PTA Retreat Part 2

Linda Cantrell has been known for years for both her "humorous" quilts and her beautiful hand appliqued quilts. This is a new direction for her which is also quite wonderful.

Linda does a lot of fusing but then treats the edge with an additional seam sealer type product and sews a straight stitch around the edge which produces a very clean finish.

One of the fun things this year was having other fiber groups (Fiber Fanatics and members of the Asheville Quilt Guild) sharing the grounds and dining hall with us. They used a different room for sewing which was a good excuse for us to visit our other quilting buddies. One quilt I saw and found interesting was based on a 9-patch -  always using the same fabric in the center.

Then cut into 4 equal parts so the center color is in each block.

and put together in this formation. I thought this was very clever and I can't wait to see it finished.

Kate gave us a mini lesson in rusting fabric. Kate brought bottles, wire, steel wool, fabric and everything we needed to do this. It was great fun.

We sprayed the fabric with water, sprinkled it with salt, laid steel wool and rusted little bits on top and wrapped it around a bottle. We secured both ends with a rubber band and then put copper wire around the middle to create a banding effect.

Kate got her copper wire from a broken appliance. It was a little bit of work to get to it, but it yielded lots and lots of wire for us to play with. Here are some of Kates wonderful pieces.

Depending on how much steel wool you use, determines the depth of color.

Think we'll have to do something as a group with these wonderful fabrics - I'm very tickled at how they all came out.