New Colors from Point Bonita

Every year at Point Bonita there are two events that bring all of us out of our studios to the main gathering room: the Bazaar, where anyone can bring their wares to sell, and the Silent Auction, where people donate quilt-related items that are auctioned off for the charity of the buyer's choice.

The bidding at the auction can get quite intense. Ladies hovered over the bid cards and blatantly crossed off each others bids, smiling ferociously at their rivals as the time left was called out: "One minute remaining!" "30 seconds remaining!" I was in such a bidding war for a huge and luscious pile of silk samples...and lost, alas! But when there were but 15 seconds to go I gave up, scooted across the room to another table, and put my winning bid on these incredible wool shawl ends covered with exquisite tambour work. (Here's a great link to see how tambour work is done.)

This is high quality wool, and a most satisfying consolation prize for losing out on those silks.

At the Bazaar my old friend Vicki Day had some ravishing hand-dyed felted wool for sale, so I bought a nice palette-full.

This is just ultra-wonderful and I know I'll be using it a lot.

More color! I took a painting workshop with Lynn Koolish, who was demonstrating some possibilities of the Liquitex paints C & T is selling to the quilt shops this year.
I wasn't interested in painting on fabrics, but I did try it out on some lace and trim.

That little sheet is Lutrador...I think I'll be able to cut some nice flower petals out of it.

Being in the creative atmosphere of Point Bonita inspired me to step way out of character and paint a shirt too. Well, actually I used the shirt as the background for when I was painting the lace....

I do find the cuff details quite fetching.
My husband says it looks like someone was riding a motorcycle and ran into a South American parrot.
I haven't had the courage to try it on yet!

Some of the wool and painted lace found its way into the project I worked on all week. It is a floral framed portrait of my beautiful niece, Amaleah.

"Amaleah: Welcome Home" 18" X 18"

It was so great looking down at that wonderful smile all week as I stitched. I used a vintage quilt block as my background.

Here is a detail shot:

There is a painted lace leaf along the bottom, and a four-petaled purple wool flower along the left side, with the blue flower bead in its center. (I learned that flower from Conni Jenkins here.) The embroidered leaves are of Vicki's wool as well.
There are several needlepunch ribbon flowers on this piece, and gathered lace flowers too.

What a great week it was.....

Julie and Joe's Quilt Adventure: Crazy Quilting

I had a GLORIOUS week at the annual Point Bonita Getaway for 70 quilters this past week.

Unlike over the past few years, I am not going to post too much about the retreat itself....there were some objections to my "live" reports last year, as some of the ladies just wanted complete privacy. But I will still have a few pictures of my class (which went great!), the studio where we worked, and the project that held my attention all week--it wasn't my Vintage CQ either!

But first I have to tell you about Julie and Joe's Quilt Adventure, which I attended last Sunday (playing hooky for the day from Point Bonita).

Julie Silber is one of the foremost quilt historians, collectors, curators, and dealers in the country with over 40 years' experience. Thousands and thousands of quilts have passed through her hands. Joe Cunningham is one of her best friends; some of you might know him as "Joe the Quilter". Joe apprenticed himself to a master quiltmaker back in the 1970's and is committed to honoring the glory of the American quilt tradition. He too is a quilt historian, but branched out to make art quilts of his own many years ago.
He is also a performer and very, very funny.

The Adventure took place at the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, which has hosted a marvelous crazy quilt exhibit over the past few months. Julie and Joe immersed themselves in the history of crazy quilting to prepare for this event, and the result is that I learned so much about the genre I love.
An added bonus was the inclusion of Barbara Brackman on the program, another of America's great quilt historians. Barbara is at Point Bonita as well, so she came on down for the afternoon part of the program to talk about how to date some of the odd and old quilts that Julie brought to stump her.
Barbara was impossible to stump, however.

The first part of the program was spent touring the museum's gallery of crazy quilts, with Julie, Joe, and the museum's knowledgeable executive director, Jane Przybysz, Ph.D, putting them in the context of social history and teasing out such fascinating information from each quilt.

The picture above shows the "trunk show" part of the program which took place after lunch, with amazing quilts from Julie and Joe's personal collections. (This one is made mostly from cigarette and cigar silks.) They brought many quilts, and often had spirited disagreements about them, too!

As you can see from the body language....

My goodness!

How I wish I could remember what the issue was here. I was laughing too hard to follow it!
(And by the way, that is a very rare tile quilt behind them. Click on the picture to see it.)

They gave me permission to post pictures from their talks, so here are just a few of the great quilts they showed us:

There is Barbara on the right. They all guessed that this was a mourning quilt, with some of the black fabrics possibly made from the mourning dress worn by the widow. It was a sad but lovely piece....some of the stitching betrayed real distress.

Julie's definition of a crazy quilt was that it have randomness to the piecing. I believe that the use of fancy fabrics and embroidery stitching along the seams is also part of what makes a quilt "crazy"...so to me this quilt almost qualifies, though they called it a "sampler". But a detail of the middle block on the right at least reveals the crazy influence....

The quiltmaker filled in the squares of her 20-patch block with crazy stitching! How cool is that?

Then there were some of my very favorite crazy quilts, the ones made of cotton that had random elements to the piecing but were quilted (I think) and used as bed covers.

I find this one utterly compelling.
I might have to make it some day....I took a picture of one of the blocks sideways and "not on point" to help me analyze it. All the blocks are the same lay-out using the same values, with slightly different fabrics. It is the repetition of them that slays me.

I know this quilt is in my future..... ;-)

One of the highlights of my Quilt Adventure experience was the commute: driving down from Point Bonita to San Jose with Joe in the morning was so much fun, with stimulating talk the entire way about such things as what is in "the DNA of American quilting"--which Joe says has been freedom of choice, from the very beginning...and then the return drive with Barbara. I was one lucky gal; it was a day I will always treasure.

If you ever have a chance to attend any of Julie and Joe's future Adventures, no matter what the subject in quilting, you will be so glad you did.
Thanks, you two!!!!!

My Workshop at Point Bonita..."May"

Our fearless leader of the Point Bonita quilt retreat, Kathy Ronsheimer, asked me if I would lead the guest workshop this year. What an honor!
Our artists-in-residence, Bettina Havig, Mickey Lawler, Judy Warren Blaydon, and Nancy Halpern give fabulous new workshops every year...plus one "guest teacher" is invited to offer a workshop each year too. Attendees usually pick one workshop per year from these offerings, and it is really hard to choose, too.
Actually this year there will be two of us filling the guest teacher slot. Lynn Koolish, author and editor at C & T Publishing, is showing students how to paint on fabric using C & T's new Surface Design Center products. (That's the workshop I'll be taking. Very excited about it!)

And I will be teaching a little project showing how to make a small embellished portrait.

"May"
8" X 8", 2009

Each of my students will be bringing in their own photo-transferred "subject" already appliqued onto background fabric, and then they will be learning the flowers shown here.
I can't wait to get the needles into their hands!