Did you know Colorado means “colored red” in Spanish?


garden-of-the-godsThe name was applied to the Colorado river (because of the red sandstone soil of the region) and came into use for the entire territory after the discovery of gold in the Pike’s Peak region. In 1861 congress chose Colorado as the name for the Territory.
Source State Symbols USA

After being home one day from San Luis Obispo, basically enough time for laundry and to unpack and repack my suitcases, I jumped on a plane to Denver for a whirlwind trip to Colorado Springs.

It was an interesting change from my usual schedule of lecture and teaching. The Piecing Partners Quilt Guild asked if I could do a lecture on Color Theory for the the morning guild meeting and then teach a 3 hour color theory class in the afternoon. I use power point as part of my regular color theory workshop to show visual examples of color terminology, the psychology of color, along with a number of examples of how colors interact with each other, so the information is already set up in lecture format, but I had never thought of offering it as a stand alone lecture before.

I was a bit apprehensive about how this kind of technical information would be received by an audience of quilters who had not necessarily signed up for a class on color theory, but to my surprise they seemed to love it. I was also surprised to hear from a couple of people after the lecture, that I presented information they hadn’t gotten in a semester long color theory class. I base my lecture and painted color exercises for the class on what I learned about color theory in college.

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The next day, I taught my Painting Imagery on Fabric workshop. This is a great follow up to color theory because I use the same paints and students have a better sense of how to mix colors after doing the charts.

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If you’d like to learn to avoid paint bleeding, create beautiful backgrounds, paint gradations, fine lines and details, along with a lot of other great tips for making painted quilts, I’ll be teaching this class at Craft Napa in January.

tracy-and-meLucky for me, my old college room mate Tracy lives near Colorado Springs and we were able to get together for dinner after I finished teaching. It was wonderful to catch up on everything that’s happened since we last saw each other in May, when she got married.

I’d love to spark your creativity at one of these upcoming events:

Nov 3-6 International Quilt Festival, Houston
Nov 1  Tsukineko Inks
Nov 2 Tea and Ephemera
Nov 3 Tsukineko inks
Nov 4 Blessings in the Wind: mixed media prayer flags

January 12-15  Craft Napa – Sign up Now!
Jan 12 Painting Imagery with Textile Paints
Jan 12 Fast and Fun Foam Stamps
Jan 13 Paint and Print-a-palooza
Jan 14 Blessings in the Wind, mixed-media prayer flags

Keep creating, Judy

ABOUT JUDY
IMG_5538Judy is an artist, explorer, image wrangler, knowledge seeker, instructor, speaker, creative alchemist, and purveyor of inspiration, helping others channel creativity on a daily basis.


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