Off to Annual Gathering http://ghqg.org/events/annual-gathering.html in the weeee hours of the morning tomorrow, doors open at 8 a.m. so you can imagine the time vendors get to start setting up.  I’m definitely looking forwarding to visiting with everyone with my hand dyed fabric, beads, Angelina, scarf kits, my Mom’s feed sacks and all the other items we bring along.

Ami Simms is the speaker and I can comment from experience, I been to her lectures twice before – SHE is FUNNY and FABULOUS!!!  http://www.amisimms.com/   I can’t wait for her lectures tomorrow on

• How Not to Make a Prize Winning Quilt (at 9am) and
• Living With Quilts: A Survival Guide

Not a national speaker or anything, I will be giving a demo on The Basics of Fusing. I picked this topic because at the summer GHQG Quilt Show, I was amazed how many people asked about fusing in my booth once they saw my sample for my new line of landscape hand-dyes.  Hopefully a few people will attend and maybe learn something new 😉

There are a couple raffles, I donated a hand-dye and pincushion for one of them and there serving lunch and breakfast – hopefully I’ll see you there, make sure to stop by and say Hi!!!

My Mom, Aunt and I went to the New England Quilt Museum last Saturday to see the Caryl Bryer Fallert Exhibit. The ride was beautiful as the trees have moved into high gear for their fall change of color. There was lots of expectant conversation surrounding both the Exhibit and the Mass Shop Hop next weekend.

I’ve admired Caryl Bryer Fallert for a long time. I discovered one of her patterns in a book that was comprised of multiple designers. Although the instructions were a little hard to follow, I not only figured out the pattern but went on to teach it as a class a few times. The classes bought an individual pattern on her website but it was made to a different larger dimensions. I just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see her quilts live and in person, especially a perspective from her first quilt to her latest.

When we walked up the stairs to the exhibit, the initial color impact was breath taking. Corona II, a favorite of mine, was directly across from the stairs and on the left wall was Birds of a Different Color, I couldn’t decide which one to drool over first. There was a bench across from Birds of a Different Color so I just sat and took them both in.

What a great show, there were quilts that seemed like old friends I had admired so often in books, but to see them in person was a whole new perspective. Ms. Fallert’s quilting designs that travel out into the borders, the multitude of thread colors used in a single quilt, the hand dyed fabrics all brought such uniqueness to her quilts.

It was all so inspiring – her unique piecing method, the hand dyes got me to consider additional options for my dyeing techniques, and the quilting – there’s so much to consider there:

• Although I often use multiple threads in one quilt, she stuck to solids (where I tend to use verrigateds) so she would have 10 times more thread changes than I might have previously considered
• She let the designs, like a quilted feather, carry out into and run off of the border
• Created ghost images (I have quilted an edge to edge twice but that’s not even close)
• Feathers that resemble realistic feathers

I could go on and on, I took lots of pictures (no flash is a requirement) which they advised were OK to post to a blog – so I’m sharing a few. Hopefully you can make it to the show, to see her first quilt with all the others makes it all feel possible.

So, I somehow trashed my Blog – the software didn’t ask, if I was sure after I hit the button by accident, if I REALLY wanted to trash it  🙁

I just figured out how to fix it on my own (yeahh!!!  😉  )  but it took a few days – apologies for my temporary disappearance.

Michelle’s book is quite the quilter eye candy which she brought to the Enfield Quilters guild meeting this week. Seeing some of the samples in person was GREAT! Lots of members were inspired to purchase her book and took advantage of the opportunity to have it personally autographed by Michelle. — Thanks Michelle

Can’t wait for next month’s speaker, Madonna Terlizzi, she’ll be covering Crazy Quilts and embellishing.  Here’s her website if you want a preview

http://fabricaddiction.net/index.php

I issued a solid fabric only quilt challenge to the Enfield Quilters guild last fall with a due date our 2015 September, tomorrow. The challenge was inspired by solid color quilts I found on Pinterest – there are some amazing traditional and contemporary quilts out there that only use quilt design to make a statement, they have no need for patterned fabric.

My ideas for the challenge were all over the place: I love red and green quilts and thought this was my opportunity so I spent about 6 weeks researching Carolina Lily quilts. This was funny to me since the contemporary photos had been my first inspiration for the challenge. I also found a lot of other red and green quilts to fall in love with but if there’s one skill I haven’t mastered its hand applique, so a lot of those inspirations would have taken me a lifetime to complete.

I settled on a quilt done in a Fibonacci sequence of finished strips of 1”, 2”, 3”, and 5”. A friend of mine and I had a great time at the quilt shop one day, stacking and restacking the solid fabric bolts to reach the final selection.  Then, in order to continue machine quilting for customers, I dedicated 15-20 minutes a night to iron, cut, and sew which was going fine until the last seam.

The last seam has now been sewn three times and is ripped out again – I keep sewing one section in upside down. You would think I couldn’t do this more than once but I assure you, I can and have. Tonight, I’ll hopefully sew the seam for the fourth and final time, right side up, and add the borders. Even when I plan well (I started in July) I still find myself up against the deadline!

Finally, because it is my quilt and I’m not good at putting my quilts in queue, before quilting customer’s quilts, it will sit on a hanger among my many other long arming UFOs. As my Mom always says, “The cobbler’s children have no shoes.” – need another deadline to get it quilted!

I’ve been a fan Caryl Bryer Fallert for a long time, I’ve even taught classes on one of her patterns. Being a long arm quilter, I became an even bigger fan when I discovered she created the first machine quilted quilt to win the top prize at the AQS show – Corona II: Solar Eclipse, 1989.

Why mention this now? My Mom and I were at New England Quilt Museum (NEQM) http://www.nequiltmuseum.org/ in Lowel, MA last month and discovered the next exhibition at NEQM is:

“CARYL BRYER FALLERT A Retrospective”

The exhibition runs August 20^th through October 31, 2015.

The volunteer at the check out desk said she helped move the quilts in and described Corona II as, even more beautiful in person. You can bet my Mom and I will be trekking back up to the museum to take this exhibit in.

For a sampling of Caryl Bryer Fallert’s beautiful quilts – http://www.bryerpatch.com/