Blue Skies and Wild Women at the Beach Party

This morning, at 8 am, an intrepid group met me at the stairs of the Boat House and trekked to the beach to search for "treasures." Most of the time, broken shells, dead leaves, and old bird feathers are called trash. Today, this stuff was "art" as the partiers tried their hands at cyanotype printing (also called blueprint fabric). Our fabric came from www.blueprintsonfabric.com .

We assembled on the deck around the pool while the partiers arranged their beach finds and other artifacts on pieces of pre-treated fabric. As soon as the sunlight hit the faintly green fabric, we saw the blueprint effect in action. When the fabrics were a pale blue-grey (about 5 minutes) we rushed upstairs, rinsed our pieces, and then rinsed a second time but this time used a squirt of hydrogen peroxide in the water. Magic!

The images of the objects against the blue background was beautiful! Jamie Grainger took off her necklace and used it to print interesting images. Others used their sewing tools or even a gull wing found at the beach. You really get to know people when you quilt with them. One person revealed she'd recently gone in for body art.
Susan Whatley from Oriental, NC showed off the ankle tattoo she got... in celebration of her 70th birthday! And you thought quilters just stayed home and stitched in their rocking chairs.. Susan said her grand daughter had been whining for a tattoo, and her mom, to quiet the kid, said, "You can have one when your grandmother has one-" The gauntlet was thrown. Susan and gran-youngen' went to the tattoo parlor together. As well as being a quilter and grandmother, Susan is an engineer and sailor. For her 75th birthday, she has plans to go skydiving!

Friday afternoon the partiers worked on clamshell applique as they made their own fish-y rotary cutter pouch. Karen Preston (PR whiz, Washington Post reporter, and former hand model) displays the sample made by Patti Brown.