Shaw Art Sale

You will see that I have been busy getting ready for the Art Show and Sale this past weekend at the Shaw Nature Reserve overnight center. It is a wonderful setting with restored log cabins and the weather was perfect.  Here are a few of the pieces I had at the sale and some pictures of the cabins.

Rusted nails on a farm

Birds on the rail at the cabin

Birch trees

Birch

Wedding Quilt

I have one sister and two brothers.  When my baby sister was married some 22+ years ago I made her a hand pieced and hand quilted quilt. In pinks and blues.  Now my friends know I'm not a pink person but I did it for her.  She told me this last week that she is retiring the quilt.  It has been used well and continuously.  Pretty good life span.  2 kids, 2 dogs, 1 husband.  She cleaned it and packed it away and maybe someday we will use part of it for a grandbaby quilt.

Quintessential Quilt Award

The Quintessential Quilt show at the University City library is a juried/judged show done on a biennial basis.  I am happy to report I won a First Place for Small Quilts this year.  My "Peaceful Valley" piece is shown in the picture above me.  Excited!!

Peaceful Valley - First Place Small Quilts

My best buddy Judy won two ribbons.  Here she is with her pieces.

For Sale BR549 - Honorable Mention Pictorial

Towering Bridge - Judges Choice

Quilt National

We are so lucky here in St. Louis to have Quilt National exhibit all of it's collection.  It has been done to benefit Safe Connections, a women's self help center.  This year it is at the St. Louis University Art Gallery.  It is a beautiful gallery in an old building in the downtown area near campus.  Parking is street parking.
I always find QN interesting and fascinating.  How did they pick the quilts they did?  Why these this year?  There are always controversial ones - I think this year went too digital.  By this I mean, digital images manipulated and printed on fabric via large format printers.  Quilt?  Not so sure.  I did have some real favorites though.  I didn't attach a name to each piece to give credit and I am going to try to amend that.

Elizabeth Barton

Deidre Adams - great texture

Patty Hawkins

October - Postcard Challenge and Family

I have made a committment to post something at least every other day in october to try to focus on my blog.
I just finished the first part of my postcard challenge.  Each of us are doing a national park - mine is Mt. Rainier.  Interesting that today the parks are all closed because of the government shut down - a topic for another day.  Anyway I am happy with my first part.  I need to add highlights - either in paint or in thread.
The back will be my mom's writing since she sent the original postcard in 1998 from Rainier.

Tom and I took a drive to Illinois Sunday to have lunch.  We thought pavilion behind us in Alton was really a striking park.  The bridge there is pretty neat too. 

SAQA Blog post

I am a member of SAQA and they have recently started a regional group for Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas.  They have also started a blog for this region and I was featured on the blog!   http://saqa-ks-mo-ok.blogspot.com/2013/08/featured-artist-candyce-copp-grisham.html  Pretty exciting.  Just another way to get your name out there.  Thank you Shannon.

Matchstick quilting

I recently took a workshop with Jacquie Gering (fabulous teacher and person) and was fascinated with the quilting on her Bridges piece.  The quilting was an 1/8th of an inch apart.  With some advice from her quilter, Sheryl, I tried it and I am very happy with the results.  It's a bit tedious but it works. The piece is more pliable than I thought it would be and actually will benefit by being mounted on another backing. 

Display at Urban Eats

I am certainly an irregular blogger.  Wanted to catch up so here is one fun thing done recently.  Art Bits - a branch of the Bits group that focuses on art quilts - has been hanging pieces at Urban Eats www.urbaneatscafe.com in south St. Louis.  I took 4 pieces in and they are so fun to see up. Several of mine are in the first picture to the left and the rest of the group to the right and in the second picture.  It's a great space with a wonderful hanging system.

Arch quilting border

I tried a new set of templates today from Linda Mae Diny.  They are a series of arches and I really liked them.  They are easy to use and fill up the border quite nicely.  They are also easy to adjust to fit any size.  Will use them again. 

Soy wax and resist

Learning to work with soy wax with Wendy.  We decided to just do designs today and then dye at a later date.  We did do some resist discharging though.  Couldn't resist (ha - sorry).  Loved some of the results that are very graphic.  Didn't care for all.  You can never tell what color you will get when discharging.  The pink was dark navy blue to begin with. 

Smithsonian quilt tour

I wanted to share more of the pictures from the Smithsonian quilt tour.  I don't have the names or information on these quilts.  That can be found at their website: 
http://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/main?edan_q=quilts&op=Search

Quilted pinafore with wool batting

Whole cloth quilt

Pen & ink drawings on quilt told a story

quilting

silk hexagons with signatures of 5 presidents

Baltimore album

Martha Washington worked on this one

Slave quilt

The most extraordinary crazy quilt