AIDS Services Coalition Ribbons of Change Gala

"Butterfly" 20" x 20"--My donation to the Gala auction

 

 The AIDS Services Coalition will hold its annual "Ribbons of Change" Gala November 4 at the  Hattiesburg Historic Train Depot. The event will feature food, music, art, live and silent auctions, with proceeds going to support of 1-2-1 Haven House. ASC has served the Hattiesburg area for 10 years, working working to meet the gaps in services--case management to help keep people housed and in care, HIV testing to make sure those at risk are being tested, food to help keep people healthy, additional housing to help people work toward independence... changing attitudes and lives.

DeSoto Arts Council Exhibit

Desoto Arts Council sponsored an art quilt exhibit at the Historic Banks House in Hernando, MS, from September 8-November 1, 2012.  Two of my art quilts were in the exhibit--Galaxy and Leaf Study. The DeSoto Arts Council serves as the countywide home for the arts with space for exhibitions, classes, meetings, gift shop, and special events.

Galaxy (above)

Leaf Study

Established in 1999, the non-profit organization serves 144,706 residents, including the 29,800 children attending DeSoto County Schools, one of the largest school districts in the state of Mississippi
in one of the 40 fastest growing counties of the United States.

DeSoto County, in northwest Mississippi, includes the cities of Hernando, Horn Lake, Olive Branch, Southaven, and Walls. The Mississippi River is the western boundary and Memphis, Tennessee is the northern border. Here the delta meets the hills. The formerly rural region’s rich culture includes rock and roll legend Jerry Lee Lewis, celebrated blues musicians Memphis Minnie, Big Walter Horton, Gus Cannon, and Kenny Brown, best selling writer John Grisham, and actor James Earl Jones.

Pumpkins!

I love when pumpkins begin appearing in all the stores. This year our church, University Baptist in Hattiesburg, created a pumpkin patch on our front lawn for the two weeks before Halloween. We had about 800 pumpkins of all sizes; all proceeds from sales of pumpkins went to our partnership with Thames Elementary School. People stopped by to buy pumpkins for carving, decorating, and pie baking. The Saturday Fall Festival featured games, races, prizes, and food. I will be sorry to see the pumpkin patch ended in November. But I will enjoy them in my front yard for a couple of months.

Pumpkins and crotons in my front yard

MQA Fall Gathering in Cleveland

The Cotton Row Quilters in Cleveland, Mississippi, hosted the Fall Gathering of Mississippi Quilt Association this past weekend. We have three Gatherings a year, with the Spring and Fall meetings moving about the state, and the June meeting located more centrally in the Jackson area. I had never visited this beautiful Delta region of our state, and we were treated to a warm welcome with lots of music and local culture to make our trip memorable. It is always rewarding to hear people brag about their particular area, and we enjoyed observing the deep pride these residents had in the Delta. Cotton bolls decorated the tables, and we saw fields of cotton ready to be harvested as well as huge bundles--(I don't know the new terminology for cotton bales!) ready to be taken to the gins.

      The bed-turning portion of the program featured a collection of quilts made by the late master quilter Martha Skelton, a collection that will not be seen again. These quilts had been borrowed from their current owners solely for creating one last exhibit of her work. MQA produced a book in 2008 about Martha's life and her quilts, and University Press recently turned over a large number of these books to MQA. They make great gifts, and guilds are buying copies to place in libraries across the state.
     Ethel Wright Mohamed's daughter, Carol Ivy, Curator of the Ethel Wright Mohamed Stitchery Museum, called Mama's Dream World, was at the Gathering to show us pictures and books about her mother's unique stitched pictures.  Mohamed's work is housed in the old home place in Belzoni, Mississippi. Mohamed is often called Mississippi's Grandma Moses of stitchery, and has pieces in the Smithsonian Institution.

ArTEAst Festival 2012

Dean Meador Smith of Simply TeaVine hosted ArTEAst Festival 2012 at the Meador Homestead Cabin today. There were about 30 writers, artists, and crafters set up in the 125-year-old cabin and all about the yard. Gadsby's Good Grub was there with delicious hot dogs, and the weather was a perfect fall day with temperatures measuring from 65 to 85 degrees.

This is the third year Dean has hosted the ArTEAst Festival, and artists and the public enjoyed the charming historical location and learning some of the history of Dean's family. 

Pine Belt Quilters 14th Biennial Show

My international friends enjoyed the show, and they were eager to understand the  differences between machine and hand quilting, machine and hand applique, and the meaning of the different colored ribbons (blue=1st, red=2nd, yellow=3rd, white=honorable mention).

My Red Hibiscus won a blue ribbon in the Theme-Small category (Life on Our Planet).

Red Hibiscus, 29" x 24", adapted from Lenore Crawford's Pink Hibiscus pattern

Find Your True South won a red ribbon and the purchase award in the Challenge category sponsored by the Hattiesburg Convention and Tourist Bureau.

Find Your True South, 24" x 24"

Migration and The Atrium at Ochsner's won honorable mentions. I had four other pieces in the show (not ribbon winners). The show received high praise from attendees. The show judge, Lorraine Covington, from North Carolina, said she was impressed with the talent and skill demonstrated by the quilters as she judged the 390+ quilts in 22 categories. In addition to the three days of the exhibition, we had a large boutique of handmade items, 19 vendors, and hourly demonstrations. Mary Ann Scruggs was the lucky winner of the raffle quilt.

The Atrium at Ocshner's, 19" x 29"

Migration, 36" x 35"

It will be time for our 15th biennial show before we know it!

Quilt Talk with Internationals

On left, Chinese student Helen Jiang; Sirui, graduate teaching assistant; Lisa Fang, master's in communication and wife of student. On the right are Korean visiting professors from Korea, Gab-sun and Eunyre Kim.

I had the privilege of speaking to a group of international students recently about my art quilting. They were interested in traditional quilts as well as fiber art and were eager to learn new words that came up in our meeting. Women from my church, University Baptist, meet with a group each Wednesday for the purpose of helping them with conversation, pronunciation, understanding our culture, and language peculiarities.

Linda Donnell, Martha Ginn, Virginia Butler

From Bumblebees to Flying Squirrels

After my bumblebee encounter a couple of months ago, I have not disturbed the occupants of the bluebird nest box. But when the support rotted and the box was hanging upside down, I was curious to see if the bees were still there. There was no sound, so I carefully opened the door; the fluffy nest material fell out and something darted around the tree. My cat Bigboy and I discovered three baby flying squirrels on the ground, which told me the mom was the darting figure I had seen leaving. The babies had soft, velvety fur and were about 3" long plus 3" tails, with loose folds of skin on their sides.

 The babies squirmed and crawled into the fluffy nest and Bigboy got bored and left. This makes me realize that the bees were not the nest builders, but squatters in the squirrel's home! I'm hopeful the mom carried the babies to a safe place, because they were gone the next morning. 

Getting Ready for Quilt Show--our 14th

On October 5, 2012, Pine Belt Quilters will open our 14th Biennial Fiber Art & Quilt Show, a  three-day event at Hattiesburg's Lake Terrace Convention Center. We have 405 pieces entered, plus one of the Hoffman Challenge Traveling Exhibits. In addition to the judged show, we will have 15 vendors, a boutique of handmade items, our raffle quilt--"Life on Our Planet," silent auction of small quilts, plus three days of lectures and demonstrations.

"Life on Our Planet"

We will have lectures and demos ongoing the three days. I will talk about Care and Repair of Quilts (Friday at 3:00) and demonstrate Ghost Quilting (Saturday at 1:00). Check Pine Belt Quilters blog for the full schedule.

My Quilt Is in China!

Rise and Shine, Inner City, 75" x 95"

My quilt is in China!  It is an honor to have my quilt "Rise and Shine, Inner City" selected as a part of The Sum of Many Parts: 25 Quiltmakers in 21st-Century America, a program conceived and sponsored by the United States Embassy-Beijing. The exhibition and its tour throughout the People’s Republic of China has been jointly developed and managed by ArtsMidwest and South Arts, with additional assistance from the Great Lakes Quilting Center at Michigan State University.

The exhibition will tour to five venues throughout China, beginning September 7, 2012:

• Shanghai Museum of Textile and Costume at Donghua University in Shanghai
• Yunnan Nationalities Museum in Kunming, Yunnan Province
• Guangxi Museum of Nationalities in Nanning, Guangxi Province
• Venue TBD in Changsha, Hunan Province
• Dalian Modern Museum in Dalian, Liaoning Province

Links have been set up with more information and pictures of all the quilts:

·         http://www.southarts.org/site/c.guIYLaMRJxE/b.8271263/k.62F9/The_Sum_of_Many_Parts.htm

·         http://www.southarts.org/site/c.guIYLaMRJxE/b.8273279/k.90FD/About_the_Exhibit.htm

·         http://www.flickr.com/photos/artsmidwest/sets/72157630842024574/

·         http://www.artsmidwest.org/programs/sum-of-many-parts-quilt-exhibition

 

 Partial funding provided by the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs. Additional support from Alabama State Council on the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, Illinois Office of Trade and Investment, Iowa Arts Council, Kentucky Arts Council, Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs, Mississippi Arts Commission, North Dakota Council on the Arts, Ohio Arts Council, and South Dakota Arts Council.

Pieces and Parts

What an exciting time we had in the Marilyn Doheny workshop! Here are some of the pieces and parts I have made. They might be fans. They might be flowers. They might be butterflies. They might be spirals. . . .You get the picture.

Strata used for the two sections of spirals on right below

First you make a strata. This strata was used to cut the spiral sections below; eight wedges were cut "up" (larger end of the wedge ruler up), and eight wedges were cut down (larger end of wedge ruler down). You can see the darker print (near the cat) at the top of the right wedges and at the bottom of the left wedges. The wedges are unsewn in this picture.

40 of these wedges would make a full circle

Split Tip--may become flowers?

Chevron (before pressing)

Right now these are just pieces and parts. More will be made before composing my quilt onto the background.

Marilyn Doheny Hattiesburg Class-Day 2

We had another exciting and busy day with Marilyn Doheny. We learned about drop shift spiral, spiral waltz, infinity spiral, scallop spiral, the inward chevron, outward chevron, up wedges, down wedges. And then there were options on how to arrange the wedges--repeat, reverse repeat. A set of wedges that was laid out like a flower could morph into a butterfly and vice versa.
Marilyn had already done the math and  shared this very basic bit of information: it takes 40 9-degree wedges to make a complete circle (9 x 40 = 360, the number of degrees in a circle), 20 wedges makes a half-circle, and 10 wedges makes a quarter circle. No matter how tall our wedges are, if they are joined continuously in the same direction, they will make a circle. Grasping this concept will help to visualize and plan the objects we want to make. The wedges can undulate by changing the direction of a group of wedges.

Discovering possible layouts using Blaze and Chevrons

The Class behind two of Marilyn's quilts in progress

The educational seminar will continue this week in Jackson Wednesday and Thursday and in Starkville Friday and Saturday. Mississippi Quilt Association's annual educational seminar provides an opportunity to study with a nationally recognized teacher and is one of the benefits of our MQA membership. We left the class with our heads swimming with ideas of how we wanted to continue with our projects.  

Marilyn Doheny Hattiesburg Class-Day 1

Marilyn Doheny hit the ground running today and filled our heads with many ideas of what we could create using the 9-degree wedge rulers, all the way from elegant fans to fantasy flowers, butterflies, bugs, and other critters. Class participants came with several strata sewn which we could use in many ways, with none looking like any other. 
She brought quilts as examples of many techniques, such as the colorful one below. Yes, it is spread out on the floor!

We made a Split Tip, and a Flip-Flop, and saw examples of the Blaze and Chevron.  She showed us how to determine which of our sewn strata would work best for a Flip-Flop and which should be held back for the Blaze and the Chevron. (More about those words tomorrow!)

Strata auditioned as a Flip-Flop

She gave individual help at each table, and we were spread out all over Kelley Fellowship Hall at University Baptist Church, where Pine Belt Quilters regularly meet.

Possibilities

 Marilyn lives in Tryon, NC, and is the owner and inkeeper of  Melrose Inn, where she offers quilting retreats in the 120-year-old B&B she is remodeling and refurnishing.

Marilyn Doheny Workshop

Each summer Mississippi Quilt Association brings in a national teacher for two-day educational seminars in three different locations. This year Marilyn Doheny will teach in Hattiesburg, Jackson, and Starkville, beginning tomorrow--July 23. The workshop participants have been cutting and sewing strata and background with borders to get ready for Marilyn's creations. Marilyn is my houseguest, and we enjoyed a fantastic meal at Crescent City Grill--one of Hattiesburg's very best restaurants in the New South Restaurant Group, owned by Robert St. John.
Watch for workshop pictures!

Red Hibiscus and a Thank You

Red Hibiscus, 29" x 24"

Amaryllis, 25" x 27"

    I'm fascinated with making large flowers lately--have made four by slightly different methods, trying to decide which method I like best. Each has some advantages, so my future pieces will probably be a combination. I love to create using my own photograph for inspiration and I wanted more practice in making my patterns. After I made the Amaryllis piece last month, my guild invited Gail Bachorik to teach her Viva Orchid! pattern, so I made that one (in blues and purples on a yellow background). Then I ordered a pattern and instructional CD from Lenore Crawford and made her Pink Hibiscus (although I did it in reds since I had just worked with pinks on the Amaryllis).

    My daughter wanted me to help her make a small piece with a rose applique to use as a gift, so I showed her how to find a picture similar to what she wanted and we then drew the design and marked the pieces to create the pattern. She did all the cutting and fusing and placing on the background, and I added the machine quilting to finish the piece. 

Knockout Rose, 14" x 14" with picture inspiration and pattern

    Ann Fahl often finishes her art quilts with a small strip separating the border from the center, and I have used this design element on both the Hibiscus and Orchid and Rose pieces. She also sets her designs on a pieced background, and this is used on the Amaryllis piece.
    Through the years other quilters have inspired us and we find we have absorbed ideas, styles, and techniques and have added them to our own repertoire of skills. I am grateful for having met and studied with some of the best quilters in America--far too many to try to name. Thanks to all who have shared!

Between the Covers at the Library

"Between the Covers" Poster

I enjoyed giving a presentation last night at the Oak Grove Library in Hattiesburg, MS, during their "Between the Covers" July adult programs. There will be a speaker each Thursday night. 
Of course, rather than book "covers," my presentation dealt with quilts as "covers." I described the fascination and importance placed on friendship blocks among quilters from the colonial days until the present. Collecting blocks with verses or sentiments and a signature offered comfort when families were separated by westward migration, death, or war.

The quilt pictured here is a version of a friendship quilt even though it does not contain verses or signatures of the makers. I received a set of blocks of varying sizes and chose to assemble the blocks as a giant tree, with the background sky and ground made of Log Cabin blocks.

Orchid

Gail Bachorik taught a workshop for Pine Belt Quilters last month called Viva Orchid! Fusing is a lot of fun but a messy process, as you can see by this picture. Well, maybe everyone is not as messy as I am.

I added a narrow and then a wide border to my orchid and echo quilted around the flower. I will finish the edges with a facing.

Gail's Orchid, 25" wide x 23" high

detail

Bigboy is very trusting when he is assisting

Celebrating the Good Memories

Gathering wisteria and Lady Banksia Rose

We just passed the one-year anniversary of my husband Roy's death on July 4. He loved the yard and enjoyed gathering flowers to bring inside to me. My son and daughter and I celebrated by remembering good times, laughing at some of the frustrating ones, and being thankful for the love he showered on us.