Tucson and Beyond

I know this is only 4 days late-I’m running as fast as I can! I had a wonderful, fabulous visit to Tucson last week to both the Tucson Quilters Guild (TQG) and my son. I leave tomorrow in the wee wee hours to travel to Cleveland for the QATV taping. With a mere 2 days in between to ready for QATV and all that happened in Tucson, blogging just could not find a place!

All us traveling quilt teachers travel light-two 29″ 50-pounders, a carry-on and a 15 lb tech bag plus my purse. Traveling quilt teachers have to be fit!

The Tucson Quilters Guild is not just huge, they are fabulous! There is tremendous energy, creativity and fun pouring out and quilting has a very large presence in Tucson. I felt so embraced and appreciated by them. They are very kind to speakers, having me fly in the day before and stay the day after the workshop-lucky me! And these two incredible ladies, Denise and Karen, made sure I was taken care of in the kindest way-food, water, entertainment, etc. I am now spoiled!

We took a quick detour to Karen’s home:

Do you think maybe an artist lives here?

My other photos of Karen Fisher’s work were all fuzzy but this is just a taste-marvelous! Karen really knows how to embellish and we chuckled over the contrast between her glorious embellishing and my super edited work. Karen wrote the book “Easy Grid Quilts” and she was kind enough to give a copy to me-I will ponder the concepts when I return to a Normal Life.

Because the guild is kind enough to fly me in a day and a half ahead of my first lecture (thank you sooooo much!) I was able to visit the Tohano Chul Botanical Gardens. Oh how I love the desert landscape!

This greeted us at the entrance-it’s huge!

It’s hard to see but this lovely dove mamma was caring for her 3 babies, sitting in her nest in the crook of a cactus-how Tucson!

Look at that sky!

Their guild has both a Tues PM meeting and a Wed AM meeting, so back-to-back lectures for me, a first. Of course I forgot to take photos of the crowd at both. How cool is that as a member to have an option?

I taught two workshops, a Modern fills class as well as a Trapunto class. I completed a new piece for the Trapunto class which I will write about at another date. I completely forgot to take photos at the Modern class.

The guild is filled with such a “can-do” attitude! Several quilters in the Modern class were brand spankin’ new to free motion quilting and just dove right in. Denise and Karen were so attentive to me and the members that I could fully concentrate on teaching-what a gift to me as a teacher!

I forgot my tripod for the Modern class and was able to rig this up to hold my camcorder-whew!

I was met my son for dinner between teaching days-squeee! We went to Poco and Mom’s, a New Mexico Mexican restaurant, which means authentic Mayan cuisine. Oh my, it was divine!! We lived in Albuquerque for a time and I learned to cook this cuisine and it is so simple and so good! Tucson is known for its Sonoran food-next time through we will do Sonoran.

Once class wrapped up, I was able to stay another day and my son and I spend Saturday at Sabino Canyon. What a treat!

Just like California, Tucson has received overly abundant rainfall this year. As a result, the Saguaros are swollen with water, resulting in this rippled appearance. I called them “cellulite cacti”!

It got well into the 80’s while I was there and the Saguaros were blooming 3 months early!

Water runs through the center of the canyon and there are actual trees and grass!

This could almost be in the Midwest…in July!

Love the desert landscape.

Yet more beauty!

My son works for Raytheon, a defense contractor. The Tucson facility makes missiles and the facilities are HUGE! It’s like a town in the middle of the desert. The facility must be protected so this is as close as I got.

My son pointed out these “dancing” cactus on the way-don’t they look like they are ballroom dancers and he is holding her in a dip?

I had to add these random license plates-seems to be more personalized plates in Tucson:

It surely is a man, and he’s guilty!

Well, maybe a slight exaggeration-it is hot there!

See that lacy shadow? That qualifies as “shade” in Tucson, giggle!

Every day, bottles and bottles of water, just to keep me barely hydrated. I was amazed at how much water I had to drink!

I’m leaving in a few hours for Cleveland, where it is going to blow a gale and snow, for my QATV taping, so probably no post on Thursday-I’ll catch up when I return. I didn’t have time to post about the art I saw and my visit to a fabulous store-perhaps at a later post…

And a note to all you patient readers who subscribed to my Newsletter-it’s coming, really! It is a priority upon my return. I’m new to this so it will take me a bit. Thank you for your patience!