Finger Lakes Fiber Art Festival

This past weekend was the Fiber Art Festival of the Finger Lakes.  I have never been there before.  I had to go and take my girls.  My friend who has been contemplating taking some classes on spinning went with us.

Besides the day of mostly rain, it was fabulous.  Lots to learn and see.  The kids had a blast. Loved looking at all the animals, all the different type fiber, the crafts, the gifts, the clothing.  Lovely!

The above are some drop spindles.  Never knew what that was- now I do.  The young gentleman below is showing how the fiber is turned into yarn.

The gentleman above is showing how the coat would be cleaned after the sheep are shorned.

This gentleman was very informative, telling us all about how they take the coat off the sheep.

It may look like the sheep was being man-handled but it wasn't.  It was pretty calm as it was getting its coat shaved off.

The others look on.  They are saying, "Geez, finally Hazel is getting a trim, she sure needed it.  Mahhhh."

Are you going next Millie? Me, nahhhhh.  You can go.

After he is done, the sheep looks around for his coat- where the heck did my coat go?

 Oh Hazel, I got it right here.  Its off to market after we clean it.

The above skeins are mohair.  So beautiful.

 The classic spinning wheel.

Silk worm cocoons. 

 Loved, loved, loved the alpaca.  I need to have one.

 More colors.  Beautiful set up.

Icelandic sheep.

Angora bunny.

Thank you to all you beautiful animals that give us such lovely fiber.  Beautiful.

Scrapitude Mystery Quilt

 (Note this is a sample of one of Charlotte's quilts- not the mystery one.  Now, that wouldn't be a mystery if I showed you the quilt. Besides its a mystery to me at this point.)

A lady named Charlotte in my quilting group is hosting a mystery quilt called Scrapitude.  Charlotte is an amazing quilter who has made many scrappy quilts.  She always receives oohs and ahhhs about her quilts.  Besides the fact that they are all beautiful, she also hand quilts them.  The woman is amazing.  After Bonnie Bunters quilt, Charlotte decided, with much prodding by us, to do a mystery quilt of her own.  Many of us have jumped on the bandwagon.  While most of these ladies do not have blogs, one does, my friend Sandy who authors Quilting For The Rest Of Us.  She set up a Flickr group as well that you can link to here.  P.S. Sandy has great podcasts that she hosts with many interesting guests including some big names in the quilting industry.

Why not join us?  If yes, see below for cutting instructions which will be followed by the first set of instructions tomorrow.  We have had the added benefit of receiving our cutting instructions early in the summer so that we would be ready in the Fall to begin.

For those of you on Twitter, you can use the hashtag-   #scrapitude

You will need:

1. Background fabric--approximately 4 1/2 yards altogether. For example, you might choose white, black, cream, gray, or whatever you consider to be a good background fabric for scraps to play off of. It needn't be 4 1/2 yards of all the same fabric; but it should probably read as solid from a distance so it gives the eye somewhere to rest from the rest of the scrappiness.I chose a heather gray for my background fabric.
2. Assorted medium to dark scraps (scraps that will be visible against whatever background fabric you choose). Charlotte didn't give a total yardage here, but see the cutting directions below. She included a lot of 2 1/2" squares specifically because our guild has been doing strip exchanges for years so we all have a bunch of 2 1/2" strips laying around.Cutting Instructions:

1. From your assorted medium to dark scraps:

• 360  @  2-1/2" squares
• 32  @  5-1/4" squares
• 64  @  4-7/8" squares* 
• 56  @  2-7/8" squares

*Charlotte says that 50 of the 4-7/8" squares can be pairs if you'd like. Or you can go all scrappy. Charlotte is a big fan of "the scrappier, the better."
2. From your background fabric:

• 64  @  2-1/2" x 12-1/2" strips. Cut these strips first, and use the remainder of the strips to cut 2-1/2" squares (below) 
• 256  @  2-1/2" squares
• 32  @  5-1/4" squares

We actually got these cutting instructions at the beginning of the summer, supposedly to give us all time to have everything cut before she started giving us the steps for the mystery quilt. Truth be told I have most of it done... okay... 50%- I can not tell a lie.