"Quilts! Traditional, Innovative and Challenging" the Miami Valley Quilters' Guild Quilt Show

I did not make this beautiful quilt, "Shadow of the Bear". It is 84" x 104" and was pieced by Miami Valley Quilters' Guild members Billie Ferguson and Pam Bohnke and machine quilted by Chris Landis. It will be raffled off this coming weekend at the Miami Valley Quilters' Guild quilt show. Tickets are $1.00 each or 6 for $5.00 and can be requested by e-mailing: mvqgoh@aol.com

The show "QUILTS: Traditional, Innovative & Challenging" is open this coming Fri., May 7 from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. and Sat., May 8 from 10 a.m.-4 p.m. and is at the Greene County Fairgrounds Assembly Hall located at 120 Fairgrounds Road in Xenia, Ohio. Admission is $5, the building is handicap accessible and there is ample free parking.

Along with work by members of the Miami Valley Quilters' Guild, there will be a Raffle Quilt, Demonstrations, Vendors, Boutique and Concessions.

I have several quilts that I'm entering, so if you go to the show be sure to look for them.

Selvedge Fun

If you know me, or if you read my introduction at the beginning (end?) of this blog, then you know that I didn't know much about sewing when I started quilting. I made my first quilt in a class and on the first day of that class the instructor told us to cut our fabric by folding the selvedges together and I had no idea what a selvedge (also spelled selvage) is!

I now know that the selvedge is the self-finished edges of fabric which keep the fabric from unraveling or fraying. It is also where the printing marks, company name and now the company's website are printed, which is sometimes helpful to know, especially when you've run out of that fabric but haven't finished the quilt yet. It has been customary in the past to cut off and discard the selvedge edge, although lately there's been a movement to use these edge pieces.

Above is a quilted postcard that I made using selvedges. Below is a chicken that I purchased from Etsy seller With Hugs and Stitches. She also makes whales using selvedge fabric.

  The project that got me interested in selvedges was a selvedge dress made by Jodie Carleton. There are more photos of this dress on her blog Ric Rac. I'm not much of a girly-girl and I suspect that the dress might be a little heavy but it looks like it would be so fun to wear it!

There's even a whole blog just about selvedge projects, aptly called Selvedge Blog by Karen Griska. She's collected photos of selvedge quilts, purses, furniture, a lamp and even an umbrella. If you want to make a selvedge project but don't want to wait until you have that many selvedges, you can sometimes purchase selvedges from other sewers!

"All the Colors" and "Sunrise" at the Springfield Museum of Art's Annual Members' Juried Exhibition

"All the Colors," 43" x 43"

This is my newest art quilt. It came about because there were many batik triangle pieces left over from another project. Each triangle is 2-1/4" tall and if I sewed them together with a 1/4" seam, they'd end up pretty small.

Instead of being pieced together, the 200 triangles were laid on the black background and rearranged many, many times until I was happy with their placement. The triangles were sewn down during the quilting process. Each piece was sewn down three times but they don't lay completely flat, as you can tell from the side view (below).

I'm really happy with the way it came out and I like how the triangles tend to curl, which makes them feel more organic.

More about All the Colors

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"Sunrise" fabric mosaic, 14" x 11", made by Pam Geisel, March 2008

I made this fabric mosaic back in March of 2008. It has small pieces of fabric arranged, covered with tulle, quilted in place, then framed.

This close up shows the tulle and the stitching which was done in different colors.

More about Sunrise.

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Both of these pieces are included in the Springfield Museum of Art's Annual Members' Juried Exhibition. "All the Colors" will have it's first public viewing in this show which runs from Sat., April 17 through Sunday, June 13, with an Exhibition Preview Reception on Sat., April 17 from 5:30-7:30 pm. The museum is located at 107 Cliff Park Road in Springfield, Ohio and is open Tues. through Sat. from 9 am to 5 pm, Thurs. until 9 pm, and Sun. 12:30-4:30 pm.

New Journal Covers

Here are the 10 new journal covers that I made last week.

Quilts in Louisville, Kentucky

My husband attended and presented at a conference in Louisville, KY and I went along for fun. One of the houses we toured, the Conrad-Caldwell House in Historic Louisville had very intricate parquet floors and several of the designs are also quilt patterns. I think the tour guide thought I was a little odd, since I was taking photos of the floors and not the furniture.

I also visited the Pyro Gallery, which is an artist co-operative and all artists have some art on display in the lower gallery, with a rotating exhibit of the members on the upper gallery. When I was there the featured artists were both amazing fiber artists, Bette Levy and Melinda Snyder. If you click on their names you can see photos of their quilts, but they are so much better in person. I caught the exhibit on the last week it was open.

Louisville has several glass artists including three groups that share the studio space at Glassworks. They have glass blowers, flamework artists and an architectural glass group. You can view all of them in their studios and also take classes including a walk-in workshop where I made these magnets.
Louisville also has a lot of public art out on the streets in the downtown area, including this sculpture which is in front of the Kentucky Center for Performing Arts.
I was also really happy to find Dee's, a large, family-owned craft supply store. They didn't have a lot of fabric, but there bead and scrapbooking sections were impressive.

If you're interested in seeing more photos from my trip to Louisville, visit my new travel blog.

Facebook Fan Page

Well, I finally did it...I got a Facebook Page and also a Fan Page for For Quilts Sake. If you're on Facebook and want to be a fan of my page, it's at: http://www.facebook.com/PamGeiselArtQuilts There are photos of almost all of the quilts I've made, the ones that are still for sale plus the ones that have sold, been given as a gift, or that I made for myself.

The photo above is the one that I use for my FanPage icon. It's my "Rainbow Pinwheel" quilt and I love this photo because the light is coming through from behind it and it looks a little like stained glass.

Women's Voices Out Loud is this Sat. March 13

The 31st Annual Women's Voices Out Loud, a celebration of women's experiences as told through visual art, stories, songs, poetry, and dance, will be held on Saturday, March 13, starting at 7 p.m. at the John Bryan Community Center, 100 Dayton Street in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Admission is free.

Visual art pieces are hanging in the Bryan Center, 2nd floor, through March 24. A reception for the artwork will take place during intermission. I put my fabric mosaic "Sunrise" (above) and my art quilt "Checkers and Pick-up-sticks" (below) in the show.