Picture quilts from J C Campbell Folkschool

A small but very nice group of ladies came to J C Campbells Folkschool in Brasstown, NC for a week long stay. The class was "Free Form machine applique",  for five days we worked with pictures and drawing, and created some wonderful pieces of textile art.

Debbie from Georgia, brought a beautiful photo of a butterfly in the garden that she wanted to work with . She worked long hours every day and recreated this wonderful scene on a pieced background (love the bright greens!). The free form stitching around the shapes gave the butterfly life and definition. Metallic threads added lots of sparkle and details.

Mary from New Jersey, had a very nice photo of tulips that her grandson had given her. She wanted to create  a small wall piece with the bouquet and blue vase as the focus. Many shades of reds and yellows gave great contrast to the flowers and the bright green fabric gives a wonderful frame to it.

Kathy from Georgia worked with one of my favorite themes, an old boat. This one was in a day scene, but as the  week progressed it became a night scene. I think the dark blue fabric added a lot of mood to this landscape. She plans to add wavy quilting lines across to give the feel of water. Love the boat of course!

Friday night is "Show and tell", we all get to see what has been done that week. So in between  woodwork, metalwork, leatherwork, paperwork etc. we get to show our projects. Nice with spotlights to show off beautiful textile art!

Quilt Camp at Ripley West Virginia.

A great week at Ripley with quilt campers from 18 states! Many, many women and men come to Ripley every October to learn new quilting techniques and to meet old friends and make new ones.

Colors were not as brilliant this year I'm sad to say, but these berry bushes at a rest stop might be the inspiration for something!







Seven very energetic quilters had signed up for my class with the focus on "Transfer Paint with Botanical Elements". These pictures only shows a small number of what was made this week- impressive!

 Maggie from Ohio had more than a little fun with the iron. She created some very interesting and complex backgrounds with her collection of leaves.

.

 Beautiful color combinations.

My favorite of what Maggie did.

David from North Carolina for sure has his own color aesthetic and is not afraid to experiment. This is something I can appreciate as a textile artist. Bright colors and flowing shapes, combined with unusual color combinations, were everywhere.

Bright colors and bold shapes. Quilting should be fun!

My favorite of David's designs. This is an art piece.

Eleanor from Ohio brought her old iron which she had not used in a long time! This was so great and gave her lots of strong colors and high contrast pieces.

 Her painted papers had some very neat designs and resulted in very special background effects for her leaves and ferns.

 The black and yellow ferns is my favorite design that she made. Don't get rid of that old iron, Eleanor!

Janet from West Virginia was dong something that was out of her comfort zone, but was very eager to do so. She has taught quilting for many years, but was ready to learn something new. I enjoyed teaching it, and she ran with it. This beautiful little quilt is her machine quilted piece. I think she will make some more!

 Another of Janet's small pieces which looks great.

 And she was very productive, to say the least! Lots to take home to work on.

Judie from Ohio is a long time quilter who embraced  this new technique and experimented a lot. She claimed that she had problems with color, but this must be a good problem because she made some very colorful pieces and I love the color combinations she came up with! 

 My favorite from Judie is the big leaf in blue and purple. Also beautiful quilting.

Jeri from Ohio is an artist in her own right and very creative and talented. I'm sorry to say that my phone acted up and I lost a few pictures from this class, unfortunately that included some of her pieces. (good news is that Jeri e-mailed me some pictures, so I can show a few of her pieces). They were very creative and so well made.                                                                                                      

Lovely colors and shapes, with added textures that was achieved with  very interesting free motion quilting designs.                                                                                                                                    

And last but not least, Eileen from Ohio worked on several banners with leaves and shapes in fall colors which she plans to use at her son's upcoming wedding. She was cutting paper shapes and creating wine shapes to hang. Unfortunately she had to leaves early so no pictures, but if I can get some I will post them here.  (again Eileen e-mailed me pictures of the finished banners). A lot of work went into making them long enough to be displayed. I bet they were a great addition to the wedding!                                                                                                                                            

If you're interested in quilt classes at Ripley, check out www.quiltcampcedarlakes.com.