Burren Rocks - group quilt at Festival of Quilts 2012

So finally, after about a year's worth of procrastination, the Genesis group project finally made it to the Festival of Quilts.
The quilt was entered into the Groups section of the quilt show which took place at the weekend.

Burren Rocks

 

a view of where the quilt was displayed

July Meeting

Yesterday, the Genesis group met up to see how progress is going on our Burren quilts. Four of the group are entering our Burren panels as a group entry into this year's FoQ.

Meg was away for a family wedding and holiday, so hasn't got a quilt to show yet, but she is going to be working on her panel over the next two weeks. So, the other three Genesis members showed their Burren quilts, in various stages of completion.

Quilts from left to right: Paula's, Tracy's and Claire's.

It was the first time that we've been able to view our quilts together and is was interesting to see how everyone has worked on the theme differently and used very different techniques to achieve their results.

Claire has used a variety of printing techniques on her quilt: soy-was batik, discharge printing etc.

 Paula has used photo-transfer images and collage

Tracy has used foundation piecing, trapunto, embroidery etc. Each member has also used a different colour to highlight the gray rock colours - pink, blue and yellow.

It was also apparent how well the idea of dyeing all the fabrics together at the start of the project worked - this really ties the project together.

The paparazzi were out in force!!

The Festival of Quilts (FoQ) deadline is fast approaching, so the group are meeting up again on the 22nd July. All four panels have to be finished and ready to post on this date!

Tracy was taking full advantage of the time by finishing off thread ends and embroidering.

IQFOI

 
Here's a photo of some of Paula Rafferty's work that was on display at the International Quilt Festival of Ireland last week.

November meeting

Genesis held a group meeting on Sunday November 20th. The main purpose of this meeting was to distribute the fabric from our group dyeing day at An Grianan.

At An Grianan we all dyed 5 metres of fabric, the plan was that 1 metre would then given to each member ensuring that all our pieces for our upcoming group project will co-ordinate.

Here's Ann with one of the fabrics that she dyed for the swap.

Tracy showed this sample that she's working on for her Burren piece.

 
Here's all the fabric that the Genesis group dyed in preparation for our group project.

Our next meeting is Sunday 15th January - it will be interesting to see how much work we'll have done on our panels by then.

Finally I got a post up!!

Contempory Quilting Group at An Grianán

by

Paula Rafferty

Thanks to the wonderful Margaret Mc Crory for the organising. It started as Irish members of the Contemporary Quilting group of the Quilters Guild of the Britain and ended up as eleven quilters, a mixed bunch, our Genesis group being among them. We met for tea at five thirty last Friday evening and then dragged all our bits and pieces into the two rooms.

We had one wet and one dry room. The wet room was a mass of dye buckets and basins as our Genesis group had made plans to group dye some fabrics for use in a new piece, so Tracy started mixing up dyes Friday evening and we got our fabrics soaked and ready for Saturday morning. Tracy Watson, Claire Lynch, Ann Bradshaw, Meg Kenny make up the Genesis group and the wonderful Irene Mac William made up the wet room group. while the dry room was the quiet room as I began to call it. Ann Fleeton, Mary Heseltine, Margaret Mc Crory, Helen Heron and Rose Little.
I went between the two rooms.

Everyone was working on different projects,
I left the dye mixing to the scientists as my adhoc dyeing methods would probably upset them!!!
So on it went for the weekend dyeing sewing and being fed what a treat.

The company was wonderful, I always come away from a weekend like that buzzing with renewed enthusiasm and ideas.

Had the worst drive home ever, very strong wind and torrential driving rain. Felt like the car was going to be lifted by the wind at any moment but got home safely eventually, Had to stop in the Kildare Village for some hot chocolate to keep me going and some retail therapy!!!!!
Got the fabrics washed out and dried Sunday evening but now my problem which one do I keep?
Stuck deciding between two pieces, what a tough life I have!!! May just have to dye some more.
Here's the finished pieces;

My pics from An Grianan

I love this  piece of old linen embroidered tablecloth, I think it took the violet grey beautifully. The subtlety of the dyed embroidered flowers really pleases me, they had been quite bright colors.

This is some old seer-sucker, white, this could be interesting in the context of the Burren.

This sample below is the shade of grey that I'll be sharing out with the other four Genisi, (how bout that for a word?)

This was a piece of turquoise linen

And my new buddy, Ireenie!!

An Grianan weekend

Some more photo's from the An Grianan weekend. Here's Ann holding up one of the fabrics that she dyed:

Tracy and Meg looking very scientific as they prepare to dye fabric

one of Ann's fabric postcards on the theme of the Burren.

After dyeing my fabrics, I spent the rest of the weekend working on my sketchbooks and altered books.