Pacific Piecemakers Quilt Guild

Bits & Pieces

April 2002 -- Volume 7, Issue 4

Jackie Morse, Editor

ARTISTS IN RESIDENCE WORKSHOPS

April 19th at Gualala Arts

12:00   Social Time   12:30   Business Meeting

   1:00  Workshops Begin

Expert Guild members will share their knowledge and skills by teaching four different workshops.  The workshops will run simultaneously and each workshop will be presented twice.  This allows all participants to attend two different workshops during the afternoon.  The schedule will go from 1:00-1:50 and the second round will be 2:00-2:50.  This has always been a very popular meeting so come and enjoy the expertise our members have to share.

Mary Austin:  Sashiko

Annie Beckett and Barbara McNulty:  Quilt Embellishment, Ribbon Embroidery, Beading

Anita Kaplan:  Sewing a Binding

Jo Dillon, et al:  Tools of the Trade: Tools, Tips & Short Demos.

COMFORT QUILTS

The P&B fabric donation has arrived.  One hundred yards of assorted colors and styles are available to Guild members to use for the making of Comfort quilts. We will have the fabric available at our meetings to supply personal requests for needed yardage.  We thank the P&B Fabric Company for their generosity and a special thank you to Marva Jacobs at the loft for contacting P&B and  making this donation possible.

MEMBER NEWS & UPDATES

Changes in email addresses:

Lynne Atkins is philyn@prodigy.net; Marilyn Limbaugh is marilynl@mcn.org; and Sharon Simon is sharon@mcn.org

New member Sylvia McKinney can be found at POB 112, Gualala;  phone 785-3677, email at edmckinn@mcn.org, and her birthday is May 31.

Two late returning members not on your new roster are:

Dot Porter at 5555 Montgomery Dr. K 105, Santa Rosa, CA 95409; phone 579-6823, birthday April 6th, and

Julie Verran at  POB 382, Gualala. CA  95445;  email is foglark@mcn.org, phone 884-3740, birthday November 4th.

A Plethora of Quilt Events

Below is a partial list of upcoming events to tickle your fancy or motivate your creativity. For a bigger variety and more information be sure to check our web site at www.pacificpiecemakers.org.

Stitching Together A New Life: Hmong & Mien Textile Art, San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles, March 23-May 12.

Monterey Peninsula Quilters’ Guild’s 27th Annual Quilt Show, April 13-14 at Chautauqua Hall, Pacific Grove - featuring small quilt auction, boutique, garage sale and tea room events.

Peninsula Quilters Guild “Quilting by the Bay 2002”, May 18-19 at Notre Dame de Namur University in Belmont with vendors, demos, boutique, special exhibits and wearable art.

Wine Country Quilts 2002 by Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County, June 1-2, Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Building with more than 400 quilts on display, handcrafted items and antique quilts, plus featured quilter Judy Severson.

A Garden of Quilts by the Quilter’s Sew-Ciety of Redding, June 1-2, Simpson College in Redding, entry forms available at 530-247-1028

The 8th Annual Great Petaluma Quilt Show August10th includes a call for entries for a Miniature Quilt Contest called “Backward & Forward”. Deadline to enter is July 12th at The Quilted Angel.

Guild Glimmers

by Paula Osborne

“Who has seen the wind”

        How would you depict wind in a quilt?  What about fire?

        “Earth, Wind, Fire, and Chocolate”, the necessary elements of life on this planet (well, almost), inspired the Pacific Northwest Quilters exhibition of the same name, which we experienced via narrated slides at our March meeting.

        Why chocolate, you may ask?  As one artist put it, “we need meat andpotatoes, but chocolate fuels our fantasies.” And we all know it’s as addictive as quilting.

        Among the myriad images of earth, fire, wind, and chocolate were silly and serious statements of wisdom and humor, love and loss, vision and memory.

        If I had to select one quilt to carry in my mind forever, I would choose the Tibetan Prayer Flags.  In a heartbeat it transported me to theTibetan Plateau.  I could feel the wind rippling through sun-bleached prayer cloths (weathered four months on the artist’s clothesline), bearing aloft the dreams of countless lifetimes.  We too, with every quilt we make, express our own basic elements, and often send them on the wind to those we love.

President’s Message

    While presiding at our March Guild meeting, I realized just how dynamic and alive our guild has become, thanks to all of you.  Seeing those tables full of current projects and a roomful of quilters eager to participate was energizing and exciting.  Thank you for entrusting this busy year in the life of PPQG to me.  I will do my best to uphold that trust.  Meanwhile, don’t forget the three magic words when there’s work to do - and there’s always work to do:  Just Say Yes!

                                                                                    Paula Osborne

Birthdays

   Frances Buentjen                 April 3

   Marva Jacobs                    April 7

   Ruth Hayflick                 April 11

   Linda Warnock                April 15

Voices in Cloth 2002

By Reva Basch

            Compared to Houston, and even to some Bay Area expositions like PIQF in Santa Clara, the East Bay Heritage Quilters’ Voices in Cloth show is probably classed as a small to middlin’-sized event. Good thing — had it been any larger, my traveling companion and I would have run out of stamina and time way before we’d completed our circuit around the floor. 

            As a novice quilter, I was interested in making the trip to Oakland — despite the heavy rain that greeted us the morning of St. Patrick’s Day — to see what a non-Gualala Arts quilt show would be like. In local terms, it was roughly on the scale of Art in the Redwoods, with 200-250 art works (i.e., member quilts) on display, plus special exhibits of quilts made by children, antique and historical quilts from Julie Silber’s collection, and theme quilts focusing on life’s passages and deeply emotional personal events. Vendor booths ringed the hall, selling everything from sewing notions to patterns and kits, dyes, jewelry, fat quarters and precut yardage, to Berninas. Eddie’s Quilting Bee appeared to be the anchor tenant of this ad hoc mall, holding down an entire corner of the room with bolts of fabric and a complete cutting operation imported from their Mountain View location.

            Every half hour or so, the loudspeaker announced winning numbers for items donated by various vendors; hands went to pockets all over the hall as we searched for the raffle tickets we’d received upon entering. The venue also included a separate quilt raffle at $5 a chance, and a silent auction area where donated quilts and wearable art were displayed along with signup/bidding sheets. A fundraising idea for us, perhaps?

            The quilts themselves were gorgeous, of course – and those few I couldn’t imagine living with were still intriguing, touching, funny, or thought-provoking in some way. Since I wasn’t tapped beforehand to write about the show, I didn’t take notes or photos; I just let the melange of traditional, cutting-edge, and everything in between swirl around in my psyche, as I uttered the occasional “ooh” or “look at that!”

            EBHQ has more than 500 members, including world-class quilters and teachers like Roberta Horton and Freddy Moran. But if you think “larger” means an end to volunteerism in favor of hiring professional help, check out the photos of members planning, receiving, and hanging their previous show: www.ebhq.org/ebhq-quilts2000.html. All that effort for a two-day show! These people clearly operate on the same principle as the one our new president, Paula, has urged us to adopt: Just say Yes.

Happy Birthday, Dear Web Site

By Reva Basch (reva@well.com)

            Mid-April marks the one-year anniversary of our web site (www.pacificpiecemakers.org). I’m delighted at how well-utilized it appears to be. I’ve recently updated the list of officers and steering committee members, and the member roster. Please check both pages and let me know of any errors or omissions you spot. While you’re at it, let me know if you haven’t already whether it’s okay to list your mailing address and/or phone number in the member directory.

            My ongoing efforts include posting an electronic version of Bits & Pieces in the Newsletter Archive section shortly after (sometimes even before) you receive your copy in the mail, and adding links in the Other Resources section to excellent quilting-related sites elsewhere on the web. Mary Austin in particular has been a huge contributor in this area; thank you to Mary and others who’ve shared their favorite sites.    

            I’ve also turned the Show and Tell section into a permanent photo gallery of exhibits, workshops, and other events and activities in which our members have participated. I’ve just about justified my digital camera purchase in terms of the great work and smiling faces it’s enabled me to capture. I’m indebted to Carol Tackett for covering some events I didn’t get to, and for taking much better pictures of some I did. Remember, “show and tell” includes your own individual projects as well — don’t be shy. Please feel free to send me your own photos for possible inclusion on the site. I can use prints (which I’ll scan and return) or jpegs.

            I’ll be working with Ann Graf, our new librarian, on reformatting and updating the list of library books on the web site. We hope to develop a procedure for adding new acquisitions to the list on the site at the same time as we add them to our library collection.

            Iris Lorenz-Fife has done a terrific job of compiling lists of non-PPQG quilting- and fabric art-related events in the general region and on a national level. However, this is a huge task, and it’s hard to stay both current and comprehensive. An alternative I’m considering is simply to identify one or more such lists of upcoming events that someone else is already compiling and maintaining on the web, and adding it to our own links/Other Resources page. If you’re aware of such a compilation, especially one that covers northern California as well as the rest of the country, and that is reliably maintained and updated, I’d be grateful for a pointer. 

            Finally, I need your help with what could become a very special feature of our site, the honors and awards section. Especially considering the talent represented in our membership, this area has been surprisingly underutilized to date. Please – if you’ve had a piece accepted for a show, if you’ve been featured in the media or received any other recognition for your work, tell me, and our newletter editors, about it.

            Don’t hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or suggestions about the web site.

Guild’s Art in the Redwoods Booth

            Spring is here! Now is time to start making some of the 500 items we need to fill our two booths at the Art in the Redwoods Festival August 17-18-19. This is our ONLY fundraiser of the year so the guild really appreciates everyone’s contributions.

            Last year’s best sellers were useful items: quilts & wall hangings, placemats, napkins, table runners. Tote bags, pin cushions and cards also sold well.

            Mark your calendar for Friday, June 21 for the A I R Projects/ Kits Workshop from 9:30AM to 3 PM. The guild meeting will be during lunch break from 12:30-1:30. Simple kits and projects will be available that can be completed during the workshop.

            Start NOW – Bring your completed items to each guild meeting. Look for the Special Art in the Redwoods Box to donate your items. Please put your name on all items so we can properly thank you.

          Contact me if you need supplies or inspiration and I’ll get you in touch with one of our Creative Committee members.

              Donna Blum  at 785-3625  or email Dblum77@aol.com.