Visiting Old Friends

I used to live in Marietta, GA where I was part of some wonderful fiber groups. One such group was "Friday Group" which met on ...you guessed it....fridays. We stitched, ate goodies, showed off our latest projects and did a lot of laughing.

This month I was in Atlanta visiting my daughter which also coincided with a meeting. Loyce who hosted the meeting loves Halloween and goes wild with decorations. She served us a yummy lunch at this amazing table with a goodie bag on each place. Lots of Halloween decorations everywhere you looked.

Mary Ellen was wearing a huge necklace, earrings and spider pin...

along with crazy socks. Like she said...only a short time each year for wearing this fun stuff.

Barbara Butler who was one of our most talented artists has always created her own fabric. This is one of her pieces which is wonderful in person.

Barbara showed us a bowl she purchased in an antique store ...made entirely of spoons...This is looking down into the middle of the bowl.

This is the outside of the bowl...it was truly fantastic.

And a finished piece from Mary Ellen ...made with ethnic fabric from her Little Quilts shop. Mary Ellen was part of the 3 person team who owned the wonderful shop and pattern company - Little Quilts.

She also knitted this lap throw using a variety of yarns...

really cool.

And a redwork piece which I loved.

 A group shot at lunch...

and onto Loyce's studio where she is the creator of the most unique and fun cards...

such an amazing assortment of supplies

and work space....It was a wonderful day with old friends...I had such happy feelings that stayed with me for days...

A Very Special Quilt

I have a very dear friend, Barbara who lives in Marietta, Georgia. I've known her for over 25 years; she was one of the first quilters I met upon moving there in 1987. She was an art teacher and long ago turned her talent towards art quilts.   

Barbara was married to LD. I never could remember what the initials stood for but it was an unusual name and LD seemed to suit him better. LD died last year from Alzheimers. Barbara was his caretaker; he was able to be at home during the final hours which was comforting to her and her children.  I remember LD so well - a very kind and gentle man who loved wearing caps and t-shirts - his favorite outfit. I don't think I ever saw him in anything else (except at his daughter's wedding).  He had an extensive collection of caps and wore a different one everyday.  Barbara decided to make a quilt using his favorite ones.

It hangs in a place in her home where she can see it all the time, reminding her of the sweet man who wore them.

I've seen a lot of this kind of memorabilia type quilt - I really loved this one with the machine stitching around the caps, the masculine feel and interesting sashings. I thought it was a wonderful quilt and tribute to LD.

Fiber Junkies Pt 2 - The Party

Last week, we had our "early for the month" Fiber Junkies meeting and since several of our members have had big birthdays this year, we've been celebrating them.

My birthday is at the end of December - the 30th and I remember my mom telling me the first words out of my dad's mouth were - "What a great little tax deduction" Anyway, getting back on track, my wonderful friends had a surprise party for me at our last meeting. We like to do themes and knowing each other so well, we seem to come up with the most unique and creative ideas. I guess I've mentioned numerous times how much I love paper dolls and how they were a big part of my childhood - so a paper doll party.

We celebrated with champagne and delicious home made chili from Kate. The placemats were poster board with a outline of a paper doll on them.

all set on a beautiful hand dyed piece of rayon Denny dyed to use as a tablecloth and I got to take home.

Talk about feeling like a kid again...in the center of the table were crayons and colored pencils. Without any prompting, we all dove in to get our favorite colors to finish our "paper doll", guess we all enjoy that feeling of being a kid again.

They were all so cute and I brought them home with me....

The gifts were such fun - a cloth tape measure which you don't see anymore wrapped around vintage paper dolls of Ramona and an antique book...

magnetic barbies and Shirley Temple paper dolls. Denny copied the clothes onto magnetic sheets and provided pans that they would work with. My granddaughter and I are going to have such fun with these.

And of course what party wouldn't be complete without "beautiful men" fabric - too much fun!

The apple cake made by our resident baker - Mary, was delicious.

And I was happy to be amongst such very wonderful friends who put so much thought and love into everything they do, I am lucky!
PS. I've been ironing the wax out of my fabrics and have results to share as soon as I get this house back in order. Thanks for hanging in there with me.
Judy

Fiber Junkies Pt 2 - The Party

And the fun continues, not only did we have such a great day of playing and experimenting but we also celebrated a special birthday for Denny. Since Denny was born in the spooky month of Halloween and also wears spider earrings, we thought this a perfect theme. 

The plates, the napkins and creepy spiders, the tablecloth was a black web sheer covering a hand dyed fabric.

We all brought home a spider but I couldn't keep mine. I would come upon it in my studio and for a second, it scared me to death. I wasn't even thinking it was evil enough to play a prank on husband or son as I know they would return the prank - so in the garbage it had to go...but it was a good one!

We hung dyed cheesecloth and Denny was given a shawl of cheesecloth to wear. You can see both tablecloths on right along with chocolate eyeballs and spiders on top.

Gen made a pot of soup and served it in a cauldron...

along with Mary's wonderful pumpkin cheesecake.

Oops....how did he/she get on there...

and best thing of all - home made breadsticks to look like witches fingers, cleverly created by Mary. How cool is that and an added bonus...they were delicious!

On to the jewels...yes there were lots of interesting jewelry like spider noserings being modeled by  Carol, Gens daughter who always visits us when she's up from Florida.

Denny has a glow in the dark spider necklace, a wand and broom and gorgeous hat...

and the group. We are a crazy group but we do have fun and enjoy the creative input we are able to give to each other. It's always a learning day but also a laughing and inspiration day. Happy Birthday Denny!

Working with friends

More results from our screen printing day at Vals. As a rule, I usually work in so many colors (to try them all) and wind up with bits and pieces. This time around I was going to try and work with only a few.  One of my favorite colors is Havana brown which is a grayish- green brown, also smokey grey - a blue grey and Marine blue. I had swatches to refer to and thought it would be a nice combination.

 Well yikes it looks black and awful. The screen while drying was very dark so I didn't know what to expect and right now I'm not happy with the results.

 This was the other screen done in Marine blue; I will have to wait and see until after it's washed.

 Kate had some good results using a kitchen mat with a flower motif.

 She didn't like all the white areas; she went back over it with more color, moving the screen just the slightest bit so the design was not lined up. It was very effective.

 Denny did a lot of layering when she screened. I love the feel that she got with this piece. I will have to try this, it has so much dimension.

 Fast forward 24 hours and here are the results and to my surprise, I'm pretty happy with them. They washed out well and I like the color. They probably could have used another color but I can re-soak them in ash and go over them with color which I might do.

 I do like the little bit of green on the right one.

 This was a totally hopeless piece. I went over it in yellow; it dried and then used some green.

 These were the 3 I gave up for lost. Very little of the brown came through, Instead the blue and grey which I like and just a tad of brown in the upper left side.

 This one I'm really pleased with; I added a lighter blue and that really made the difference.

 

Kate loves green and suggested a green over this one which I now love. I think I will do some discharging on it to create some light areas, but overall, I think it's a good piece.
There is so much to be said for working with friends, besides the wonderful social aspect of it, the brainstorming and feedback. I easily miss so much while working so close to something but someone  will walk by and suggest green or blue or......and it's the missing ingredient that just seems to make it work. A good day.

And it just keeps getting better

And the fun continues....the next day we worked on more ice dyeing in the morning, choosing a different color palette.

 I wanted to work in mustards and browns this time.

 I used a "4th" piece on top of the scrunched 3 pieces on the tray as it seemed to work out well the day before.

 We also did another "confetti" bucket. This time - lime green and navy - 2 great colors that should melt well together.

 And the results are in...

 and we're running out of room on the clothesline. Most of these are Kates and Mary's.

 Kate had another spectacular "bottom of the tray" piece - far right.

 I loved this piece and don't remember who it belongs to but it's very mottled and beautiful in person.

 This is probably my favorite piece. I'm always drawn to subtle colors. This was a re-do of one of Mary's pieces; it came out glorious.

 think I see a lot more of this in our future.......

 This one dyed in second go-round in browns and golds.... I took this picture at home. I'm loving the crystal effect.

 And this is my "confetti" bucket piece. They all turned out great using the navy and lime.

 In the afternoon it was on to easy "Shibori" with paint - stay tuned for more on that tomorrow.