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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Wonderful work inspired by a few of my classes and techniques
After taking my Heavy Metal Play Day class in St Paul last June Janet Hartje made this wonderful book to hold a variety of papers showcasing mixed media techniques. Check out Janets blog to read more about the book and see some of the other cool stuff she’s been creating! This week Marilyn Fischer, from Kentucky, shared this [...]
A Spot of Tea in Long Beach
My last class in Long Beach was Tea & Ephemera, where everyone works with drawing and painting on tea bags, collaging; printed abaca paper, decorative art papers, napkins and old garment patterns, bits of text from books and foreign newspapers and iron on ink jet transfers made with TAP. Then another layer of visual texture [...]
Heavy Metal in Long Beach
Heavy Metal Play Day is a day of fun and exploration; embossing and adding color to metal in a variety of ways, working with both aluminum and copper. It was another great workshop at International Quilt Festival. Tweet
Tsukineko Inks at International Quilt Festival, Long Beach
My first day teaching at festival, I had a full class with 24 students and a lot of wonderful work was produced using Tsukineko’s All Purpose Inks. We always start by using a dry brush method; dipping the fantastix tool in to the ink and working on white fabric and then progress to using paint [...]
Art Quilts: Painting and Surface Design at Idyllwild Arts
Our studio for 3 days, amongst the boulders and pines. It was lovely, Idyllwild Arts is such a fabulous retreat venue! Day 1 Color Theory Day 2 Painting a few people kept working on their paintings after class and brought finished paintings the next day. Day 3 Mixed Media What a wonderful 3 days! Noel, [...]
St Paul Day 3: Metal Workshop
free motion quilting designs were this students inspiration for the peice with the leaves My third class in St. Paul was Heavy Metal Play Day, I was so excited to finally have the opportunity to teach this class after planning it almost 2 years ago. The first half of the class we concentrated on working [...]
