Dye Day 2010

It’s our annual Pandora’s Dye Day! My local fiber arts group has been setting aside one day each summer for the past few years to get together and dye fabric in Grace’s garage. Grace dyes a lot of fabric and has a great setup. She buys a bolt of PFD (prepared for dyeing) Pimatex cotton fabric and cuts it into one-yard and half-yard pieces for us. We bring along other fabrics (I had some wonderful silk-cotton blend), yarn, embroidery floss, shirts, and other assorted items to dye.

After mixing up lots of colors, we get to work!

DeLane dyeing in small plastic containers.

Michele was dyeing some silk cocoons.

They were bigger cocoons than most I’ve seen before, and took the Procion dyes beautifully.

P.J. checks on one of her pieces.

Grace was keeping watch over all of us. She doesn’t usually look this serious!

I dyed some cheesecloth orange, and some white tank tops blue/green and pink/purple. 

These are Shibori pieces created by wrapping fabric around PVC piping, tying with string, and then scrunching pleats in the fabric before applying the dye. I always love how these come out.

Completed pieces drying in the sun. What a fun day. Thanks, Grace!

Asheville Quilt Show 2010

Here are a few of the wonderful quilts at the Asheville Quilt Show, “Stars Over the Mountains,” held this weekend at the North Carolina Arboretum in Asheville, NC:

Quilt (untitled, detail) by Margory Eberle of Weaverville, NC. Quilted by Joyce Fong.

Hummingbirds 2 by Penelope Wortman of Candler, NC, with Ellen Perkins.

Neighbor Ladies by Margaret Hunt of Clarks Hill, SC.

Go With the Flow: Water, Wind and Music by Patty Ashworth of Oak Ridge, TN.

Round Midnight by Caroline Manheimer of Asheville, NC. Quilted by Rachel Reese.

View of the mountains from the North Carolina Arboretum. 

Summer Beauties by Judy Heyward of Mt. Pleasant, SC. This quilt won a ribbon for Outstanding Machine Workmanship.

Vintage Button Bouquet by Linda Roy of Knoxville, TN, won a ribbon for Outstanding Hand Workmanship.

 

Ring Around the Posey by Elizabeth Miller of Charlotte, NC.

Under the Watchful Eye of Queen Charlotte II by Deborah Langsam of Charlotte, NC.

Arabian Mystery by Judy Heyward of Mt. Pleasant, SC.

Birder’s Fantasy by Mary Field of Asheville, NC.

Seasons III by Beverly Hertler of Red Bank, NJ.

Mini Madness (miniature quilt) by Kristin Kipper of Greer, SC.

Celebrating 75 Years of the Blue Ridge Parkway by members of the Asheville Quilt Guild: Julie Bagamary, Georgia Bonesteel, Ann Bordeau, Robin Brooks, Connie Brown, Laura Casey, Donna Faber, Norene Goard, Amy Harry, Yolanda Hall, Judy Heyward, Ira Inman, Maureen Kampen, Lynda Kepler, Ellen Levine, Janice Maddox, Nancy Matthewson, Linda Nichols, Diana Ramsay, Sharon Smaldone and Rita Williams. Quilted by Norene Goard.

Quilting the Garden by Renate Jaeger of Jonesborough, TN. (The design is from the book of the same name by Alma Allen and Barb Adams.) 

Capriccio by Norene Goard of Hendersonville, NC.

I was charmed to see this kind gentleman patiently escorting a woman in a wheelchair (perhaps his wife?) who was dressed entirely in pink. I snapped this photo of them in front of my quilt, Pink Petal Party.

Friendly Gathering by Gail Sexton of Sunset, SC.

Flip-Flop Paper Piecing by Mary Kay Mouton of Milledgeville, GA. This tiny miniature quilt won Best of Show. Mouton is the author of a book (also called Flip-Flop Paper Piecing) about this technique.

Faces from the Past by Judy Simmons of Fletcher, NC.

Melinda Schwakhofer

My friend Melinda Schwakhofer has created this beautiful piece to raffle for a special cause: The Sheldon Centre. According to Melinda, it provides “a restful environment, gentle hospitality and therapeutic resources to people in ministry from all denominations, who come to Sheldon for help and support in times of stress, crisis, burnout or breakdown.” Through The Society of Mary and Martha, The Sheldon Centre is raising money to rebuild their most out-of-date accommodation, the Long Barn.

Melinda made the gorgeous accordion book (shown above) from silk and handmade paper. Here is her description:

I call this little book a prayer book. It is quite small and the pictures and words invite contemplation.  It  measures 3 1/2" x 5 1/2" when closed and extends to 18". My prayer book is made from images of Lacock Abbey, Wilstshire, UK and a Chartres-style labyrinth at Meyers Park Baptist Church, Charlotte, NC.

I printed them onto silk dupioni, fused them to buckram and stitched around the arcs and shadows with gold metallic thread. The other side of the book is designed with a detail from Chartres labyrinth and a quote from Thomas Merton. I printed these onto handmade paper which has been washed with gold paint.

“The darkness becomes an atmosphere of breathless clarity
in which we find peace
and the deep night becomes the brightness of the noonday sun
in which we find the one our heart desires”.
– Thomas Merton

To make a donation (and enter the raffle), click here. Donations can be made from any country and in any denomination. On Sunday, September 19, Melinda will draw a winner at random from all of the people who have made a donation. “This prayer book may help you to find your way in a dark time,” says Melinda. “Your donation will certainly help to provide a place for others to find their way.”

To learn more about Melinda, please check out her website and her blog. Melinda is an American living in Moretonhampstead, Britain, and her blog is a place I visit often. It is a marvelous little slice of England, filled with her spectacular photos, beautiful and insightful writing, mouth-watering recipes, and of course, her art.

Goodbye, Max

Our beloved cat Max was hit and killed by a car on Monday, while we were away visiting my parents. Since then, I’ve been breaking down into sobs every few hours. Max was an amazing creature, a very special cat, and his death came far too soon.

If you’ve followed my blog for a while, you already knew Max. He was always doing funny and silly things, begging to be photographed; you can see some of these photos in this post, and a video of him taking pins out of my pincushion here. Most recently, I featured him in this piece I made for Quilting Arts magazine.

My husband, Rob, is a gifted, eloquent writer, and yesterday, he penned this tribute to Max for our local paper, The Mooresville Tribune: 

He barreled into our lives eight years ago as an impossibly blue-eyed kitten, brought to our front door by a solemn-faced neighbor girl whose pitch was more a threat than an offer. “If you don’t want him,” she said mournfully, “I'm going to have to take him to the shelter.”

And so we wanted him. Our oldest daughter was going into kindergarten, and we decided she was ready for a pet. She named him Max.

His fur was a mix of black, gray and white — stripes and solids — that gave his face a distinctive, serious look, but he had touches of golden brown that added warmth. He grew into a strikingly handsome cat, and we called him our Beautiful Boy.

Max never doubted it, either. His confidence in himself seemed unshakable. He did not hide beneath furniture, run from strangers or shy away from direct eye contact. He never walked into a room that he didn’t immediately own. We liked to joke that “Max” was short for “maximum” because he had the maximum amount of personality that you could cram into a cat.

When Max lay on our daughter’s bed at night, his purrs reverberated through the back of the house. But he could be a different beast with the rest of us. He was aggressive, running around at full speed, stopping only when he would sprint up to one of us and sink his teeth into an ankle. He would hiss and dart for the door when we went outside.

We decided that Max was an outside cat, and told our daughter that forcing him to live indoors was probably responsible for his surliness. We warned that an outside life carried with it some dangers — hungry predators, speeding cars, malicious humans. She decided that if outside was where Max would be most happy, outside was where he needed to be.

Max quickly went from stressed out to blissed out. He still spent time inside, sometimes snoozing beneath the lamp in my wife's quilting studio while she worked, and occasionally emptying her pincushion (you can watch him in action at YouTube; search for “Max” and “pincushion”). She eventually made him the subject of a small art quilt that appeared in Quilting Arts magazine in June.

More often, he ruled the yard. He provided the audience for football and soccer games. He crouched beneath the little dogwood tree, preparing to sprint after squirrels he probably knew in his heart he couldn’t catch. He oversaw yard work.

Soon he discovered life beyond our yard, sauntering across the street to spend time with our neighbors. I sometimes called him the Mayor, but I’m sure he thought of himself more as a king and of us as his subjects.

We grew accustomed to his being out and about, so much so that when we left town near the end of July for a few days, we did so without even a goodbye. We were far away when he was struck and killed near our house Aug. 2.

We weren’t there for him, but Max’s loyal “subjects” were. One of our good neighbors collected the body and brought it to our house. Another called and gave us the heartbreaking news, and then with two more put the body in a cooler, to give us time to get home so that we could give Max the burial that a cat of his stature deserved.

The next day, when my wife gently lifted him off the ice, and carefully took him out of the plastic bag, we saw that the fatal blow had left few marks. Even in death, he was our Beautiful Boy.

We dug a hole, and with our two girls we buried him in his beloved yard.

No one saw who or what hit Max, though it’s a reasonable bet that the driver was going too fast, not paying attention, or maybe both. But it’s hard for me to reduce eight years with Max to a safe-driving public service announcement.

Max reminded me that people and cats have got to do what they’ve got to do. We knew the risks involved in letting him out the door, but we knew that's where he had to be. He knew it too, and he made sure we figured it out and followed through.

The outdoors cut short Max’s time with us, but that’s where I will choose to remember him: lying contentedly beneath the little dogwood tree, happy with his kingdom, living his life the only way he could.

– Rob Knapp

 Goodbye, Max. Love you, boy.

Blueberry Jam

The pattern for my Blueberry Jam quilt is included in the Fall 2010 issue of Fons & Porter’s Easy Quilts magazine, which will be on newsstands in early August. 

All the fabrics are Bernartex batiks (and if you want a fabric kit with the same fabrics I used, you can order one now on the Fons & Porter website here). I designed the quilt with big circles and leaves, so it’s easy to appliqué smooth curves and sharp points. Or you can make it using a fusible appliqué technique.

I quilted my quilt with big swirls on the blueberries, curvy veins on the leaves, and an overall leaf pattern in the background. 

These blues and greens are my favorite colors! This quilt was inspired by a trip to a blueberry farm near my parents’ home in Tennessee. Blueberry Jam is 43-1/4" x 52", but wouldn’t it look smashing in a bed sized quilt?