October is the annual trek to Cedar Lakes in Ripley WV. Quilt camp is the gathering of about 275 avid quilters from all over the country. This is my 6th years to offer classes, and it is always enjoyable to spend 4 days with wonderful women, and a few men, exploring new directions in quilt making. My class this year was "Transfer paint with botanical elements". This is a very fun techinque, where you first paint papers with the paint/dye, and transfer the colors onto the fabric with a very hot iron. You can layer and cut shapes from the paper as well as using anything flat as a resist. Pressed leaves gives great images, and are very durable, so they are great for this technique. The women in the class got very experimental and were not afraid of drying new things. Now I cannot wait to try some of these in my new works.
Everyone was very hard at work for 4 days.
Karen Auer from Ohio added paintsticks to her transfers, very graphic and colorful.
Alice Bark from Ohio with a large maple leaf.
The orange dots are from pressing bubble wrap in the
paint.
Shari Gilzow from Ohio worked with soft greens and ginko leaves. The added treadwork brings the leaves to life.
Cheryl Davies from Ohio designed a beautiful quilt as a memorial to her mother, who had passed this year. Cheryl used special dried flowers and a bird in the right corner to represent the spirit of her mother. Machine stitching added to the shapes.
Carol Cutlip from West Virginia worked with a variety of leaves and ferns in a wonderful fall setting. She added textures from papers and machine quilting as well as trupunto.
Donna Kern from Ohio, used very soft colors with a variety of leaves. She will add stitching to outline the shapes
Ginny Diefenbaugh from Ohio made one of the brightest collection of pieces this week. Yellow, red and little touch of black set off her leaves. They are glowing!
Kay Phelps from West Virginia worked with her favorite earth tones. A perfect match for her choice of leaf shapes. (the photo to the right turned green, so not true colors, but I liked it too. You can see the texture in the transfer).
Rachel Webster from Ohio made several very interesting samples, by combining colors on the papers before transferring. This is not easy to do successfully, but she really has an eye for this technique.
Eileen Simon from Ohio worked on one of the largest transfer pieces. How fun is this? Leaves and shapes and texture all in one. The triple border picks up on the colors in the center, and frames it really well. Quilting in the center will add a lot of texture here.
I thought I had everybody represented here, but realize that I somehow did not get photos of Kay Buckley's pieces. I thought everything was on my camera, so I am really sorry I cannot show hers. She is from Ohio.
I just had to play a little too, trying out some new fabric I just found. This is a slinky polyester with a shine to it, but the colors transfers very easy and very bright. I think I can have some fun with the quilting on this.
This marks a new time and new energy from me, as I have been having several months this year with health issues, sciatic nerve and a broken arm, Now after surgery I am ready to get going, pain free.
If you are interested in the Quilt Camp at Ripley, WV check out Peg Bingham's website for info on the Spring and Fall camps at www.pegspatches.com
