt or an assortment of new fabric is revealed!  She also displayed her American accent by pointing out the "to-may-does" on the buffet table.  I also had the opportunity to see Helen conceive of and complete the next Twelve by Twelve quilt!

I haven't taken the photos out of the camera yet, but we have had a grand time.  The retreat ended today, and we will unpack, rest, repack, and then head to PIQF tomorrow for more quilty fun.  Can there be anything better than sharing quilts with a good friend?!

Return to Normal

I am back home after 4 days of delirious fun at the ranch retreat.  Pictured above is the main house at the ranch.  We used to sew there, but now there's a gorgeous new pavilion that can hold all of us, our machines, irons, lights and cutting tables, so we are there.   Some of the attendees still stay overnight in this gorgeous old building.

It is hard to describe the utter delight of a retreat with women you adore.  We chattered, sewed, laughed, showed-and-told, and ate delicious food.  There was much hilarity, many hugs, and I am already looking forward to October's retreat.

Each April, we do a challenge where someone chooses a fabric which the participants must incorporate in any way they like into a quilt.  This April's challenge involved two fabrics-- a black and white print, and a red tone on tone.  Here is my entry:

I used Susan Carlson's "Free Style Quilting" method to make this fellow and had a very good time.  The lettering, you might remember, wasn't the smoothest process but the result was okay.  And, remarkably, the resident artist at the ranch, the very very talented Lisa Thorpe, wanted this guy so we arranged for an artwork trade! 

Oh -- Hello to Elaine!  Elaine is a blog reader who attended the retreat for the first time and, I hope, will return for more fun in the future.  It was great to meet you!

Now -- off to unpack and make some sense of my sewing room...

Off Again

I promised you recently that I'd show you how far I got on my smaller piece in the workshop with Patty Hawkins.  Here it is so far -- needs some work, but I like it.

Now, I'm off for another fun time!  It's April, and that means I'm off to Bishop's Ranch for a fun, fabric and friend filled retreat for 4 whole days.  I've packed up a bunch of projects and I know I'll have a grand time.

Hope you have a fun week!

Patty Hawkins

I have just finished a three-day workshop with master quilt artist Patty Hawkins.  What a wonderful, wonderful experience it was!  I am tired but energized and I really learned a lot.  If you don't know Patty, go check out her work on her website.  She makes the most gorgeous abstracted landscapes, and is most well known for her aspen scenes.  I can now verify that she is just the loveliest woman -- an excellent and encouraging teacher, too.  I was repeatedly struck at how clearly she gave feedback, but with constant positivity and generosity.  (Here is Patty with my friend Diana in the background.)

She had some wonderful exercises to help us with abstractions, one of which was to compose a mock-up of our chosen image using 5 values of ugly colors of construction paper.  We were to focus on value and shape, not color ... and using that paper was very freeing because had we been working in fabric, we would have been so distracted by the fabric color and pattern.  Here are some of the results:

(You can see mine on the top right, next to the waterfall one -- it was a scene of Eucalyptus trees and a curving road.)

Then we moved on to making smaller pieces in fabric, working in part from our value studies.  I was having such a good time that I didn't take many pictures, and totally forgot to take a picture of my own!  So here is my friend Marion's, which was turning out beautifully...

I came away with a small piece ready to be quilted, and a larger piece started.  I never used my "ruby beholder" and my reducing glass so much!

So, it was a very fun time.  I've yet to unload the car, but I'll take pictures of my results when I get them inside.  Now it's catch up time for laundry and household chores, not to mention tidying my studio from the mess I made when I was pulling stuff out to take to the workshop.

I just can't recommend Patty enough as a teacher.  If you ever get the chance to take a class, DO it.  Just meeting her and spending time with her and her sweet, generous, and funny person is worth the price of admission.

After a long, long incubation period...

Some years ago (3, maybe?  4?), I took a 3-day class from Jane Sassaman, and the fuchsias above are what resulted.  I liked it a lot as far as it went, but I didn't know where to go with it from there.  At the time, I think, I planned to crop it way down, so that those upper leaves would be cut off and maybe even part of the fuchsia on the right.  So, I stalled.  I liked it enough that I didn't want to finish it just to finish it, and it seemed like a good idea to let the ideas percolate.

Over those years, I'd take it out of the closet and hang it on my design wall and contemplate it, with the goal of finally getting it done.  At one of those times, I remembered that I'd chosen fuchsias to begin with because they remind me of my grandmother.  She had hanging baskets of them on her patio, and as a kid I was fascinated by their little balloon-like buds and how they look like tiny graceful dancers.  And somewhere along the way, I thought about incorporating some sense of lattice to the background, because I remember looking up at the fuchsias against the lattice patio cover.

Well, after all that time, something hit me a few weeks ago and I've been working away on this.  Finally!  How satisfying to get this piece back out and to make progress on it!  I was looking at quilt blocks, and found an old traditional block called "Grandmother's Choice."  How appropriate, eh?  I tried to piece them in a way that creates a lattice pattern, and I've attached the fuchsias and leaves to that frame.



















I'm still not satisfied with the lower right corner -- where the dark teal background creates a sharp vertical line against the blocks... I've tried drawing in a bit of the block to fill in, but it doesn't overcome the heavy line.  I may end up fusing/appliqueing some parts of blocks to have them sort of fade into the background.  We'll see.
But I'm liking where this is going so far. (BTW, it's hanging kind of wonkily on my wall but it is actually straight.  Or it will be.)

Off to the Ranch

This evening marks the start of another of the biannual quilting retreats I attend out at Bishop's Ranch. I especially love the October retreat, when the crispness of fall is in the air and the vineyards are tinged with yellow as the leaves start to turn. It's a wonderful time to gather with friends and get busy with sewing.

So, today I'm packing up and sorting out what to take. It's not easy figuring out what I'll work on! I've found, from past retreats, that I don't do well working on anything that requires too much thought -- I'd rather be chatting, and the retreat setting just doesn't lend itself to heavy concentration. I've also done machine-quilting there in the past, although keeping one's head down and humming away at quilting speed isn't conducive to community chatting, either. So, for me the best tasks tend to be piecing, or working on something I've thought out before I arrive.

In the pile are 1) a bunch of wedges for a One-Block-Wonder quilt I cut out quite a while ago; 2) squares stacked and ready to be sewn into rows for a simple cozy throw quilt, using the snow ball pattern; 3) more blocks to piece from scraps for a springy quilt, probably for donation purposes; and 4) papers and fabrics for a Karen Stone paper-piecing project in shades of yellow and purple that I started at the last retreat.

That ought to keep me busy.

Of course, the camera will go into the bag for future pictures...

One of the BIG questions of life

At our ranch retreat, we presented the quilts from our Second Annual Quilt Challenge. Last
April, a couple of intrepid fabric shoppers selected two different fabrics, and our challenge was to make something -- anything -- using some of each fabric.

Once again, I decided to make a quilt commemorating an aspect of the retreat that is meaningful to me. I thought about how we all get talking while we sew, and how we discuss all sorts of things -- our hopes, our dreams, our families, our failures, our marriages, our kids ... we can cover a lot of pretty personal territory.

So, my challenge quilt commemorated one of the intimate issues that absorbed us during the April '08 retreat:



"Over or Under."

(And don't tell me that at some time or another you haven't discussed this burning issue with someone...)

You can see a slideshow (once again, courtesy of Angie) of all of the challenge quilts here. There is a wonderful assortment!



Challenge Quilts April 2009

Virtual Retreat

Oh my! I've had all sorts of goings-on over the last two weeks, so I have a lot of blogging to catch up.

Before we headed off to San Diego for Easter vacation, I had a lovely 4 days with my retreat buddies at the Bishop's Ranch. As always it was total fun and lots of laughter and very restful and even productive!

I've not yet had a chance to download the pictures I took there but here is a great slideshow of pictures taken by the Official Ranchhands' Retreat Photographer, Angie. She's not only a great quilter, and blogger, and expert on home quilting systems, but she takes great pictures, too!

So click, and sit back and relax, and enjoy this virtual quilting retreat...

Bishop’s Ranch April 2009

Fall Fling, Spring Fling

I apologize for the recent silence -- I have been off having fun at my twice-yearly quilting retreat at the Bishop's Ranch. Clearing the decks so I could take those days away meant a flurry of work, but I promptly but all things practical out of my head as I drove out to the ranch. As usual, it was 4 days of fun and laughter and friends and great food and, of course, quilting.

This time, I packed up my trusty Juki and took only two big quilts that were sandwiched and ready to be quilted. The first one I finished was the "one block wonder" quilt above, which I've named Spring Fling (because of those springy colors, of course). Several retreats ago, a couple of ladies were making one block wonder quilts, and as the book was new to most of us, we were enthralled with the concept. That led to a shopping trip where a bunch of us wandered around the shop using mirrors to see the kaleidoscopic effects of various fabrics, and then a bunch of us started making these quilts. This October retreat was the designated time for completion, so our show-and-tell included a whole "one block wonder" segment where we shared our finished quilts.

I enjoyed making mine, basically -- sewing the blocks was especially fun, as every block is a new, surprising kaleidoscope. Designing the overall look on a wall was fun too. But sewing them together became tedious, and I wasn't thrilled with the process of finishing the quilt. I ended up floating the quilt top on top of the borders... a rather slapdash process that isn't the tidiest up close but did the job to my satisfaction.

This shot is from show and tell and doesn't show the quilting, but I had a fun time following the kaleidoscope patterns in the blocks and quilting big, lose flowery shapes in the border.

So now, I have a mess of stuff to put away, tons of laundry to do, and a pile of legal work to address before I can get away to the Pacific International Quilt Festival next weekend! Another quilting excursion -- October is a fun month!

Summertime Relaxation

Doesn't this look like a lovely spot for an afternoon of relaxation? Chatting with a friend, reading a novel, sipping iced tea.... This beautiful scene is at the Bishop's Ranch in Healdsburg, California. I swear, just looking at this picture changes my blood pressure and breathing rhythem.

And look at the summery color palette this photos yields, courtesy of Big Huge Lab's "Palette Generator":

I'm heading off for a weekend alone with my husband -- boy is that a rarity! Before I go, a few random thoughts:

I'm so happy that Project Runway is back! But c'mon -- if you knew you were going to be a contestant, wouldn't you think about previous challenges, and have some idea of what you'd do if faced with that challenge? I'd be thinking -- "what would I do if we had to use materials from a grocery store...a hardware store... a florist... a Walmart... a thrift store..." How could those people be faced with a grocery store challenge and have no idea what to do?

I just finished a delightful novel, called "If You Could See Me Now" by Cecelia Ahern. The premise is great: What if there were a group of invisible people whose job it was to befriend kids who need a bit of social support? So when a kid talks about his "imaginary friend," what if those "friends" were REAL, just invisible to everyone but the child? The novel is told from the perspective of such an "imaginary friend" whose perspective on life is amusing and entertaining and poignant. He hates being used by parents ("Fred LOVES broccoli and says you should try it, too!") and he just loves having fun. It's a charming novel, well written.

Now, off to the weekend fun...hope your weekend is relaxing!

So remember I mentioned the 2 day workshop I was taking with Laura Fogg? It was really fun. Here's what I have so far after those 2 days. It needs a lot more work, but I'm happy with where it is so far.

Turns out Laura has a website, www.fogwomancreations.com, where you can see a lot of her work. She's a terrific teacher.

The process involved starting with a photograph, then building a collage with just raw cutting and placing the pieces on a batting background. Once you've created the picture you want, you lay a layer of tulle over the top and sew it all down with machine quilting. And, once that's done, you can add more detail and embellishment on top of that. Laura showed us how to add borders and then add a foreground elements (and a lot more embellishment) that carries into the main image...you can see great examples on her website.

So, I have a long way to go with this, but it was very fun. And the process was very freeing, just cutting and putting bits down.

The image I'm working with is a photo I took of a scene I pass every day between the house and C's school. When the plum trees are in bloom, it's just spectacular. But I've not managed to get a really good photograph, so it's fun to work with it in fabric and see where I can go with it.

Now I can't wait to get back to it.

At last -- back to fiber

After what seems like a long, long non-fabric stretch, I am excited that finally I am going to spend the weekend playing with fabric. Through a small art group I'm in, I'm doing a workshop with Mendocino quilt artist Laura Fogg. Laura is known for her fabric collages, and her name may be familiar to you because she is one of the Mendocino Quilt Artists whose groups of quilts have won the AQS group challenge a few times.

At any rate, I've got my goodies packed up, I have my inspiration photos ready to go, and I am looking forward to a fun and free time cutting and placing fabric. (And then we smack down tulle and sew. Fun!)

I've packed my camera and hopefully will remember to take pictures!

Bishop's Ranch Challenge

I'm finally getting a chance to sort through the pictures from the Bishop's Ranch retreat 2 weeks ago (ah, it seems so much longer than that already) and I thought I'd share the results of our quilt challenge. The assignment was to use two particular fabrics which were provided to each participant: Kaffe Fasset's "lotus leaf" print and a green/turquoise stripey piece. There were no other restrictions. And, not surprisingly, the results were fabulous.

Here's Pat M's quilt...and the paper in the lefthand corner is a photo of the quilt made by her sister MaryLou, who lives in Massachusetts and was unable to make it to the retreat this time.



This is Sally's. You can't tell in this photo, but the flower petals are dimensional -- they stick up and really look like lotus flowers.



Here's Sydne's:



This is by Carolyn, who rarely works in bright colors but pulled off a wonderful quilt despite not being wild about the fabrics.



This is Janet's (sorry about the blurry shot):



And Joanie's (another blurry one -- sorry!)



This is Maureen's -- aren't these chairs adorable?



Here's Pam's...



And Pat D's, using a pattern by Diana McClun and Laura Nownes:



This is Ancella's:



And Carol Ann's:



Delaine cleverly made this one quilt to satisfy our challenge and one for her guild, too.



This is by Diane A (the blurriness is mine, not hers)


This is Eleanor's



And you might recall my comical and slightly risque contribution:



The challenge was quite the success and we really enjoyed looking at them all hung together. (That's a plus for doing a challenge with mandated fabrics -- they tend to look cohesive hung together, regardless of how different the quilts actually are.)

Janet, Pat, and Sandy chose fabrics for next April's challenge, including (gasp!) a brown. I have no idea what I'll do, but of course I have a year to decide.