I love pottery. To think that people dig clay out of the ground, manipulate it and decorate it, and make something functional and beautiful just boggles the mind.
We went to a local exhibit of pottery this week. An annual exhibit and sale, Fired Works features the work of 150 artists and is always a treat.
We don’t need any pottery; our collection is certainly adequate…but we love to go to this event every year, so off we went. And, yes, we did buy some.
Most of our collection is of the Southern folk art genre, but the whimsical pieces delight me, too.
As we examined the beautiful pots on display in this beautiful facility, I was constantly seeing images that related to quilt making. The captions on each photo explain some of my thinking.
The design element of repetition is prominent in quilting. On each artist’s table you could see the power of repetition in color, shape, and texture.
Another display showing the power of repetition…and the neutral of black, white, gray with a pop of red and green.
This simple folk art rabbit looks like he could be a trapunto design with matchstick quilting!
These wavy lines with crackle texture and neutral color combination really impressed me!
You know how I love focus blocks of appliqué in my quilts….I think you can see a tulip block in my future.
This brown pitcher reminds me of batik fabrics. And a mix of dots and stripes is always good.
These earthy browns make my soul sing!
And this punch of green with browns – oh, my!
Oh, I visited this table again and again. The whimsical houses remind me of Pam Holland’s quilts.
The color combination of seafood green along with turquoise is not one that would have come to my mind until I saw this….and the pop of orange? Genius!
Improvisationally pieced squares in black and white?
And, who doesn’t love a blue chicken? That base of a black white diagonal stripe reminds me of how impactful a similar binding is on a quilt.
In the past week, three friends have given me fabric and linens. I’ve received wool, barkcloth, commercial linens, and handmade lace. Am I excited? Oh, yes! As I dig deeper in the boxes, I discover more and more treasures.
Some of these treasures have been swimming in the walnut bucket. I even strained the old walnuts out to make a cleaner bath for them.
These are the same walnuts I collected in the fall. I put them in a bucket of water, let them ferment a while, then dipped some treasures. I wrote about the first ones here.
That mixture sat through the winter months. Yesterday, Jim helped me pour the mixture through a bit of cheesecloth to see what months of stewing would do to the dye. I photographed the results in pairs…before and after.
I love the texture of barkcloth. Both pieces you see here are nice, but the darker one seems more interesting to me.
Bits of an old petticoat white, then darker. I love tucks….and I’ll remove some of the stitching later. It acts as a resist to the dye.
This tatting is gorgeous in its original state, but the darker color really enriches it. The top row in the image is the color all of it was before dyeing.
I had hoped to dye some of the tatting black. I love this coffee shade I got, but the next step is to dip some in an iron water bath to make it darker. I have nails sitting in water now.
Maybe my favorite fabric to come out of the dye was this bit of damask. I love how the dye increases the contrast in the woven design. Yes, more of this fabric is soaking in walnut dye now!
A couple of oval doilies before and after a walnut swim.
In December, our friend Paul was visiting and told me he had bought some hats to wear to work. But they were white. VERY white. He wondered if there was some way he could get them darker. I said, “I happen to have some walnuts in a bucket of water outside if you want to try that.” He was willing to let me dip his hat. Here are the results. Paul was happy.
I guess you noticed most all these brown beauties were posing on an indigo dyed linen tablecloth….I can’t wait to stitch some of this blue and brown together!
I just spent three days with my quilting sisters. We hosted our guild’s quilt show and had a blast! Normally held biennially, it had been four years since our big weekend party. Covid had forced us to cancel our show in 2020, so we were ready to get back to business sharing our love of quilting with others.
We host the show to share our passion and educate others about the history of quilting, the art of quilting, and the availability of resources available locally. The truth is that members of the guild are also inspired by this display. We’ve seen most of these quilts before in meetings at our show and tell sessions. But having them hang together for three days gives us a chance to visit, to examine things up close, to ask questions of each other, and to learn.
Susan’s Sweet Dreams quilt was made with many vintage feedsacks.
It’s a lot of work to put on a show. Planning has been going on for months. Members submit entry forms for quilts, members share the tasks of organizing that information, preparing booklets, labels, ballots, ribbons, and a floor layout. On Thursday, all that comes into play as we “hang the show”.
On Thursday night, members and our guests meet to bask in the beauty with each other. We examine the quilts and cast our votes in several categories. “Quilters’ Choice” ribbons are awarded by our ribbon queen Tess at our members’ reception.
During the show, we love visiting with our guests. Some visitors are not quilters, but friends of quilters, or folks who are interested in every art form they can find. Answering their questions gives us a new perspective on what we do…seeing our work through the eyes of those who might not be quilters puts a new spin on things. Other visitors are quilters from other guilds in the area, and I love to chat with them and learn about their quilting and their stitching groups. In fact, I wrangled invitations to visit a couple of groups soon. You’ll hear about them in the future.
At the end of the show, more ribbons are awarded (viewers’ choices) along with the winners of our silent auction quilts and our raffle quilt. More details of some quilts and their makers are in the captions of photos that follow.
Angie’s Roseville Album won many awards: Best Appliqué, Best Bed Quilt, Best of Show, and 1st place Viewers’ Choice.
Pam is telling visitors about her Wind Beneath My Wings quilt which included some vintage barkcloth.
Marie’s Heart Strings portrays an image of her homeplace. I love of Marie’s use of raw edges, hand stitching, and photos on fabric.
Donna’s Italy Dream won 3rd place in the Wall Quilt category.
Yvonne’s quilt, Betty’s Quilt, won Best Hand Quilting. Whole cloth quilts are always loved by viewers.
Starlight, a beauty pieced by Donna, shows Dewey’s astounding longarm quilting. (He’s the same genius who prepares our floor layout.)
One of many scrappy quilts in our show, Kathy’s Selvage Kites features selvages from her stash in the background of the stars.
Is This the Party To Whom I am Speaking? (above) is a bold graphic quilt…but the title comes from the fact that Kathy’s mother is a retired telephone operator. Kathy collected fabrics with images of phones to include in her quilt. The detailed shot at the left shows some of those.
Idaho Square Dance was made by a new quilter. Carol got interested in quilting after making hundreds of facemasks for Covid in 2020. She needed to do something with her scraps. This is one of her first half-dozen quilts. And, she does her own quilting on her home machine.
Heaven’s Home was begun by beloved member Jean and completed by her son and daughter. Duree finished piecing the quilt, son Dewey quilted it on his longarm.
This photo shows many of my sisters as we pose with a group of quilts we made for the Methodist Home for Children. Our show was displayed in their gymnasium.
I had several quilts in the show, won’t bore you with all….but a few with links to their stories are here.
We shared our Challenge quilts from the past four years and my Playhouse in the Chickenyard was fun for many visitors, especially the men who attended. You can read that story here.
My Miss Nellie’s Country Garden sported a Viewers’ Choice ribbon on Saturday afternoon. Her story is here.
I admit that seeing my own quilt hung in the show inspired me…to do more work using linen. The lighting on this shot of Paducah Journey shows how wool batting and linen fabric work together to create glorious texture.
