Quilting, Camaraderie, and Critiquing

It's taken me 69 times around the sun to go to my first quilt retreat--something that most other serious quilters do regularly--and that retreat was both warm and fuzzy while also bracing and invigorating.  To my great surprise, and beyond my expectations, the setting turned out to be a rolling, wooded one, with yellow leaves drifting across the landscape and the smell of woodsmoke in the air.  The weekend was wonderful on that basis alone, and you can read about the wonderfulness here:

https://stitching-it-all-together.blogspot.com/2018/11/i-went-on-quilt-retreat-i-found-cedar.html

Besides the magical setting, the retreat offered quilting camaraderie:  New friendships made and older ones renewed and strengthened.   Quilting is by its nature a solitary activity, except maybe in rural areas like Pennsylvania Dutch Country. So it's validating to come together in one room with others who also have a passion for this demanding and rewarding art form. 

There was a lot of clackety clacking in that room when everyone got going!

One high point of the weekend for me--aside from discovering, and walking through, a cedar swamp on the property--was a quilt critique offered by Sandra Sider, a SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) member who has a lot of experience at this.

I offered my quilt-in-progress, Spirit Moving Over the Waters, for a critique.  It's a smaller quilt on top of a larger quilt.  The smaller quilt is a collage of photo transfers of sand ripples:

Spirit Moving over the Waters is intended to be a smaller quilt mounted on a larger one.  This is the smaller quilt.

The larger quilt on which the smaller one will be mounted is made of blue silk, sewn with rippled lines of stitching.  It's been layered with Fabric Magic, so that when steam is applied, the blue silk will shrink and create dramatic raised ripples.

Here are both parts, mounted for critiquing.  That's Sandra Sider there, sharing her thoughts.

That's me, listening and thinking

One suggestion was that the stair-step arrangement of the smaller quilt was jarring.

 
It was suggested to convert it into a diamond shape, which I did, by basting:

I think it looks kind of cool that way, but possibly too stylized.  And when I put it on an angle on the blue silk rectangle, as someone else suggested, it looks like a UFO.

If this smaller quilt (brown) sat on an angle on top of the rectangle of the larger quilt (blue)., it might look like a flying saucer.  It weirds me out a little.  I didn't intend for the Spirit Moving Over the Waters to be an extra-terrestrial.

Then somebody else suggested a more natural edge on the smaller piece, eliminating the troublesome stairstep arrangement, but looking more organic, possibly more like a real shoreline.  I like that idea and will try it, temporarily, on one of the four sides of the diamond.  Just to see.

It was also suggested that my background quilt may not be big enough, as the Fabric Magic, with which it is layered, will shrink 30 percent when steam is applied.  Can this blue rectangle shrink  30 percent and still leave a decent margin around the smaller quilt?  Now I'm thinking about starting all over again with another piece of blue silk.  Gah! Do I know how to have fun or what?

These are things to think about on the road to completion of this quilt.  The feedback is refreshing, and even if I  don't agree with everything, it helps me see my work with new eyes.

A couple of other ladies had their quilts critiqued, including this one, which is to be part of a tribute to women artists that will be hanging soon in the Tolland Library, Tolland, Connecticut.  This particular quilt, one of many this quilter is making, is a tribute to the photographer Vivian Maier.  Do you know about Vivian Maier?  She was a nanny who took candid photos on the streets of New York as she went about the city with her charges.  There was even a film about her:  http://www.vivianmaier.com/film-finding-vivian-maier/.

Here's an 18 x 24 art quilt honoring her, and Sandra Sider giving her comments:

We all liked the way the artist mimicked the scalloped edge of old-time photos, complete with black photo corners, and included a slice of Manhattan streetscape in the background.

Here's another piece, this one, like mine, a work in progress.  The artist constructed this seahorse from dozens of sewn circles, called yo-yos, made from recycled prom dress fabric:

Gorgeous, isn't it?  It's going to be part of a larger seascape, with the sea horse's tail wrapped around a piece of underwater vegetation.

Part of the value of the critique process also enhanced the group dynamic, with all participants going into it as interested and invested art quilters.  Satisfying all around.

I haven't told you about the accommodations yet.  They were monastic and scrupulously clean.  I slept like a rock in that little bed.

It was inconvenient to have the room's one electrical outlet on the opposite side from the bed.  But that's why God invented extension cords.

So it was all good.

And I'm grateful to be able to come home to this:

My yard, late afternoon, Sunday, November 4, 2018

I went on a quilt retreat. I had no idea it would be like this.

Have you ever been on a weekend retreat?  I've been on a few, usually of a religious/spiritual nature.

But never a quilting retreat.  This past weekend was my first one, sponsored by the Connecticut chapter of the Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA).

It was a lot of fun in so many ways, and I'm going to tell you about a few of them. But first I have to tell you about the setting, because it blew me away.

This retreat was held at a place called the Incarnation Center, in Ivoryton, Connecticut. I'd heard of the place, but I had no idea it was situated on so many rolling, wooded acres.  The property was laid out in such a way that trees and rocks had been left in place, with the result that each building, surrounded by trees, looked as if it were set into its own natural nook.  I took this photo from a window of the building where the retreat was held.  It gives an idea of the "nookiness" of the place.

And miles of hiking trails.  I had no idea that there were going to be any outdoor activities there.

Wrong!

I went exploring with my buddies Carol and Linda.

 I could not believe that there was a cedar swamp on the property.  This is a big deal to me, because although there are a few cedar swamps in Connecticut, they're not common  by any means.  I like them because they're so eerie and spooky, with shadows, and ferns, and trees growing out of still, mirrorlike water.

See the boardwalk in this photo?  We were walking on that when Linda's phone rang. It was her son, calling from Florida.  When she told him where she was at that moment, walking on a boardwalk through a cedar swamp, with me and Carol, he told her that she was getting 'way too in touch with her inner white girl!

But what a day for a walk.  Everything you could want for a fall day, especially one that dawned so darkly, with wind and driving rain.  By afternoon, the sky had cleared and turned blue, and though the wind stayed brisk, it had the advantage of bringing down cascades of leaves.

Carol catching leaves

November roses.  What a blessing.

There was also a farm on the property, where Carol saw some llamas, and a mile-long lake.

Who knew?

I went to a quilt retreat and found all this.

And that's not even mentioning the warm camaraderie, kindled by a common passion, and the chance to have my work critiqued.  And the food was good!   I'll tell you about all that next time.

Camaraderie

Critique