Lake Norman Quilt show

Several members of the Lake Norman Quilters (and many of their husbands and a son!!!)  gathered yesterday afternoon to hang our quilt show.  230 quilts were hung in about 4 1/2 hours – a pretty incredible feat! 

Once the quilts were hung, the winners were announced and ribbons given out.  A committee of 9 ladies worked this year to make our ribbons:

Jean Newman made these teensy little yo-yo ribbons for our winners to wear on their name tags. When you’re at the show, look for ladies with these on their nametags- you’ll know they won a ribbon in the show.

One of my quilts, “Cold Foot Contest”, won first place in its category:

I’ll post more pictures tomorrow once I’m able to walk around the show and find all the winners. But I had to share Best of Show. I’m so excited for my friend who won! Susan Brubaker Knapp made this quilt and it’s the one her new book is based on:

If you’re in the area we’d love to have you come see the quilts. And we have many wonderful quilt vendors and one lady with hand dyed yarns!!!

Friday, Oct. 30 and Saturday, Oct. 31
9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
East Mooresville Intermediate School
1711 Landis Highway, Mooresville NC 28115

If you need directions to the show or want more information, please go to the webpage for our group. It contains a down-loadable PDF with a map and general information.

Quilt show this week

My quilt guild, The Lake Norman Quilters, is having their bi-annual quilt show this weekend.  It truly takes a lot of hard work from many, many hands to pull off a successful quilt show. And if I do say so myself, we do an excellent job!

Yesterday was judging. We had two judges, Scott Murkin and Carol Larimer, judging our quilts.  The process is fascinating and I learn a lot from working with the judges.  First of all, the quilts are laid out by category on tables so the judges can work their way across the room. Each judge requires several people to help with the process.  Two people will hold the quilt up so the judge can see it as a whole. Then, while the judge examines the quilt more carefully, one person acts as a scribe writing down the judge’s comments and critiques. When the judge is done with the quilt, it is either released to be hung in the show or it is set aside for further consideration.  When the judge is done with a category, he or she goes back to those quilts set aside and re-examines them to decide on ribbon awards — 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and honorable mention.  There are also specialty ribbons awarded that they consider such as Best Use of Color, Best of Show, Best Quilting, etc.

Here I am holding a quilt for the judge to inspect:

And here are the judges considering one of my quilts for a specialty ribbon. I didn’t win it, but it was really nice to see that my work was being considered!

And here are the ladies that were still around at the end of the day:

From left to right:  Grace Howes, DeLane Rosenau, Joyce Mullis, Susan Dunne-Lederhaas, Cindy Magee, Cheryl Campbell, Barbara Barrier, Michele Sheets.

Today, several of us along with some new faces, were back to hang the small quilts on large sheets to make our day a little easier and a little shorter tomorrow.

Our president’s mom, Arline, came to help – she ironed a lot of large black sheets this morning!

Setting out the quilts by color, size, or grouping:

Hanging the small quilts on the large black sheets:

All the small quilts hung on black sheets are neatly rolled up (no folding so we don’t wrinkle the quilts!) and are safely stored at the church. Tomorrow they and all the large quilts will be transported to the school where another group of members (including me!) will hang all the quilts for the show.  Once all the quilts are up and the show is ready for the public, we’ll announce winners and hand out ribbons. I can’t wait to surprise the happy recipients!

I’ll be back with more quilt show news on Friday.

I’m back….

Wow!  Seems like I just disappeared off the face of the earth this summer. Soon after my last post, we went to Pennsylvania for Steve’s annual kayak and canoe races:

 Then, as soon as we returned home, life began to revolve around my son’s wedding. Most of what I was doing was “boring” for blogging….   I cleaned all the garden beds (all 11 of them!) moving plants around and dividing perennials. Then we found a gentleman who agreed to paint the house for an excellent price and get it done before the wedding.  When I mentioned wanting rock work done on the house, he recommended another man and within 2 more weeks, the house’s foundation was completely rocked. The house looks great! (I don’t have a picture yet, but I promise to post one soon).

While Gary and his son cleaned, washed, and painted the house, I painted the dock, cleaned and sealed the deck,  painted all the doors on the house and then I painted our chicken coop and shed to match. 

Although all of this was normal household upkeep, our impetus was having 40 people here at the house for the rehearsal dinner. There were many friends and family members coming in from out of town for the wedding and Steve and I really wanted them to be able to visit with Ted and Lauren on the eve of the wedding. This shot is of the tent in the front yard where I had 2 tables.

In the midst of these activities, I was also helping Lauren and Ted with the wedding. They were married on the 17th and the wedding was beautiful!  We are thrilled to welcome Lauren into our family (feels like we did that months ago, but it’s now “official”).  I’ve been asked for pictures so here we go:

 

Lauren was walked down the aisle by her mom and dad

Ted, Adam (my son-in-law) and Steve

The music for walking back up the aisle was dance music – we were supposed to dance

And dancing with Lauren at the reception

Most of my quilting time was spent working on a wedding quilt for them. They had no idea I was making a quilt for them.  I mailed muslin squares to everyone I could think of and asked them to either write a message or decorate the square in some way that would be meaningful to Ted and Lauren. I received about 2/3 of them back. While I was waiting for the return of the muslin squares, I made rail fence squares out of the green fabrics in my stash. This is the best picture I have at the moment, but I’ve put the quilt in our local quilt show and will have a better picture of it once it is hung.

I promise not to disappear again for so long.

Beaudreaux and Birthdays

My son Ted turned 28 yesterday.  Sometime while he was in high school, he discovered Beaudreaux Cajun kitchen in NODA in Charlotte. Since then, we’ve celebrated his birthday there every year. We went again last night and had wonderful Cajun food and had a wonderful time with the family.

Good times.  I am a blessed woman.

my new toy

I went to the AQS show in Knoxville, TN last weekend with two good friends, Grace Howes and Susan Brubaker Knapp.  Great quilts and about 300 vendors. We got to spend two days looking at all the pretty quilts and shopping at all the vendors. It was GREAT!  Unfortunately, AQS rules forbid me to show you any of the pictures I took of the beautiful quilts – I have to get permission from both AQS and the maker of each quilt — too involved for me!

What I can show you is my new toy.  I’ve looked at needlefelting machines for a while, but just could not justify the cost for the amount of use I think I’ll give one.  BUT at the show, Pfaff was running a sale and it was too good to pass up — especially when Susan and I talked and decided to split the cost and share the machine.  I am so excited!!!

I get to use it first because Susan has some deadlines that she is trying to meet and really doesn’t have time at the moment to play.  I on the other hand have lots of time to play: 

I inherited a lot of wool from a woman who used to hook rugs. There’s a small bit of yardage, but most is recycled clothing that has been washed and dryed thus felting it to a point.  I pulled out some of the wool and played this morning.

I’m not sure what this piece will be, but I’ll keep you posted.

Another day of dyeing!

Got my dyes out again yesterday for another batch of stuff. I just love this process!  I did some more Onesies because I was asked for some ‘girly’ ones.  Then I did some fabric and in each batch of cotton fabric, I threw in a new fabric I found at the AQS show last weekend – 55% silk, 45% cotton. Takes dye like cotton! Very nice. I also threw in some perle cotton to see what would happen.  The colors are not completely true to life, but you can get an idea of my results.

I’m only showing a few of the Onesies. I have several in different colors and sizes. If you are interested in purchasing the Onesies, I have a few in my Etsy shop or you can contact me and let me know what size or color you are wanting. They are $8 each.

And here is some of the fabric I did:

This is a piece of shibori I did.  I love the way it came out:

And here’s close up:

And this one is a piece I rust dyed a couple of weeks ago. I like it, but it was just too plain. I threw it in a dye vat and I love it!!!

Hopefully, I’ll be posting again really soon.  I bought a new toy and want to sit down and play…..

Dye day

I spent the day dyeing stuff on Wednesday. I love the process of dyeing; I love even more the surprises I pull out of each vat!  I do not try to make anything I can reproduce. I love being surprised by what I do. I love the individuality of each piece.   Usually I dye fabric, but I decided to do some other stuff:

I use all sorts of things for my vats. I recycle plastic containers of all sorts. The ones my husband’s athletic drink mix comes in are great!  The washed out cat litter buckets are wonderful for larger pieces. and for small pieces, even a ziplock bag works really well.  Please note: Once I’ve used an item for dyeing, it goes in my dye stuff pile and never returns to the kitchen.

This is a silk scarf I played with one day using soy wax batik.  Everywhere I had put soy wax was white, so I dumped it into a vat with orange dye.  I like it.  It’ll be real pretty around my neck this fall!

I found this shirt on the clearance rack at Target. It was solid cream, but I loved the little flower embellishment. I dyed it blue!

This is a close-up of the little embellishment.  I love the way it only took dye in tiny areas. I can’t wait to wear this! I think I’ll save it for AQS show in Knoxville!

And lastly, here’s a Onsie I dyed.  My daughter’s friends are having babies (7 of her friends!!!)   Have you tried to find a cute ’something’ for a baby????  Oh my goodness – it seems that every boy is to play a sport or love trains and the poor girls are all in pink or have baby ducks on their clothes!!!  I like Onsies – they are practical and comfortable. I decided what could possibly be better than a Hand-dyed Onsie!  I’ve put some in my Etsy shop:   http://tinyurl.com/n9vnut
I’d love for you to go look!  (Grace, I need a refresher course in getting that tiny url thing to work!!!!)

Until next time,  DeLane

The Art of Cloth

I want to share with you some pictures from our gallery show at the Cultural Center in Lincolnton, NC.  The show has been open since June 3rd and will remain open through next week, July 2nd.  I know many of you will not be able to attend and really wanted to see what the show looks like. Here are a few pictures to give you an impression of what we’ve done.

DeLane's portion of the show

 This is my corner of the main gallery.  The pedestal to the left has my Nuno felted scarf hung onone side and my knitted, felted bag on the other.  The far pedestal has one of my pieces on it – my Treasure Box.

Grace Howes and me with Art Cloth

 This is the Art Cloth I’ve spoken of over the past year.  We started one year ago with 40 yards of white fabric and we dyed all the fabric ourselves. The fabric was dyed, overdyed, and then embellished and manipulated in many and sundry ways by each of the members of FAB.  Each member made 24 small quiltlets ranging in size from 3″x3″ up to about 12″x12″.  Then these 120 small quiltlets were fitted together and sewn until we had this final piece. It roughly measures 72″x84″. We are very proud.

This is a picture looking towards the front of the gallery taken with my back against the far wall. The doorway you see leads into the smaller gallery where we hung our group challenges.  These were pieces we each made individually based on a challenge from the group.

Our round robin challenge pieces

This particular challenge is the one we called our round robin. We each started with a piece of paper 24″x36″. We then cut our papers into 5 smaller pieces in any shape and size we wanted. We then chose a theme and using one of the pieces of paper, made a quilt top in the exact size and shape of the paper.  This small quilt top and all the pieces of paper were then passed to another member of the group. They were to choose one of the remaining pieces of paper and make a quilt top in its size and shape to fit with the overall theme and color scheme.  Four members made wallhangings; I made a jacket. 

Here I am with my “Cold Feet Contest”.  It will be going to Syracuse to hang in the “Quilting By the Lake” show the day after I take it down in Lincolnton.

I hope seeing a little of our work inspires you.

Anyone who has not yet seen our show, “The Art of Cloth”, and wants to see it has one week left to go.  The hours are Tues – Fri 10 – 5.  The Cultural Center is located on Main Street in Lincolnton, NC.

Susan’s New pattern is coming!

This is the front cover of a brand new pattern booklet that will be on the market this October, 2009.  It is written by Susan Brubaker Knapp and is being published by C&T Publishing.  I am so very excited for Susan!!!! She has worked hard to get this project done and I believe anyone who loves applique is going to LOVE this pattern. 

This is the full quilt. I wish I could enlarge it so you could see all the detail she has incorporated into this piece. It is breathtaking.

I loved her quilt the minute I saw it, but knew I would never sit down and do the needleturn applique.  So instead, I did one of the blocks in boiled wool. I hand appliqued it using the buttonhole stitch.  I love it. 

 I encourage you to visit Susan’s website!  www.bluemoonriver.com

You can pre-order the pattern booklet by going to her website or by emailing her at Susan@bluemoonriver.com  I believe she is offering to autograph the booklets that are pre-ordered!

The Art of Cloth

Yesterday, the FABs, Grace Howes, Jean Funderburk, Christine Scholtz, Judy Whitehead, and me, spent the morning hanging our gallery show called “The Art of Cloth”.  It looks really good and we are all very excited about this.  I don’t want to “spoil” the exhibit for you so don’t want to post great pictures of what we’ve done, but did want to give you a taste hoping to entice you to come to our opening next Friday.  Please join us next Friday, June 12th at 6:30pm for our opening reception.  We’d love to have you come celebrate with us!