Gardens of Eden - Part I

We attended the annual flower show at the Dome Arena in Henrietta with our friends, Pat and Lloyd Berardi. It is filled with wonderful exhibits from local landscaping companies. The entrance featured floral arrangements, with the first one being a lovely bird of paradise and orchid creation.





The Bonsai display is always well done and much appreciated. The gardeners working at the left on shaping and trimming are framed by the wonderful 50-year-old wisteria in full bloom and an emerging forsythia in the foreground.





Colorful collections of mass plantings were spaced throughout. Here tulips and daffodils are joined by azaleas and rhododendrums . How wonderful to see a preview of the coming season!








A huge white oak was featured at the Monroe County Parks display. The dead tree was harvested from an area farmer's field and is unusual in size and girth. The climbing snake is carved from the interior by staff with a chainsaw and sandpaper!

Priscilla's quilts

Our friend, Priscilla Kibbee, has just returned from her trip to Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam. See her blog for wonderful travel pictures... http://www.priscillakibbee.blogspot.com/

She brought several of these quilts back with her from Laos, which she selected for their excellent workmanship. Each is more beautiful than the other!

40 yards of fabric

Beth and I got together to dye fabric and each dyed 40 yards. For anyone who hasn't hand-dyed fabric, that's a LOT of work!!

We did 5-step gradations of 8 different colors, using zip-lock baggies.

These pails show 4 of the gradations being soaked/rinsed before being put in the washing machine.







Greens, dark browns, dark oranges, and oranges.









Light browns, grays, yellows, and golds.

More Show & Tell

A few of us gathered for some more Show & Tell with some in-depth look at work that any one wanted to share.

Pat, Ren, Nancy, and Bev are watching Jeanne put her work up on the wall.


Jeanne started this piece in a GVQC workshop, and we think the color choices are terrific. The discussion included reviewing fabric and designs for border options.







Jeanne also showed us this completed piece in which she used fabric she printed from her photograph and her hand-dyed fabrics.








And Pat showed us her completed shibori-fabric quilt. Her quilting really enhances the lines created by the shibori dyeing.

RAFA's March Meeting

Show and Tell is always the most popular part of our monthly meeting, and we have a few pictures to share.

Hiding behind her snow-dyed fabric is Anne Fischer. You can see by the tall stack of dyed fabrics, that she's been having a lot of fun with this process.









Barb Seils and Janet Root are watching Nancy Hicks show us the quilt she created from her painted piece.










Janet Root sold a jacket similar to this one at last year's Clothesline Festival, so she had to make another one for herself.












Janet also made this wonderful quilt, which was quilted by Val Schultz.

Sarah Terry finished the piece she started in a GVQC workshop.

Elaine Ross, who is a new RAFA member, is behind this piece she did for a challenge.

These little purses, made by Jeanne Simpson, got lots of attention when people opened them and inspected the lining fabrics.

Brenda D'Angelo says that making these ear-flap hats has become very addictive.

Pat Falkner has made a lot of progress on her lion quilt inspired by photos her husband took on his last trip.

Jeanne Beck showed us how she has attached one of her Notation pieces to foamcore and plans to frame it.

And this is Mary Rankin with her latest piece.

Cutting up the pretties

Our friend, Pat Pauly, has long admonished those of us who hoard our beautiful fabrics to cut into them and put them to use. So it only made sense that she would take some of her latest shibori-dyed fabrics and see what she could do with them.

She cut two yards of fabric into triangles and resewed them into squares. This generated 24 squares - 4 rows of 6 squares each.





She really wanted to make a square composition, which would require 25 squares. She had enough scraps to make one more triangle and considered cutting into a different fabric for the last triangle.







But then she created this design with the original 24 blocks.
Changing the squares around generated some interesting secondary patterns.











She cut into another yard of her hand-dyed fabric to finish the piece.

Pat's Show & Tell

Our friend, Pat Pauly, has been keeping busy creating lots of beautiful hand-dyed fabrics.

Some of the fabrics have been overdyed, and several fabrics were created with shibori techniques.

It would be too hard to pick favorites -- they're all gorgeous!


Pat will be selling her fabrics at the Genesee Valley Quilt Show which will be held in the RIT Gordon Field House in Rochester June 5 - 7, 2009. (www.GeneseeQuiltFest.com)

Marcia's latest effort

The evolution of design is a process that continues from start to finish on a project.

The blocks were made originally by "stacking and slashing" three fabrics. This early version included adding wide strips of dark brown and turquoise to the two columns destined to be separate pieces.










Further refinements were made when the blocks were sewn together, including using strips that are more narrow.










The quilting was done on the long-arm machine, and the Dainty Ditcher ruler was employed to help guide the spacing of parallel stitching lines.











After consultation and advice from friends, it was decided that the composition was stronger when sewn together as one piece. There is still some discussion underway as to the better way to hang the quilt; i.e., as shown or with a 90-degree rotation. What do you think?

Ren Vasiliev - paper and fiber collage

Ren is a teacher and head of the Geography Department at SUNY Geneseo. She is also a consumate fiber artist, and you can see her work at http://www.thecrazyatomorbit.blogspot.com/.

This is a class project she assigned her cartography class and also completed as an exercise herself. A left click will bring out more of the details as the book unfolds and each page "charts" descriptive representation of her activities and personal space during the semester duration of the course. The sum of the story is wonderfully well done and shows her creative nature perfectly!








We have her stuffed cat and red stool as visitors, on their way back to her from posing for a drawing class.

We don't know their history, but they add a nice visual accent to their corner of the studio. Best of all, the cat requires little care, but does appreciate a little pat now and then as one passes by!









We thought that Inspector Suki might enjoy, or at least respond, to the visitor. But after a short perusal, she ignores the transgressor. Here she assumes her watchful pose perched on soft piles of fabric as she watches Marcia at work.

Another Priscilla project adorns the design wall during her last visit to the studio. It will be interesting to see what her final result is.