Come to Leicester Artist Studio Tour and PTA

Well, 2 things going on at the moment....first and foremost - the upcoming annual artist studio tour in Leicester, NC.You can visit their website - www.cometoleicester.org for details. Our own Dort Lee will have some beautiful pieces for sale.

Dort recently went a European adventure with her sister; she came back with lots of photos for inspiration...here are some of the results.

I have shown some of these in previous posts, but not finished. I love old stone walks and roads so this one really captures my heart.

And some more beautiful pieces...all are small in size making them perfect for fitting into any home decor. Dort has a wonderful sense of color and visual texture so think you'll love seeing these (and perhaps bringing one home) in person.

Onto our PTA meeting, what a group...can't say that enough...not only wonderful friendships but talent abounding. Marene shared a "woven" quilt which was fascinating to see. It's an abstract landscape (top picture is upside down)...the blue squares representing the sky, the grass and the earth on the bottom.

I really liked this piece and thought it might be fun to do something like this...a good way to use scraps.

For this next piece Marene confessed to using a cheater panel with a pieced owl added on top....but she redeemed herself by showing us the beautiful embroidered leaves she did by machine. She used a metallic thread which really added some glitz to the piece.

Barbara showed us this lovely piece finished - the colors so vibrant..but what Barbara was most happy about was the inserted piping.

Barbara was recently a teacher's helper at the NC symposium - in Susan Cleveland's workshops...Well I was about to say "how lucky was Barbara" but in this case, it goes both ways. Barbara loved the experience and soaked up so much of what Susan was teaching including this wonderful method for using piping in a quilt. It was "spot on"!

Mary showed an antique quilt inherited from her friend...such beautiful quilting...

and also a Japanese quilt she just finished. Mary has made quite a few of these...this time adding the center circles.

Georgia shared some recent sun printing fabrics she had tremendous success with...

Using the sun printed fabric, she made a grid and then assembled it into a pillow so the pattern would be on the diagonal. You can see how she did it below...flipping it over to wrong side, bringing each corner to center (on left) and on right you can see how the pillow's pattern happens. I loosely folded it under so you can see the effect...when sewn, it's much crisper.
But pretty cool....

Our sweet Mary B showed us some of her UFOs that she finished...I really liked this one with the strip piecing.

All in all, a great, inspriational, fun filled day..