half over

The week, I mean.  Goodness, it is already Wednesday and the weekend beckons. Personally, I like that.
I haven't been able to blog about the delightful afternoon I had at the Turtle Creek Quilters' Guild in the wilds of south Jersey because the unofficial event photographer just sent me the photos.

There was a slight glitch in getting to my destination, since Mapquest sent me to a different town from the one where the meeting was.  Finally got there, after a phone  conversation that began something like this:
R: "I'm lost."
Guild Person "'Where are you?"
R: "I don't know."
GP: "What does the sign say?"
R: "Church St."
GP "that's right."
R: " But I'm in Yenemsville and I'm supposed to be in Groveville and nobody here knows where that is."
GP: "Well I don't know where Yenemsville is because I'm not from around here."
R: "Neither am I."
Finally a guild member who was from around there guided me and the rest of the day was fine.

Three-fifths of the guild members showed up for my lecture and asked lots of good questions.

 

With one or two exceptions, the quilters were very traditional and were fascinated by the idea of free-form slicing/dicing and no-ruler strips.

 In fact, several of them were already working with strips, making a quilt out of jelly roll strips by sewing them together end-to-end.  I totally missed how they got from a 1600 inch long piece of cloth to a quilt, but here is a site that shows what they look like when they are done.

Meantime, here is a group of guild members checking out my quilt and trying to figure out how I did it.

 Yoko is a new member - this was her first meeting.  And she told me she thought that Japanese quilters would go crazy over my way of working and that I should go and teach there.  Sounds good to me - LOL.

 Here are the Block of the Month giveaways that some of the members brought in.  I was struck by the fact that 9 of the 14 blocks used brown and that 4 of the remaining 5 contained blue. What the significance is, I have no idea: I am just making an observation.

 All in all, a lovely afternoon and I believe we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

Before I waltz off to bed, I have to share with you some photos on the Pixetera Blog which captivated and delighted me.  The buildings in this urban enclave are so vivid, so full of energy and color and humor - despite the obviously poor environment, that they made me smile.  They are an inspiration  and remind me of the buildings that Sean Scully photographed in his book, The Color of Time.  It is my favorite photo book in all the world and I bought it in 2004. It is now out of print and the least expensive price is 10x what I paid for it.  Good grief!  If you ever find it in a used bookstore, grab it!

Tomorrow, I am going to explore something new.