Happy Thanksgiving!

As we enter the holiday season by celebrating Thanksgiving tomorrow, I want to wish each and everyone a Happy Thanksgiving.  I am thankful most of all for my loving and supportive family, and grateful for the many blessings of this life we live.  I hope you have a wonderful day surrounded by family and friends, a dinner with all the trimmings, and whatever other traditions your family enjoys.  I know for us that will probably include football and some games, and lots of food!  My mother, at 92, is still the baking queen!  Enjoy!

Gelatin Plate Printing

I recently took advantage of an opportunity to take a Gelatin Plate Printing class with a new local teacher, Susan Gantz, at Artistic Artifacts.  This was another chance to play with a technique I haven't used much recently, although I have played extensively in the past.  Susan had some really wonderful and intriguing samples and I did get some insight into how she gets her results.  However one difference is that she prints more on paper than fabric, so the results will vary.  Some of these prints are on paper and some are on fabric.  Can you tell which is which?

  

Paint Stick Class

At the VCQ meeting I took the paint stick workshop with Karen Lee Carter of Virginia Beach.  I've used paint sticks before but was happy to play with them again and pick up a few new tips and ideas.  Karen Lee was a well-planned and organized teacher.  It was a relaxing and enjoyable day.  These are some of my sample pieces.

 The piece on the left was done using a torn file folder, applying paint to the edge and then shading it off the edge.  The piece on the right is done with a stencil.

 The pieces on the left and center were rubbings over hand-carved rubber stamps.  The one on the right was masked with tape and shaded around the edges first, then laid over a piece of mat to create additional texture marks.

Here, the left and center were both done with rubbing plates; the right piece was rubbed over a hand-carved stamp.

The class was a good opportunity to practice some techniques I hadn't used recently.

VCQ in Virginia Beach

A few weeks ago the Virginia Consortium of Quilters held our November meeting in Virginia Beach at the Resort & Conference Center on the Chesapeake Bay side of the city.  We had 88 people attending for a day of workshops and the annual business meeting.  Workshops included playing with paint sticks, a 10-minute block class, a wool project, an angle play project and a miniature mystery, as well as Come Quilt with Me. Here are some class show and tell pictures.

My friends and I stayed over an extra night to play tourist a bit; Sunday turned out to be a gorgeous sunny day, 71 degrees.  We had breakfast at Pocahontas Pancake House in VA Beach city, walked along the beach and climbed the Cape Henry lighthouse, the first lighthouse built in the US which was in operation from 1792 to 1881.