Hanging Night and Day

The Night and Day exhibit of our contemporary art quilts is being hung today at the Wayne County Council for the Arts in Newark.

The first task is to plan the layout of the quilts.

Then Mary and I let our group's math wiz, Bev, calculate the spacing between each quilt.











It's always great to have lots of help to make the job go faster.

Bill steadies the quilt, while Wayne checks it with the level before he secures the hanging rod.














Nancy and Bev are checking out the pieces that were hung so far.












I helped Nancy post the artist statements for the quilts.













Mary grabbed a picture of the exhibit title board that Pat prepared.

Gardening start

Everything is late this year.  In fact, here is Bill finishing up trimming some raspberries that were not tended to last fall.  There has been little greening so far this year, so no harm was done.














Marcia is weeding another part of the area.  Despite deep freezing  of the ground and several below-zero nights, the weeds, of course, survived and growth is well underway.

 

Our feral barn cat joins us, sort of, and enjoys stretching and rolling in the sunshine.  She continues to avoid human touch and is still "our friend at a distance."

Spring cleaning

A sign of changing seasons is the arrival of the Clearly Aquatics crew to work on a couple ponds on our property.  This year they picked a cold and rainy day.









The slippery, difficult cobblestone-lined fish pond is always assigned to the "new" man.  The draining of the existing water is followed by pressure cleaning. 

Bill is in his customary supervisory position on the deck.








Our lily pond is behind the barn and is also drained.  The flower pots are then fertilized and returned to their underwater habitat.

For the deck pond, the fish are returned, the waterfall pump is cleaned and covered with a new filter and net, and the filling process begins.

Peeps - continued

Taking advantage of having everyone together yesterday, Anne organized a group "selfie."

(Anne, Jeanne, Pat, Linda, Nancy, Bev, Mary, Marcia, Carol)











Nancy found the start of this wonderful spring jacket at Craft Bits & Pieces and was finishing it up with pink binding.





















Mary showed us the Leaf piece she made in Pat's recent workshop at the Lake to Lake Guild.

Peeps Meeting

 All the members of the Art Quilt People (Peeps) group were at the studio for the April meeting.

It was the last regular meeting before the hanging of the Night and Day exhibit in Newark at the Wayne County Council for the Arts.

It was a last look at the quilts that will be on display, and time to finish up those bindings/facings and labels.

Night and Day Exhibit



 





The Peeps (Art Quilt People) group has planned an exhibit for the month of May at the Wayne County Council for the Arts in Newark, NY.   The opening reception is May 10 from 1 - 3 pm.

 For the theme, Night and Day, each of our members is making two quilts.

These are detail views of my two quilts:

"Red Twilight"









"Daybreak"

As always, Suki is a very big help.  This is her assumed position as I try to sew the facings on the quilts.

Soy-waxed fabrics

 

 

On a nice warm spring day the bushes outside of the studio make a great drying rack.

Some of the fabrics were not soda-ash soaked before I started applying the soy wax and/or some of the dyes I applied may not have had soda ash included.  So as a precaution, I brushed a soda-ash solution across the fabrics and let them dry.











During the class, these fabrics had wax stamped on them and then were painted with yellow dye and a little turquoise. 

After they were dry, more wax designs were added.















These fabrics were then brushed with black dye.



















Some of the fabrics had only been stamped with wax in the class, and these were dyed with turquoise.

GVQC meeting

I finally made it to a meeting of the Genesee Valley Quilt Club for the first time this year. 

The guest speaker was Diane Hire, known for her colorful quilts.

Here are some views of the samples she brought with her.

A little intruder

One of the great joys of living in the country is being so close to the natural world around us.

 A little friend joined us on the floor in Bill's office.










We don't know what kind of snake this might be.  We don't know where siblings or parents might be or how entry was made!   Lots of mysteries.....

The capture was made without injury to any party, and deposit was made to the great outdoors.

Wax class - Sunday

On Sunday afternoon we got a chance to walk around and see everyone else's work.

Here's Liz with several of her pieces.












 Regina, showing us her pieces on the wall.












Linda's and Carol's pieces are on their walls.















Stephanie created several beautiful scarves.

Wax class Saturday

We all brought several kinds of stamps, sponges, and stencils to use with the melted soy wax to make designs on our fabric.  I stamped wax on this red fabric with the Styrofoam form that is below it.  The form was originally used in packing test tubes.  And below the form is sequins waste, which made a great stencil.

 

Carol scrunched her fabric and painted it with the wax.  When it was dry, she painted a layer of dye on it.

When the fabric is completed with layers of wax and dyes, the next step is to remove some of the wax by ironing the fabric between layers of newspaper.

More design elements can be added by removing some of the color with discharging.  Here, Carol is demonstrating the use of thiox to discharge some of the dye.









Donna Lamb, Schweinfurth Director, and her friend, Lucy, stopped by for a quick visit.

 

Waxing Eloquent

The first weekend in April was set aside for Carol Soderlund's class on working with soy wax on fabric.

Carol's samples of multi-layered fabrics were gorgeous.








Priscilla was able to come for the weekend and take the class too -- fun!

The class was held at the Schweinfurth Memorial Art Center in Auburn, NY, in the lower workrooms.  We had lots of work room and lots of tables -- great space!

I caught Liz with her coffee cup in hand in this picture. :-)





 Our work space included another area with more tables, large sinks, and washer-dryers --- everything needed for a fabric dyeing class.