Portraits and Landscapes

Our theme for August was portrait and landscape quilts. The process for creating this type of quilt is both intriguing and intimidating for some quilters. Fortunately for us, we have some talented artists in our midst who are willing to share their knowledge and skills. Education and knowledge sharing is an important part of our guild and every meeting has a considerable amount of time set aside for this instructional portion. This month, Adele took the lead and showed us her process of taking a photograph and turning it into a piece of fiber art. It was fascinating.

A photograph of her daughter and granddaughter, turned quilt!

From this writer’s perspective, I find that quilters who have mastered this technique are typically pretty cavalier about how much talent goes into creating one of these pieces It’s a lengthy, multiple step process to get from photo to quilt and once that part is done, adding just the right quilting that enhances the quilt is another entire process. It involves free motion quilting and thread painting. We are in awe of Adele and her craftsmanship and grateful to her for sharing the process. Thank you!

Another equally talented member of our guild, MaryEllen, uses slightly different methods to create her one of a kind landscape quilts. She also shared her process with us in a previous meeting and gave us a trunk show of her incredible work.

These are not necessarily from a photo or image, but mostly MaryEllen just has a vision and poof it’s a quilt. Mind boggling!

It’s still very much summer here on the Jersey Shore, and we were busy creating a little sunshine of our own with these “sunshine” blocks for our monthly block lotto project.

And lucky Debbie L gets to take them home. Looking forward to seeing her “Sunshine” quilt soon.

As we prepare for our show in February 2025, we will also be debuting something new this time around. For your shopping pleasure, there will be a Kitchen Boutique, with a treasure trove of handmade kitchen items for sale. Eileen has been busy working on some samples such as these double insulated oven mitts and this charming little cozy for your pint of ice cream. And so much more! If you happen to stop by Old Spool on September 15th, you’ll be greeted with the hum of multiple machines and we will be sewing up a storm, creating one of a kind, handmade pieces for sale. Stay tuned.

And here’s what else our friends have been up to.