AANC Stitch 'n Chat

This morning was the Stitch 'n Chat meeting of the Athens Area Newcomer's Club and fun was had by all. It's one of my favorite get-togethers of the month and a time to do some handwork. The world keeps running because of women's meetings! This meeting is held in the lovely Lyndon House Arts Center in Athens.

The ladies are from left to right: Frances (purple top), Nancy , Betsey and Louise.

WTYL,
Anita

Working on the Afghanistan photo quilt

Here's a photo of a little red sample quilt top I made for my String Quilt Bloocks class last week. The design came from the book Liberated String Quilts by Gwen Marston, and it's my sample of how to combine traditional blocks and string blocks.

Yesterday I sketched the last part of the Afghanistan quilt (which is entered into the Asheville, NC Quilt Show, Aug. 1-3, 2008). Because the original photo did not include the lower half of my son's body, I had to have my husband put on his work boots and pose for me as I took photos of him in a squat position. It's impossible to remember how feet and legs are positioned in a squat, haha. It was interesting trying to figure out how to get my sketch onto the fabric, too. The transfer paper I have from my clothing sewing days is about 20 years old and didn't work, so I traced the design onto tracing paper and used a bright yellow watercolor pencil that was very sharp to trace through the paper onto the fabric. Hum...well it worked.

We heard from Bryan (our son) on the answering machine two days ago...we're hoping he'll be back to his base in Germany soon from his Afghanistan deployment. The end of his 15 months tour will be late summer but it can take time to get them out of "theater" (I think that's how they say it). It took a lot of time to get them in, and it will take a lot of time to get them out. God bless our wonderful soldiers who are helping the women of Afghanistan to thrive in freedom and allowing the children to be educated. Our soldiers do so much more than we hear about on the news here.

I may have another post today. Until later...

Anita

Cotton Patch Raffle Quilt

The Cotton Patch Quilt Guild is selling raffle tickets for their Opportunity Quilt, A Quilt for All Seasons", which will be raffled on March 10, 2009. Proceeds benefit the Quilt Guild education and charitable projects. The CPQG Quilt Show will be held March 6, 7 &8, 2009 at the Oconee County Civic Center, Watkinsville, GA (south of Athens).

If you are interested in purchasing tickets, please contact me. Tickets are $1 each or 6 for $5 and I'll pay postage to mail them to you.

Anita

June 08 String Quilt Class

We had a wonderful String Pieced Blocks class at the Dragonfly Quilt Shop in Watkinsville, GA on Saturday with five energetic students. Diane B. (top) was admiring the blocks at the end of the class. Mary G. and Kyle H. (middle) and Phyllis R., Diane and Mary B. (bottom) were hard at work sewing blocks.

The Dragonfly, http://www.dragonflyquiltshop.com/, has a great classroom area where shoppers stopped in now and then throughout the day to admire the finished blocks. Plenty of fun was had by all...especially the teacher!

WTYL (write to you later)

Anita

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String Quilt Blocks class today

Today's the day of our String Quilt Blocks class at the Dragonfly Quilt Shop! It's been a lot of fun putting together this class and its samples, as doing so has given me more contemporary quilt ideas. String piecing is amazingly versatile...I see ways to apply it in may of the quilts I'd like to make. The photo is of one of my string Quilts of Valor made earlier this year. It's with a soldier now. http://www.qovf.org/ is the address for the Quilts of Valor Foundation if you're interested in obtaining more information.

The Afghanistan quilt is moving along (see last week's blogs). All of my base pieces are in place and, after today's class, I'll start embellishing to add more detail. I tried using string piecing in this quilt, but the pieces were too small and dense and would have been difficult to handle in the small area they were planned for. Some of the embellishments I'll use are hand-printed fused pieces, textile paint, Paintstik accents and more.

Time to get ready for the day. WTYL

Anita

Working on the Afghanistan photo quilt

Well, after a week of avoiding the quilt with "curved" piecing, I finally jumped in today. The curves were just a bogeyman that didn't make me cry or tear out my hair. The first curved piece was sewn on in about 90 seconds, and the next two were a breeze, haha. "Much ado about nothing..." One of these days I'll post a photo, but since it's going into a quilt show I'll wait until it makes its debut there. Now that curves are just another way to piece, I have some ideas for other pieces.

On Saturday I'll be teaching "String Quilt Blocks" at the Dragonfly Quilt Shop in Watkinsville, GA. Working on the samples has given me more ideas for water-themed quilts too. Above is a picture of some equilateral triangles made with string piecing. Using equilateral triangles this way is a great way to make contemporary landscape quilts. So many ideas...so little time.

I'll write again soon...

Anita

Bry's photo

This is the photo that Bryan's allowing me to use in my fiber art piece for the Asheville Quilt Show, "Piece for Peace". The village, pictured to the right of the soldier's head, looks like it exists in biblical times. I've copyrighted the photo for him in case he wants to publish it later. Looks like we could have two sons in photography before long.

Welcome

This is my first blog on this site and I'm excited about it.

Today I'm getting ready to go to the quilt shop for more printable fabric sheets for a project that's due within two weeks. I'm new at using Print Shop Pro Photo 2X to alter photos and print them, but the program is amazing. Several times this week I've been able to print poster-size photos for a quilt that will be entered into the Asheville Quilt Show this summer. The "poster" prints in sections and then I can sew them together. Carol Breyer Fallert's book "Quilt Savy: Fallert's Guide to Images on Fabric" shows an easy way to piece the poster sections together so that the finished product looks seamless.

The theme for the Asheville Quilt Show (Aug. 1-3, 2008) is "Piece for Peace". We put on a wonderful show. Y'all come! Or in my native New England tongue, "Come see you guys!" There's a link to the AQG on my website at www.headyfiberarts.com for more information. My quilt is based on a photo my son Bryan sent from Afghanistan where he's standing guard on a mountain top.