Stopover in Vancouver

I’m here in Portland for a visit with Bonnie and brought two unfinished tops started by the Soup Group – Joan, ClaraJo, Emiko and me. With help from Bonnie’s fabric stash I have finished both of them. Bonnie made two backs so they are ready for quilting. See Blue Tuesday and Crossroads below.

Blue Tuesday

Pat with Crossroads

We took a beautiful drive up the Columbia River, visited the Maryhill Museum, walked the dogs, shopped, had Asian cuisine , knitted and sewed.  We saw High Fiber Diet's latest show at Trinity Church in Portland.  Another PERFECT visit!

Signs of Spring at Trinity Church in Portland

A five-patch inspired by Malissia Pettway 1940’s “Nine Patch”, (Gee’s Bend: The Women and Their Quilts, pg 236) is under construction in purples and yellows, and I just finished machine quilting another Guatemala Bound quilt, Parfait, sewn by Susan and me.

Pat quilting Parfait

Time to iron.
Pat

Maude Kerns Art Center & Gallery, Eugene

My friend Mary and I took a drive down to Eugene, Oregon, yesterday to see our quilts at the Maude Kerns Art Center.  It was a great day.  We had all kinds of weather, from pouring rain, to hail, to sunny blue skies.  The gallery is located on the university campus in an old renovated church.  

The show, Fiber2 (really Fiber "squared" or to the 2nd power - I can't insert the correct character here) consisted of High Fiber Diet's Bird's Eye View show plus two exhibits by the Eugene fiber group Loosely Bound.  The local public radio station, KLCC, did a review of the show on February 27, 2011. Click here to hear the review.  Click on the Maude Kerns line near the top of the listings.

The gallery has a small gift shop with lots of unique items, many by the artists showing in the gallery.  In one corner they made a nice exhibit of my quilts, paintings and books.  Mary's collage cards are on the rack.

This grouping is small quilts made by the Loosely Bound artists.  What a great way to display small works.  Each was mounted on an 8" x 8" wooden cradle board that had been painted black.  The unity of color and the mounting technique really pulled together these works by different artists.  Each work was for sale individually, and the work I saw was priced from $50 to $75. 

The show is worth seeing and is up for only a few more days, until March 25th.  Do try to stop by if you are in the area.

Palm Desert

I just returned home from a week in the desert, Palm Desert.  I visited my sister, and we drove down to Oceanside and San Diego to see the Visions Exhibit and the show at the Visions Gallery.  Great work and worth the drive.  The desert was beautiful, slightly green since it rained last week.  That's the Salton Sea you can see shining in the distance in the upper right of the photo.

We visited The Living Desert, the Palm Desert zoo.  They have quite a few desert animals and animals from Africa.  You actually can feed the giraffes if you get there right at 10 am.

There are two aviaries you can walk through and also a walk-through butterfly exhibit.

There are lots of odd desert plants and trees in the gardens.

The big arts festival in La Quinta was last week as well.  There are well over 100 vendors - closer to 200 I would guess - showing quality artwork.  American Style Magazine voted La Quinta the 6th best art/craft fair in the country.  It's easy to see why.  The park is shady and beautiful with green grass, water fountains and pools. 

I went to the meeting of the Coachella Valley Quilt Guild and participated in a little quilt show at my sister's condo association.  I met lots of Linda's quilting friends, many from the Portland area!  So now I'm back in the rain with more to come this week.  The ground is saturated here.  Several trees fell in Sunday's wind storm.  The roots can't hang on so well when the ground is so soggy.  We're still waiting for spring.