NC Quilt Symposium, the Quilts!

NC Quilt Symposium in Raleigh this year was a feast for the eyes! Great vendors, beautiful quilts and wearables, and it was wonderful to re-connect with old friends I hadn't seen in a while. We were so busy I didn't get to even see all the quilts, but here are a few of the winners and some of my favorites from the show. The Capitol Quilters' Guild hosted symposium this year, and had so many special treats for us! One of these was the Apron Challenge, where all were invited to make and donate an apron to be auctioned off to raise $ for a local food charity. They were all adorable, one of my customers made one from my #168 "Cook 'n Craft Apron for Mommy & Me" pattern, it's the 3rd one from the lower right side of the aprons photo in the cute doggie fabric with striped pockets, love it! All in all, the show was so inspiring and the classes sounded great too.

Rami Kim

From time to time you meet a kindred spirit who is so down-to-earth yet so creative and talented, and you know that God has blessed you with a special moment in your life. Such was the case when I met Rami Kim! Our guild invited her to speak and do a workshop in April this year, and I had the good fortune to spend the day with her and a few of the guild members, what a great time we all had! It was a total girls' day out as we enjoyed lunch and then headed for Mary Jo's in Gastonia where we shopped for batiks, silk and of course, wool. I found a pattern I really liked and discovered Rami had made it up a couple of times and thought how versatile and cute it was in several different fabrics, also that she is also a lover of wool! Rami was an absolute delight to hang out with, funny and playful and not at all boastful about being a best-selling author, TV star and multi-talented award-winning teacher. That day she was just one of the girls looking for great fabrics and sharing funny stories. After doing some fabric shopping we headed to downtown Concord and splurged on chocolate and some delicious Cuban coffee, then did a little shoe shopping (the bead shop was closed, bummer!) Then dinner and we headed to guild, where Rami shared her talents and awesome creations in a wonderful program on wearable art and accessories (also funny stories about the evolution of her studio in CA.) I was among the lucky to get to model one of her incredible jackets, now I don't normally think of myself as a "ruffles" kind of gal, but after wearing Rami's beautiful lavender jacket I am re-thinking that, it was gorgeous and felt like a dream on! All in all it was a magical day spent with everyone, and I look forward to seeing her again next summer when she comes back!

10 years ago

In a matter of minutes, I am transported back 10 years to a day of watching in horror as the twin towers collapsed, planes crashed, thousands of lives were ended too soon, and life as we knew it would never be the same. Praise God that Osama bin Laden is finally gone, and I also pray that, although this will not bring back all those families' loved ones, it might bring them a sense of peace and closure. As our pastor said yesterday, God has a plan, and He always accomplishes it, with or without our help, it's going to get done. The prayers of millions of Americans have been answered this day.

This news brings back so many memories from 2001: hearing the news, the first person I thought of was my cousin Mark who lived in Manhattan; was he safe, or was he among the victims? Also our friend Steve who works in the Pentagon, was he OK? We quickly got on the phone to start checking on family and friends. Thankfully, ours were not among the unfortunate ones.

And finally, on a more happy note, this also reminds me that I have been working with my Woolfelt company, National Nonwovens, for 10 years! I met them at Spring Quilt Market in Atlantic City in 2001, and they gave me some of their wonderful Woolfelt squares to play with. My first design came out that fall, and in fact I ran an ad in a trade publication advertising my new pattern which was released within a week of 9/11. It's still a good seller to this day, and I have thoroughly enjoyed working with N.N. all these years, moving into fiber art along with my folk art as they expanded their product line, and now their awesome bamboo felt! I look forward to continuing a happy relationship with all the great folks there for many more years to come.

Fantastic Fibers 2011

Back in February I started playing around with zippers; I made a couple of fun flower pins with some metal-teeth zippers, some I had on hand, some I found at a couple of local shops. When I was invited to teach the zipper flower, I started experimenting with fiber art that was a bit edgier in using zippers. I designed an original necklace using one of my wool geode pendants, some of my hand-felted wool beads, and some glass beads, all held together by - you guessed it- a zipper! I even left the tab on at the bottom and attached a decorative dangly bead to it. I was so pleased with the outcome I decided to enter it into a national fiber show and am thrilled to share, out of a whopping 432 entries, my little zipper necklace was one of the lucky ones (58 of them) to make it into the exhibit! Fantastic Fibers 2011 is at the Yeiser Art Center, 200 Broadway in Paducah, KY 42001 for the entire month of April. If you happen to be going to Paducah for the big quilt show, I hope you'll check out the fiber show too! My piece is titled (what else?) "A Zipper Runs Through It", and I'd love to have a photo of my piece in the show if you go. For more info on the show, you can call the Yeiser Art Center at (270) 442-2453 or visit their web-site www.theyeiser.org

International Women's Day

Today marks the 100-yr. anniversary of International Women's Day, and as I was thinking of the women in my life who have inspired me, clearly the #1 on my list is my mom. Always putting others' needs before her own, a great friend and multi-talented creative soul as well, she has always encouraged me to reach for the proverbial "gold ring", and made me believe I could do things as well as anyone else. She taught me to sew when I was only 5 years old, and always took the time to show me creative techniques and the value of an imagination. What an inspiration she continues to be for me today!

Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival XXII

Last weekend was the always-amazing Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival in Hampton, VA, and this year's show was the best! For me, it started out less-than-stellar, as I broke my little toe 2 days before I left for the show and also managed to either crack (probably) or bruise a rib en route, so I was not at the top of my game physically this year. Luckily I had a great helper with Lynn M., who made sure I didn't have to do any heavy lifting or shuffling and took care of lots of details including the booth while I taught my Wild Wooly Flowers Class.

We had so much fun in this class! We did have a full class, several of the girls were students in my felting class last year, and we also had some newbies including a man. Everyone's flowers turned out spectacular, just breathtakingly beautiful! And they learned some basic wet-felting techniques as well as how to shape their flowers. I'm adding some photos from the class, as well as from Show 'n Tell from Saturday night and a teachers' picture, that's me in between the very talented Esterita Austin and Gloria Loughman. How blessed I was to get to teach at this awesome show! I always love sharing my passion for felting and meeting fellow fiber-lovers. And I also got to see what the other teachers were doing, most phenomenal work. Here are a few pictures from the exhibit by Gloria Loughman who is from Australia, walking through her section of the show was like strolling through a serene rain forest with all it's lush vegetation and fresh greesn and colors; she also used an interesting woven look in several of her quilts, which were full of color. I also really liked Karen Carter's work, completely different but you know I love folk art; Karen's pieces are the ones with so much wonderful texture and dimensional embellishments. (Karen, BTW is a real sweetheart and looks so much like Meg Ryan!) And you know I love the wearable art! This was the first year I didn't submit anything, I have just been so busy, but there were some stunning pieces there, including the Best of Show by Rami Kim, a magnificent silk ensemble with folded flowers. All in all, it was a fantastic show, even with the scandal of the "controversial quilt". ^_^

Silk Dyeing

A couple of weeks ago I took a class with Mary Anne Caplinger on silk dyeing, little did I know what a pro I was studying with! Mary Anne was an awesome teacher and so talented, I discovered she has written 2 books on her particular niche in the quilting world, a beautiful artsy technique she uses in many of her pieces, several of which were hanging in her amazing studio. (You can see one of her jackets in the background of the photo of Mary Anne and me.) She has also been to Japan and studied shibori dyeing and indigo dyeing, and so one of the techniques we learned in her class was "arashi" dyeing, or in layman's terms, pole-wrapping. I had always wanted to try this, and it was a little more involved than I expected, but I loved the results! And while we wrapped and tucked, we had a lesson in Japanese culture, learning such tidbits as that the arashi technique represents rain-drops. We wrapped, dipped and dyed all day and learned so much! I'm posting a few pictures from the class, which was so much fun to take with Carolyn S., she was a great companion. (Our wipe-up rags turned out great, too. ^_^)