Celebration Day 4

Our final day at Celebration was a morning wrap up on Sunday.  After breakfast, we gathered in the auditorium for class show & tell, final announcements, and some additional "bonus" door prizes.  Then we said our farewells and headed home, with fond memories of stimulating classes and all the fun.  These pictures are small, but since there were 9 teachers who each taught 2 classes, this post would be really long if I didn't make collages.

 Above, class projects by Cindy French, Laura Blanchard and Nancy Prince.

 The 4 above are Pat Speth, Linda Ballard, Linda French (longarm quilting), and Priscilla Hair.

 The last group is more from Priscilla Hair, Bonnie Hunter and Come Quilt with Me.  There were also 2 classes on Electric Quilt with Evelyn Townsend, but alas, nothing to take pictures of!

Our final trip through time in the tardis resulted in Virginia & David Banks being the winners of the BabyLock sewing machine.  Actually, Virginia was the winner but since they both quilt, maybe they will share it!

 And finally, one last look at the beautiful scenery and a fond farewell till next time!

Day 3 Continued

Saturday lunch was a "tea party".  Everyone was encouraged to wear hats and/or gloves to lunch and everyone received a favor of a tea cup pin cushion.  There were some great hats!

Our Saturday evening program was a trunk show by Bonnie Hunter of her string quilts, followed by more door prizes from the time traveling tardis, block lotto drawings, and announcements of the silent auction and raffle basket winners.

Celebration Day 3

Saturday started with an early morning walk down to the lake.  Here are some shots of the view.

My second workshop was with Bonnie Hunter, called Basket Weave Strings.  I usually tend toward more artsy classes, but this time I felt like doing something different and I really liked the  look of the project, plus I've never taken a Bonnie Hunter class before.  She's really popular with a lot of quilters and its easy to see why. Bonnie's enthusiasm is contagious and she helps us make a dent in the scrap bin - and create a few more!  This was a pretty relaxing class, just a bit of instruction to start with followed by plenty of time to sew.  The string blocks are pieced on a foundation, so other than cutting the foundation papers, no measuring required!  Strips are random widths and don't necessarily have to be straight.  

 Above Bonnie is showing some of her antique string quilts.  The class project is on the right.

 Bonnie demonstrates the foundation piecing process.

These are the blocks I completed in class.  There might have been more, but after sewing 10 blocks I realized that I was sewing without any tension, so then I had to fix them all.  I was happy to get 16 blocks done in spite of that.

Celebration Day 2

Day 1 of Celebration was a half day - afternoon arrival, getting settled in our rooms, followed by dinner and an evening program.  Day 2 was the first workshop day.  I took Thread Painting with Nancy Prince.  We worked on portions of a small landscape - one section was done on stabilizer and then used as an applique, while the other was stitched directly onto the background.

The finished project will resemble the picture below.

Friday's evening program was a lecture by Pat Speth, the "Nickle Quilt Lady" (she is the author of the Nickle Quilt books).  She had lots of quilts to show that all started from 5 inch squares, and also showed lots of border options.

The evening was capped off with more door prizes and time traveling antics.

VCQ Celebration 2014

This is a long overdue post.  VCQ's Celebration retreat happened at the end of April, and I'm finally getting around to writing about it.   We have this retreat every two years, with 2 days of workshops by both national and Virginia teachers.  It is a jam-packed weekend with vendors, a silent auction, 3 evening programs that include trunk shows, door prizes, block lotto drawings, and lots of fun!  This year's event was no exception; in fact, the committee did an outstanding job with their "Quilting is Timeless"/Dr. Who time travel theme. 

Above is a view overlooking the lake at the Smith Mountain Lake 4-H center, and the main activity & dining hall building.

Here you see the Quilting is Timeless Tardis created by the committee, and Monique & Marty in garb from one of their time travels.

The first night features show & tell of projects begun at previous Celebrations.  There were many quilts shown this year, quite of few of which were like the bottom picture, Jamestown Landing, which is one of Bonnie Hunter's patterns.  Bonnie was a teacher at the last 2 Celebrations, and again this year.  Everyone loves her scrap quilt classes.

Post SAQA Conference Printing Class

PGFiber2Art was honored to kick off a week-long series of special classes at Artistic Artifacts that followed the Studio Art Quilt Associates conference held in Alexandria last week.  Last Sunday afternoon we had a group of 10 delightful ladies for Thermofax Screen Printing, 5 who were local and 5 who attended the SAQA conference from other states - Colorado, Arizona, South Carolina, and Georgia.  They created some lovely pieces of fabric and were willing to experiment and try new things.  It was a relaxing and fun afternoon.

Above are several students hard at work. As part of their kit they chose 5 fat quarters of both hand-dyed and commercial fabric to print on.

The snowflake fabric turned out awesome!  The hand-dyed fabric is the perfect background for the all-over snowflake printing.  Below, two different circle screens are used in different colors to create layers and depth.

 I love the way these 3 prints of money plant are slightly overlapped, and also the combination of a natural design element with text.  Below a tree bark screen is combined in different colors with text.

 The piece above was created with 4 different screens and different colors to add texture and depth.

Jeanne is hard at work!