The Australasian Quilt Convention
This is the Royal Exhibition Building, the home of the Australasian Quilt Convention in Melbourne. It was built in 1880 with a brick structure and wood interior, it has two floors and is in the shape of a cross. There’s no heat or airconditioning, and since fall was well underway it was a bit cool [...]
Tsukineko Inks at Road
This is Gina, who was our one woman entertainment committee in the Tsukineko inks class, she has a fantastic sense of humor and kept us laughing all day, and she’s not only funny, she’s very talented too with a winning quilt in the show. In this class we always start the day by [...]
Tea and Ephemera and Heavy Metal at Road to CA
So what is ephemera? Well, here is the definition from the Merriam-Webster Dictionary EPHEMERA 1: something of no lasting significance 2: ephemera plural : paper items (as posters, broadsides, and tickets) that were originally meant to be discarded after use but have since become collectibles Tea & Ephemera is a class that’s all about expanding ones view of [...]
Painting Imagery on Fabric at Road to California
I had a great time teaching last week. The first class I taught was painting, this is my favorite class to teach, because primarily I teach people who dont have any formal art training basic techniques to successfully paint on cotton fabric, which is a lot harder than painting on canvas. It was wonderful to see [...]
Finishing Festival with Some Flash
My last class at festival was Heavy Metal Play Day which focuses on learning a variety of ways to emboss and color metal. We worked on aluminum and copper with the creative metal tool kit from from Walnut Hollow. So many fun samples!
A Fiesta of Ornaments
Teaching my class on how to make Fiesta Ornaments is always so much fun because you get a little taste of everything. We paint, do a little quilting and decorative stitching, sew metal and do some beautiful decorative embossing, and at the end of the day students go home with a beautiful ornament and the [...]
Painting Imagery With Textile Paints
The next class I taught at festival was painting with textile paints. In this class we use Pebeo Setacolor textile paints and cotton fabric. In this class students learn to paint backgrounds, use freezer paper masks, paint gradations, paint lines, dots and details, and glaze paint to create more visual depth, among many other things.
2 Great Tsukineko Inks Classes at Festival
I’m long over due posting about my week teaching at International Quilt Festival in Houston (I’ve been focused on trying to find a place to live) but I’d like to start off by saying I had a fantastic time in Houston and my students produced incredible work. I taught two classes on painting with Tsukineko [...]
A Spot of Tea in Springfield, Missouri
I had a lovely time in Springfield with the Ozark Piecemakers at their annual guild show. My trip began with seeing a fabulous textile exhibit at the new Springfield Branson airport including the humorous work of Pam RuBert and beautiful organza work of Rosemary Claus-Gray, if you live in that part of the country I [...]
A Sea of Colorful Fabric Using 10 Techniques with Acrylic Inks
This was the scene on the floor before we broke for lunch on Saturday. Luckily we had a really big room. I spread out a 9′ x 12′ tarp and then added another 6 feet to it an hour later. These were our base fabrics created using the first 5 techniques. After lunch we used [...]
Charting a Course in Color
I teach color theory very much like you would learn it in art school, because I think the way to really understand color is by mixing paint and seeing what happens when you physically add one color to another. As an educator I believe experiential learning like this creates the deepest level of learning for most people. In the [...]
Alternatively Bound and Stitched in Long Beach
There are always a few things I learn teaching a new class, like if I’ve forgotten to put something on the supply list or how long will it take students to go through each part of the class within the 6 hour time frame. With sewing machine based classes at conventions, it always takes a little extra time [...]
Emboss some metal at Road to California next January
I am excited to be teaching at Road to California for the first time next January. Registration started Sunday and I can’t believe 3 of my 4 classes are already filled! My Heavy Metal Play Day class on Sunday still has room in it though, if you’d like to change things up a bit and try something [...]
10 Techniques with Acrylic Inks
We had a great time with the acrylic inks class, this was the first official time through it so there is always so much to learn, for all of us. I’m glad it was a small class, I can see where timing will have to be adjusted for a big class, as well as needing [...]
Embossing Metal at Shake Rag Alley
It was so nice to teach a few small classes for a change, don’t get me wrong, I enjoy the energy and excitement of large classes (25 students) at festival, but day after day on your feet circling the room on those carpet covered concrete convention floors can get tiring. At Shake Rag things were [...]
Day 3 Heavy Metal Play Day
The saturday metal class was fantastic! Walnut Hollow recently changed the size of their metal squares from 4″ x 4″ to 5″x 5 3/4″, and this larger size really opened up the creative potential for embossing. My students had so much fun, creating fantastic designs, check out all their beautiful work (click on the photos [...]
Day 2- Color Theory
I believe the best way to learn about color is to mix and create colors by watching the physical interaction of one hue upon another using paint. Reading about color or looking at swatches of fabric can give you a sense about how colors relate but there’s nothing like experiential learning to fully grasp the [...]
Exploring Tea & Ephemera in Cincinnati
The first day of festival I taught Tea & Ephemera which is a class focused on learning a variety of mixed media techniques: drawing on tea bags and adhering them to fabric working with printed tea bags collaging a variety of art papers, napkins, book pages and foreign language newspapers additional color is applied with paint [...]
Fun Metal Workshop and a Rough Drive Home
On thursday, I drove 85 miles to Rockford, IL to give two lectures and teach Heavy Metal Play Day. I don’t teach locally very often so it was really nice to drive instead of dealing with the hassles of flying. There was lots of fun experimenting with different embossing techniques on silver and colored aluminum, [...]
Thursday: Tsukineko Inks Again and Dinner at 8
On thursday, I taught a second Tsukineko inks class at festival and the good news is if you were trying to get in and didn’t, I had such a big waiting list, I have been invited to come back and teach it again in Houston next year. Dinner at 8 Sue Dennis, Rachel, Sue Bleiweiss, [...]
Wednesday: Tea, Preview Night and Dinner with Friends
On wednesday I taught Tea & Ephemera which is really a class about trying out lots of different techniques on one piece of colored fabric. It’s all very spontaneous, playing with various papers, printed paper imagery, drawing on tea bags, using printed abaca paper to emulate tea bags, stamping patterns and texture and using shiva [...]
Tuesday: Tsukineko All Purpose Inks
All my classes at festival were full with 25 students and such a treat to teach, so much incredible work was produced. This is the work of the youngest student I have ever had in any of my classes at festival, beautiful! huh? She’s 17, from England and a total delight. I was so lucky [...]
Magical Metal Altars at Create
Thursday I taught Magical Metal Altars to a full class with 20 students. This is a new class, kind of a larger modified version of the popular Fiesta Ornaments. What fun this was! I gave the students a wide range of options to create their altar; from using a template with everything predesigned by me [...]
Painting Fabric Class at the Create Retreat
The Create retreat got off to a wonderful start on Wednesday. My first class had 8 students, it’s such a pleasure to have a class that small on occasion, teaching 25 (my usual number for festival) can be challenging, because I always like to give everyone individual attention along with the class demos. These gals [...]
