Category: student work

  • Another International Quilt Festival has come and gone

    Another International Quilt Festival has come and gone

    It has taken me about a week and a half to recover from the last month and a half of travels and teaching, so I’ve been a bit slow to get back to blogging since I got home. I  have quite a few photos from my time in Houston, so I’m going to write several…

  • The road to Sydney and 2 classes at Kim Bradley’s Creations

    The road to Sydney and 2 classes at Kim Bradley’s Creations

    After the retreat in Canberra, I went to Sydney. It was a beautiful 3 hour drive. Cecile and I stopped half way for lunch in the historic town of Berrima, where most of the buildings are built from sandstone. Spring was in the air and the wisteria and fruit trees were filled with blossoms. We…

  • Fantastic 3 day Unique Stitching retreat in Canberra

    Fantastic 3 day Unique Stitching retreat in Canberra

    3 tired but happy teachers: Sue Dennis, Cecile Whatman and Me What a great retreat Cecile organized, and on very short notice too, I think she pulled off organizing and booking it in 3 months and it was a huge success! I was still transitioning to a time zone 7 hours different from my own…

  • Acrylic Ink Adventure Camp in La Grange, Texas

    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…

  • The Australasian Quilt Convention

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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

    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…