Suzani Quilt Workshop—Thursday, August 28, 9:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m., Gualala Arts Center
We are still taking reservations for Liza Prior Lucy's Suzani Quilt Workshop on Thursday, August 28. If you want one of the remaining few places, please call Laurie Mueller at 785-9533 as soon as possible.
Here is the description of Liza's workshop—you will find the supply list and a description of the fabrics needed on the PPQG web site:
Students will be working with very close monochromatic tones and circular shapes to develop their own versions of the Suzani quilt. The class will focus on color development, simple piecing, and an innovative method of machine appliqué using bias binding.
Barbara McNulty has asked to host Liza, but may not be able to do so. If you wish to be the backup host —and Barbara has until August 14 to decide—please call Iris at 886-5030. Remember, the host is welcome to attend the workshop at no charge.
Finally, mark your calendars for Wednesday, August 27, at 7 PM, for Liza's lecture and a preview of Katie Pasquini's October workshop. Liza will deliver a one-hour lecture on her collaborative work with Kaffe Fassett. She will present a slide show and display many of the quilts created in this collaboration, and talk about the colors and color inspiration.
by Paula Osborne
July's guild picnic at Naida's was everything a summer picnic in the coastal redwoods should be: Good food, good company, perfect weather!
Fresh salad greens and tables full of delectable toppings, followed by homemade ice cream and Snap’s to-die-for peach cobbler, left us with little interest in an evening meal.
With a new mini golf course (what next?), bocce ball, ping pong, and golfing greens, we had more than enough options to occupy the rest of the afternoon---but mostly we just visited in the shade of the picnic pavillion. Thanks to the food committee for making it all so easy for us.
Most of all, Thank you, Naida and Snap, for your incredible hospitality!
by Paula Osborne
You never know when a workshop is going to change the way you think. Anita Kaplan’s class on Color, Value & the Triangle, offered by Gualala Arts, nudged each of her students to think like an artist.
From the first exercise—clipping, saving and organizing visual and verbal images that please you—to the last one, playing with carefully cut triangles on our design boards—we moved towards a new way of expressing our own art and craft of quilting.
While testing many different fabric combos (light, medium, dark), Anita helped us to discover the power of VALUE, even more than color, to give life to any design. Einsteins we’re not, but this is clearly an artist’s theory of relativity. Anita's organized teaching process helped us to limit the chaos of choosing our fabrics.
To our delight, balance, unity, variety, and focus, the four vital elements of design, began to emerge on our design boards. As usual, I took more pleasure in others’ designs than my own, but therein lies an important feature of the workshop experience: being stimulated by someone else’s ideas to go outside one’s own comfort zone.
So…did this workshop change the way I quilt? It may be too soon to tell, but the very next day I bought an accordion file to organize my growing pile of clippings. If there’s a chance that thinking like an artist makes us better quilters, Anita’s class was a good place to start.
by Cynthia Chilton
In May, several Guild members and other north-coasters enjoyed an absolutely wonderful "Fabric and Food" trip to France.
Connie Barney Wilson, chef and tour guide (her company is "Provence on Your Plate"), took us from Alsace to Avignon. We had private tours of the fabric museums in Mulhouse and Lyon... visited fabric houses in Beauville, Soleiado, Olivade. We had many, many great meals, two cooking classes, and stayed in marvelous chateaus and hotels. One particularly memorable experience was visiting the touching Boutis museum in Provence, and learning about the almost lost technique that is being brought back by a group of women.
Connie will lead the trip again from May 9-20, 2004. Folks should contact me or visit her website: provenceonyourplate.com
This trip is not to be missed!
1—Reva Basch & Mary Hunter
20—Charlene Keller
23—Pam Wilson
24—Mary Alice Bastian
by Ann Graf
Visit our library and get inspired to try new designs and techniques. We have a variety of wonderful material that will start you thinking about new wall hangings, the upcoming challenge, comfort quilts. Some recent additions include:
Off Center
Patchwork, C. Adam
Radiant New York Beauties, V. Wells - some great color
combinations and paper-pieced projects
Sewing in Circles, P. Horras - easy machine applique
Reverse Applique with No Brakez, J Mullen - a visual treat with
great color use
Mary Mashuta's Confetti quilts , M Mashuta - good for all levels
We will also be adding The Patchwork Planner, introduced to us by
Anita at her great workshop - more ways to use all those
triangles.
Diane Cunningham reports that someone left an antique white hanky with lace on a chair at the last Guild meeting (the Kathy Sandbach lecture). Please contact her if anyone remembers losing one. She says it must be 50 years old. Diane’s number is 884-4342.
As many of you may have heard in the last week or two, Bill Darling was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. We would like to surprise him with a comfort quilt. Because Bill and Betty Jane Darling had many friends throughout the community, we would like your help in getting the word out to as many people as possible, and have designed a project that will allow non-quilters to participate as well.
The finished quilt will consist of log cabin blocks with centers of fabric photographs of their friends or of places the Darlings loved, chosen by their friends. The unifying color will be a variety of green fabrics, representing the trees and meadows that Bill loved to hike through.
For more information, contact:
Ruth Hayflick, 785-3181 rhayflick@mindspring.com
Mary Hunter, 785-1150 dardmary@mcn.org
Iris Lorenz-Fife, 886-5030 irisilk@mcn.org
True (Strange) Fabric Tale
by Annie Beckett
Here's a true story for those who suffer occasional 'post fabric indulgence spousal remonstrance' to tell their husbands:
I went to the sale held at TreadleArt in Santa Rosa in the last two weeks before it closed. There was a woman shopping the sale who pulled bolt after bolt from the shelves and stacked them on the counter, below the counter, all around the counter, using up all the bean bag frogs to reserve them.
By the time she finished amassing and asked the salesperson to start cutting she must have accumulated forty bolts in her pile. Since there was a minimum 1 yard cut I began to think this woman had some bank account. Then she started specifying three yards of this, four of that, five of the other. I thought, "What on earth is she making?"
When I couldn't stand not knowing any longer, I asked her what she planned to do with all that fabric.
"Pet it," she replied.
I said, "Excuse me?"
She repeated, "Pet it!" then elaborated, "I have a fabric room stacked from floor to ceiling with bins. My fabric lives in the bins and every night when I come home from work I take some out from here, and some out from there and introduce them to each other. Then I pet them. Then I put them away."
Wait, I thought, do I have this straight? "You don't sew..."
"Nope."
"You don't quilt?"
"Nope."
"You just collect fabric so you can..."
"Pet it."
"Wow!" I said, somewhat reverentially. "Wow. I can't wait to tell my husband this. He'll be so glad he married me instead of you!"
Our webmistress, Reva, spotted a small ad for this business in an old issue of QNM, and figured they must have a web site by now; they do: www.houseofhanson.com/lpsharp.html. The prices look great, and recycling old rotary cutter blades seems like a good thing.