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I thought this year’s PIQF was one of the best. I was a bit disappointed in last year’s show so this was a welcome surprise. I took the Meissner bus and we only had 5 hrs for the show. I met soooo many of my students this year and that was incredibly affirming. I AM passionate about teaching and I heard so many stories about how my class enabled them to quilt their own work. It was so uplifting and encouraging. I really had very little time for the quilts. Please note: -I can see that I missed entire swaths…
The Sierra Gold Quilters Guild meets in Pine Grove, Ca and I think I’ve lectured/taught there 5 times? It is a small and mighty guild with an abundance of talent. They put on a great show every year and I was thrilled to have a wee bit of time to stop in. Their venue is the Amador County Fairgrounds which has a unique feature: the main building has (I’m guessing here) 14 storefront-type windows. The guild fills each one with a unique themed display. Because of the unavoidable reflection, I’m only including one photo, but the windows are charming and…
The Sutter Medical Center in Sacramento offers a quilt auction every other year to raise funds to research breast cancer. I got a few moments to briefly enjoy the display and I’m sharing some of the quilts here. In most cases there was little or no attribution to the maker and/or quilter on the card. I’m showing them here mostly without names: There were several one-block wonders of note. It started with a panel and this was the result-love it! This was one of my favorite pieces. When viewed dead on the patterns dance! Note that border. I love the…
Fall is particularly welcome this year after record breaking heat this summer. We seemed to have instantly slammed into cooler weather and I’m delighted! And if it’s Fall, it must mean I’m prepping for Houston. Because I kit my classes, students walk in with snips, pencil and paper, and everything else is provided-they love that! It is a lot of work to make and ship them but I think it’s worth it in the end. Just think, I only have around 330 more sandwiches to go… What would I do without podcasts to entertain me? I chose cotton batting this…
This was one of the best shows I’ve seen; every piece was exquisite. I stole an afternoon a few weeks ago to see the 49th Annual Textile Exhibition at the Olive Hyde Gallery in Freemont, Ca and apparently I have been missing something in the past few years! Unfortunately the show closes this weekend but I’ll share some of what I saw. I am in crunch time with my book (seems like I’ve been saying that for months) so I am only going to post one photo from each artist. Trying to choose one image per artistiwas like choosing a…
I’m in the middle of my 3-guild 5-day tour of Southern California/Ventura County and it’s really been a lot of fun. This is a quick post cobbled together on my phone: I had a very lovely home stay for 2 nights. Unfortunately my GPS lead me astray and a Very Tired Jenny checked into a Motel 6 instead of a Holiday Inn express by mistake. Sigh. There was a lot of interest from the guilds in their meetings which has been wonderful. I was touched by this scene! Yesterday’s class was packed with 23 students! It was a challenge, but…
Yes, I’m still binding and writing. I think it’s Groundhog Day because I keep on doing the same thing! There is great progress on finishing my projects for the book, and that’s good because I am behind in all the details of normal life. I’ve got some unconventional ways of doing things that work for me–thought I’d share: I needed to remove both glue and markings from some of my work. I did not want to run them through the washer or even hand wash in the normal fashion. I wanted to make sure they did not wrinkle or crunch…
Please make sure you read my note at the end of this post! I have binding to do, lots and lots of binding, literally 13 projects! Most of my quilts are art quilts and I prefer to hand finish my bindings. I cut them, gasp, at 1 7/8″ and sew them with a very scant 1/4″ seam, giving me the skinny binding I prefer. If I made bed quilts, I would probably cut them the standard 2 1/2″ and they would be much wider. Given that I have miles of binding to do and very little time to do it,…
I got a chance to be a normal person for a few hours last week. Besides all the mundane “catch-up” errands, I got to pop into the Sister’s Collective Gallery in Sacramento where “Never, Ever Forget-African American History, The Middle Passage and Beyond” was showing. I only had a little time to view the show but it was well worth it. It was a juried show and artists were asked to create an African American living history quilt using their own style that tells their own story or a story of historical or contemporary persons or events. A wide range of…
I got to go play for a few days! The plan for this summer was supposed to be that July was my time off, time to regroup, relax and create. As it turned out I chained myself to my computer to write my book. I had exactly 4 days free after a deadline and before the next teaching gig. So off to South Lake Tahoe we went. We rented a condo in a large “luxury” development right on the lake. It was beautiful and well maintained. Unfortunately the condo we rented was, oh boy, stuck in the 80’s! The floor plan…