Arts & Old Lace Sneak Peak

Arts & Old Lace is a quilt challenge put together by two local quilters, Judy Gula of Artistic Artifacts and Cyndi Souder of Moonlighting Quilts.  The challenge was simply to create an 18" quilt with this theme; a kit of fabrics and laces was provided, but not required to be used.  I made 2 pieces for the challenge which will debut July 21.  I won't show the completed pieces until after that date, but I thought I'd share a few close-up shots of what I've been working on for the last month.

  Need I mention that both pieces contain screen printing?  Visible in the first picture but not so much in the second.  Stay tuned for more pictures later.

Thermofax Screen Printing at Artistic Artifacts

Elizabeth and I taught our thermofax screen printing class yesterday at Artistic Artifacts to 6 creative and enthusiastic ladies (and the teenage son of the proprietor).  Had a great time and enjoyed seeing the different ways each student found to use the designs.  They printed on fabric and paper, learned to tape a screen and experimented with discharge products.  We scheduled another class for Seprember 29.  Check us out if you'd like to learn about screen printing!

Screens Debut at QU Show

Yeah!  Our thermofax screens went on sale for the first time at the annual Quilters Unlimited of Northern Virginia Quilt Show!  Here are some shots of the Artistic Artifacts booth; our screens are in a basket on the table - there is a screen of a bird in front of the basket. (barely visible in the first picture, close-up in the third)

Elizabeth and I spent the day at the show, and about an hour & a half demo-ing screen printing to publicize the class we are teaching at Artistic Artifacts next weekend.  It was lots of fun!  But silly us, we forgot to take pictures of us during the demo!  We appreciate Judy giving us the opportunity to share our work. 

PG Fiber2Art - New Venture!

My friend Elizabeth and I are launching an exciting new venture: selling our original thermofax screens.  A local shop, Artistic Artifacts, is going to carry them for us.  The owner, Judy, recently purchased Batik Tambal, and vends at both quilting and mixed media shows.   I don't know what to expect; when we talked about her selling them in the shop, I hadn't thought of the additional exposure of shows, but we'll get our first taste of that this weekend at the Quilter's Unlimited annual quilt show.  We'll be hanging out in her booth on Saturday to promote the thermofax printing class we'll be teaching at Artistic Artifacts on June 9; class information is available on the AA website here.  This is the box of screens I delivered to Judy today.

Our business name is PG Fiber2Art and we can be contacted at PGFiber2Art@gmail.com.

Baby Gifts

This is the year for babies at work.  We've already had 1 adoption and 3 births (1 set of twins).  This week there's another shower coming up for 4 more expected late May through early July. Back in February I purchased ribbon balnket kits to make for this group, and got them sewn up this past week.  They are super soft minky fabric on one side and flannel on the other, with a layer of batting in between. The colorful ribbons provide additional texture and things to grab onto. They are about 13" square.  The ribbons are cut to 5" and stitched to the flannel/batting layers before sandwiching with the minky.  Kudos to Quilting Adventures quilt shop in Richmond for this cute pattern/kit.

The babies receiving these are 3 boys and 1 girl.  The strawberries, of course, are for the girl; the flannel side is green.  The navy with large dots has an Eric Carle dotted flannel on the back side.  The dots with white backgrounds have a navy and an orange flannel on the reverse sides. All washed and ready to gift!

Messy Studio

After preparing for our Celebration retreat, coming home and hauling in all the bags - but not unpacking them - and then spending most of the week working on thermofax screens for some new projects, it was time to clean up the studio.  What you can't see in this photo are the bags on the floor surrounding the perimeter of the room.  So after working on some projects all day today, I finally unpacked the bags and got most of it put away.

Here are the goodies from the retreat - most gifts, a few purchases, and some from a generous friend.  The Celebration committee worked really hard at making everyone feel special, had fabulous door prizes and lots of little gifts for everyone.  Not to mention the great classes, vendors, lectures, and other events like silent auction, raffles, AAQI competition, show & tell.  A good time was had by all!

Secret Projects Revealed

A few weeks ago I shared a sneak peak at some projects I was working on.  They were teacher gifts for our VCQ Celebration retreat weekend.  Since that weekend has just passed, I can show the whole pictures now. 

These are 'mug rugs", about 9 x 12.  My friend Elizabeth stitched the machine embroidered pineapples.  I added the strips and quilted the 9 mini quilts. This was good practice quilting on the new Baby Lock machine.  I also tried a fusible binding technique I learned from Cynthia St. Charles' blog,

This is one of the "Pockets to Go" from a Terry Atkinson pattern.  Three of us each made 3 of the cubes, which we filled with various treats for the teachers. Now I need to find time to make myself one!

It was a great weekend, wonderful classes and teachers, and lots of fun activities.  More later..