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Quick post here: I’m packed and ready to go! I’ll arrive this afternoon and hopefully will make the Winner’s Circle tonite. On Wed I have myself scheduled to attend 3 lectures, a lunch and a dinner. I have two quilts on the floor: one in the 500 Traditional Quilts exhibit and my donation quilt to the IQA fundraising auction. Then my teaching begins-all classes full: Thursday Machine Quilters Forum 9AM-Noon “Basting and Blocking” Free Motion Fun: Fills and Frills 2PM-5PM Friday Fabulous Feathers …
It’s been a wild ride this week- finding out I will be published again and prepping for Houston! Last week I said I was giving all my brags at once-who knew? I lied: I was notified this week that my images will be included in the upcoming book “1,000 Quilt Inspirations”. The book includes detail photos from quilters of all genres from around the world! I sent in several photos and I’m not sure which are included. The book is published by Quarry and is available here. I can’t wait to see my copy-WHOOP! I’m also prepping for Houston. You…
A lot of good things have happened over the last few months and I haven’t gotten around to sharing all of them. I thought I’d put them all in one glorious shot of shameless self-promotion. Houston I’m teaching again at Houston International Quilt Festival, the biggest quilt show in the world. I’ll be teaching 4 half-day classes and one full-day class, all on consecutive days, so I’ll be busy. But you already knew all that. 2013-First group of ladies at the Friday Sampler that were excited to learn to quilt feathers The news is that all of my classes filled…
I walk Basset Boy early in the morning during the hot summer months. It’s so early that both night and morning people are sleeping. The stars are usually bright and visible. I LOVE that hour: all is still-even air conditioners, there are no cars, no pedestrians and the whole earth is shrouded in peacefulness and quiet. There is virtually no color and I see most things in silhouette. It’s beautiful. When Elizabeth gave us our Sept assignment and asked us to work with “lost edges” I was, well, lost. I wrote about part of the process here. I am fairly…
I’ll be teaching again at the Houston International Quilt Festival-and this year is its 40th anniversary! The Festival organizers ask each teacher to consider donating a small quilt to an on-site silent auction to raise money for the non-profit IQF. I really enjoyed making my donation quilt this year, come take a look: I started with an eco-printed wool panel purchased from Tin Thimble. If you’re local, you really have to spend a day at the old Loomis Fruit Shed: have a lovely lunch in the atrium, browse one of the coolest nurseries around, enjoy the shops (olive oil, wine,…
I recently developed a new workshop titled “Your Quilt, Your Way” in which I work up several quilting design plans for students based on a submitted image of their work. I just taught it over the weekend and I think it was a good workshop. I worked with 9 student quilt tops (as other participants observed), most of them art quilts. Many times an art quilt demands mindfully chosen but very simple quilting; quilting that enhances, yet neither shouts nor shrinks. If the quilt design is strong on its own, the very best quilting choice may be parallel lines or…
I’m working on the Elizabeth Barton Master Class assignment for this month which calls for “lost edges”. Lost edges recede into the background to create the illusion of form. It was a new concept to me-or so I thought. The more I researched it the more I realized I knew exactly what it was. And indeed, I’d been fascinated with lost edges since the beginning of my quilt making: I made this quilt in 2001, straight from Alex Anderson’s star book. This is one of the blocks. See how the edges of the saw tooth star fade into the background?…
If you’re familiar with Julia Cameron’s classic book The Artist’s Way, you’ll know that she encourages a weekly self-date to view art. I don’t always honor my weekly date but I try-it really does fuel the creative spirit. My date last week took me to Gallery at 48 Natoma in Folsom. Their current exhibit, Bird’s Eye View: Aerial Art, paired one of my favorite textile artists, Linda Gass, with watercolor artist Elaine Bowers and it was a powerful combination: The gallery’s description of the exhibit: “During this historical time of drought, Californians are connected to the water in our region…
I completed my latest piece, “Poppies”, on Sept 2, barely in time to submit for consideration in the Pacific International Quilt Festival. It was a wild ride, down to the wire. I will hold off on photos of its completion until it shows, but I do want to share some of my “learning curve”. Believe it or not, this was the state of affairs 20 days before submission. I had another idea in mind and had started that piece, but realized I did not have a clear view of what I wanted. So my Plan B was to work on…
The Fall Quilt Show Season has opened! It’s been awhile since I’ve been to a show so it was especially nice to be able to briefly visit the Gold Bug show. They were in a new location this year and it was fabulous-lots of great light and more vendors than I remember. And they had a CHOCOLATE vendor (Cello Chocolate)-now why haven’t other guilds thought about that one, huh? Quilters and chocolate-duh! Oh it is great chocolate too-they had samples of each of their 8(?) types, each from a different region. It was almost like a wine tasting-fun. There were…