Quilters Plus Retreat



 I spent the day with the gals attending the Quilters Plus Retreat, held at the Letourneau Christian Center on Canandaigua Lake.

It was a beautiful clear day on the lake.

The Center has a large work room with lots of space for everyone to spread out.















I was there to lead an improvisational piecing exercise. 

Everyone worked hard and produced some great pieces.

I had a fun day and thank Quilters Plus for inviting me!

Class with Lynne

Jeanne and I spent a fun day with Lynne Feldman at her studio, taking her class on Painting with Fabric.

You can see some of her work on the walls.






 

We needed to bring a composition or design idea to work from.  I'm not comfortable sketching, and created these shapes which I cut out of paper.
















I traced my shapes on stretched canvas.  Then we started cutting our fabrics and gluing them to the canvas with acrylic medium.








Joy worked on her composition of two ladies.

















Mattie had her composition almost completed.












Here's the work from our class in various stages of completion.

Peeps Meeting

The Peeps gathered for a regular monthly meeting and got right down to work on projects they had brought with them.













We also settled in for some "show and tell" and critique time.











Pat completed the piece on the left that she started during the filming of her dvd.

Pat's piece on the right is a whole cloth that she dyed, screened, and quilted.

Nancy made this quilt from two pieces of African fabric.  She has always been interested in African motifs and uses this inspiration for many of her compositions.











Pat showed us her new bowtie quilt top that she is working on for a new class that she'll add to her class offerings.  Pat teaches and lectures to guilds and other groups of interested quilters all around the country and Canada.

Kitty Update

We continue to serve as hosts and servants to our feline friends.

Here Suki has joined Marcia, helping with the hand sewing on a new jacket, and making herself comfortable as she watches the passing scene.  Of course, she prefers dark colors for her pillow (the better to leave her buff-colored fur!).












Our feral cat, Millie, is well fed as you can see.  She has her own bench and rug on the deck outside the back door.  She has a good deal of resemblance to Suki's coloring, including blue eyes, but they are not friends. 

She continues to enjoy being held and snuggled with Marcia, but still no progress on feeling comfortable in the house.














 Suki loves bags and boxes of all types and sizes.  Although, she is mature at eleven years old, kitten-like activity still encompasses much of her behavior. 

She has seemingly recovered from her recent undefined illness!

Sew Day

I stopped in for a little sewing time with Jeanne at her new studio at the Hungerford Building. 

She's mostly settled in and the studio is looking great. 

Her design walls are now completed, and as you can see, she's already putting them to good use.









She got this storage unit from Ikea for her fabric.












Jeanne's been making these stitched coasters that will be available at her studio.  I love the colors!













She also made these small wallets and tissue holders.

Border Fences

I joined a challenge group and agreed to make a 12" square quilt for the theme, "Crossing Borders."

My piece is named "Border Fences," as I  wanted to portray some of the types of fences used at borders, including rolls of barbed wire.

The background fabric is canvas that I painted and stamped with acrylic paints.

This project gave me the opportunity to try piecing using cotton and the canvas, and I was happy with the way it worked.

Ficus problem

I wanted a new ficus tree for the studio and got this one 2 or 3 months ago.  It was losing leaves, but that's not untypical with moving a ficus.

But then I began to realize that it was not only continuing to drop leaves, but many of them were yellowed.

I also noticed that there were white "spots" on many of the leaves, and as you can see in the bottom picture, some brown "bumps" on the leaves and stems.

Unfortunately, I found out that this is an infestation of scale, which is a bug I've never encountered before.  I'm also finding out that it is hard to treat.

I've been spraying it with a solution of oil soap and alcohol in water, and it looks a bit healthier with some new leaf growth.  But I still find some signs of the scale.

All suggestions for treatment will be appreciated!