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  • More Student Work (and a bit of my own)

    The photos of projects from my April workshop in Las Vegas keep trickling in. I must say – not only am I pleased with the  beauty and creativity of their work but also with their follow through; I always ask students to send me pictures of their finished projects but rarely get as much response as I have from the Desert Quilters in Nevada. The two images here are from one student who did two of the class projects and is working on a third that she promises to send me when it is done.

    Now onto my latest workshop: I taught my Animal Totem class to the Westside Quilters Guild  last weekend, I had a fabulous turnout for the class. I did manage to snap a few pictures before the end of the class and hope to get more as students complete their quilts. Several (more than usual) chose to hand applique their projects so those may take awhile, it seems these days most students prefer a faster method but as a dedicated member of the ‘Secret Society of Handworkers’ (not really a guild – I’m being facetious) myself, it always pleases me to see hand applique is not a lost art.  My heartfelt thanks to the Westside Quilters for a successful class.

    Some new additions to my own collection of  Small Wonders are two samples I finished for my Journal Quilts classes. I hold these once a month at two shops in the Portland Metro Area – Pioneer Quilts in Milwualkie (the first Friday of each month) and Sewn Loverly in Wilsonville (the last Thursday of each month), In these three-hour sessions we explore techniques a bit more on the artistic side than traditional quilting, Stamping, embroidering, beading, painting, fabric manipulation, embellishing… we poke our noses into just about anything fiber arts related and the students get an opportunity to learn and try techniques on small projects (I call them ‘Small Wonders’) that beats experimenting on a larger project and finding that it’s really not your cup of tea and then relegating it to your UFO pile. If, on the other hand, you do find you like the process, you now have yet another skill you can add to future projects and expand your horizons.

    Last month at Pioneer Quilts, we explored an approach to embellishment I was inspired to from a report I heard on NPR. It concerned an approach to composing music based on a sort of DNA model and what is called The Music of the Spheres – a composition in which each celestial body (or musical instrument) follows its own repetitive cycle or beat that might be static on its own but blended together with others forms a complex pattern. I wondered as I listened to the report if there was a way I could express this visually with embellishment and my artwork ‘Music of the Spheres’ was the result. The previous month we explored working with flat piping at both shops and the design approach was inspired by the abstract work of Dutch artist Piet Mondrian who created a series of works consisting of squares and rectangles in primary colors divided by graphic narrow black lines (we used the flat piping here). My instructional layout yielded an area larger than the rest of the arrangement that cried out for a motif so I hand embroidered the iconic ‘She Who Watches’ petroglyph on my sample. The last image is of yet another Bella Vista landscape, this one of Mt. Hood portrayed in moonlight.

    I will be giving the Bella Vista Landscapes workshop in a few weeks for the Crook County Quilt Guild over in Prineville, the Mt Hood pattern will be one of several pattern options.


  • Another Successful Workshop

    Hello dear readers. It’s been too long since my last post but better late than never. I have a friend who swears it only takes 15 minutes to do a post. Maybe I am just inept when it comes to blog posts (and in all truth – I prefer designing and creating to blogging) but it took me several hours just to select, crop and optimize the photos for this post not to mention assembling them into a gallery template.

    Enough about my computer skills (or lack thereof); what I want to talk about is my workshops in Las Vegas last month. It’s always a challenge picking a class that will appeal to the greatest number of students and that is exactly what a guild and an instructor want – a good enrollment in the workshop. In this case, the Desert Quilters of Nevada chose very well. Not only did the classes fill but they filled so well that they had to ask me to add an extra class to accommodate all the students. I, of course, was thrilled to do so.

    The two workshops chosen were my Bella Vista Mini-Landscapes/Postcards From Japan and Confetti Trees. In both classes, students worked from patterns of my own design though a couple of mavericks created their own unique designs with great success.

    Often, when I teach I get so wrapped up in that process that I completely forget to pause and take pictures and it was no different in this case. By the time I thought of pictures, many students had gathered their equipment and were headed out the door but I did ask students to send me pictures of their quilts if they were so inclined and I’m happy to say the pictures have been arriving in my inbox on a fairly regular basis along with notes of how much they enjoyed the class.

    Though I will not deny that teaching is most definitely a source of income for me, it is this enthusiasm and pride on the part of my students that keeps me enthralled with the process of sharing my skills and knowledge. My thanks go out to the Desert Quilters of Nevada for a wonderful, successful teaching engagement and for sharing the pictures of their accomplishments with me to share with you.

     


  • Good News and Upcoming Events

    Finally! I have bought a gallery and am in the process of preparing my photos to load into it and build my gallery. It will probably be a slow process but at least I’m one step closer to having something up on the site. Stay tuned for further updates.

    Onto upcoming events. I have a Totems class scheduled at A Common Thread This coming Sunday April 10. I LOVE this project and have created a virtual menagerie of animal totems for the class though I’ve only had the opportunity to make a few samples. The two  shown are the latest ones I finished and I have another two in progress.

    Deer Totem embellished with turquoise beads and copper pennies
    Deer Totem embellished with turquoise beads and copper pennies
    Lizard Totem with a Bold Over Batik insert fabric
    Lizard Totem with a Bold Over Batik insert fabric

    Next week I fly to Nevada to teach and lecture for the Desert Quilters, I will be presenting a trunk show and several classes on Landscape Quilts.

    Windswept Trees with Confetti Embellishments
    Windswept Trees with Confetti Embellishments