Acrylic Ink Adventure Camp in La Grange, Texas

Just in case you had any thoughts that us traveling teachers live a carefree  jet setting life, I can quickly dispel any of those ideas. 🙂

I woke up at 3:15 Friday morning to make an early flight to Houston. Since it was so early and I was hightailing it to the airport, I figured I’d grab something to eat at the airport, but the line was so long to check my bags I barely made it to the gate in time to board the plane. When I arrived in Houston at 2 in the afternoon my wonderful retreat host Kim DeCoste, met me in baggage and having seen my facebook posts from the morning, had a Chicken sandwich waiting for me in the car, yay food!

Then Kim drove us 100 miles to the Great Expectations Creativity Center in La Grange, TX.

What a fantastic facility with a large workroom, adjoining dormitory that sleeps 10, a beautiful two bedroom guest house, and artist in residence quarters on 69 acres.

After unloading the car, setting up the workroom and eating dinner we started class at 6:30 (13 hours after I woke up). The room was large and easily accommodated all 25 students with plenty of tables, comfy chairs, counter space, cutting and ironing tables and a large designated sink for rinsing paint and dyes.

We spent 3 hours creating mottled and textured fabrics with various techniques that would become the foundation fabric for Saturday.

At 9:30 when I was out collecting fabric I came across this cute little guy.

And at 11:00 pm (18 hours after I woke up) I went to bed.

Saturday morning we started the day exploring printmaking with a variety of hand carved stamps, foam stamps and beautiful wood blocks from Colouricious.

I love incorporating stamp designs into the translucent layers when painting with acrylic inks.

Then we worked with freezer paper and several other masking materials, creating simple resists with colored pencils and china markers, using acrylic paint markers, and drawing fine lines with quill and ruling pens.

Here’s what my table looked like through the weekend.

After lunch we took a field trip into town to visit the Texas Quilt Museum. It’s in a lovely 2 story brick building from 1890.
Next to the Quilt Museum is a gorgeous shop called The Quilted Skein. It’s part quilt and yarn shop with hands down the most beautiful selection of fabrics and yarn I’ve ever seen in one place.

In the afternoon we painted with acrylic inks in a more illustrative way.

At the end of the day we had our first show and tell. Each student chose two pieces from the fabrics they had made up to that point to put up on the design wall.

The day ended with a wonderful dinner of Texas BBQ brisket eaten out on the porch, hanging out in rocking chairs, watching the sunset, chatting well into the evening. It’s such a treat to have several days to get to know each other better, share our stories about our journeys, blessings, losses, and accomplishments.

There was no shortage of laughter.

On Sunday everyone worked on one piece of fabric incorporating all the techniques they learned from Friday and Saturday.

Before lunch everyone put work up on the board for the final show and tell. I am amazed by all the fabulous work everyone created.

What a fantastic retreat! I want to thank all my wonderful students for choosing to spend their weekend with me, and the staff of Quilts Inc. for inviting me to teach at this incredible location. What a blast!