Summertime is Preparation Time

June 8, 2018

Summer is officially here in our house. My son James finished school yesterday so routine and regular sewing time is out. Luckily this year I don't have a backlog of orders from my Etsy shop, Quilts from Clothes Not sure if this is good or bad. I feel Etsy has changed over the last year or so, T-shirt quiltmaker shops have multiplied and I am getting less exposure. But happily this leaves me more time to prep for the upcoming retreat and classes I have in 2018 and 2019.

Oliver the Doodle photo found on Instagram, permission granted for use of the image

First up September 3-7th at Zephyr Point, Lake Tahoe I will be joining Artistic Alchemy as their new teacher. We will be holding our 5th annual retreat for creative sewists. Look up the retreat here, I do still have a couple of spots in my workshop and am limited to 12 students. My workshop titled Fabric Collage Addiction will give students plenty of time to work on a fabric collage project from a photograph. Feel free to contact me for more information.

This week I have started work on preparations for my classes at the International Quilt Festival in Houston in November 2018. It is quite an honor to be a teacher here and I know I have a lot of work to get ready for this event. I will be teaching 4 classes and a sampler class over 4 days. For each of the classes I will be providing kits so students can learn the technique and the complete the project at home. Its a cut and paste collage class so no sewing is required. Class sign-ups aren't released till the middle of July but the list of teachers can be found here.

This class Rocking Roosters will be November 10 8-11am and the Sunlit Sunflowers class November 9 2-5pm. As you can see these are 3 hour classes! For each of my classes I will have a choice of two patterns with all the fabric, interfacing and background fabric provided. All students need to bring are a good pair of scissors and glue.

The sample photos above (hover on the picture to see more) are from my Dazzling Dogs class November 7 8-5pm, and Leaping Lizards November 8 8-5pm, both 6 hr classes. These classes again will have a choice of two slightly larger and more detailed patterns. These you will work on in class as well as learn about how to turn your own photos into patterns for collage quilts.

Heading into 2019 I will be one of the 16 teachers at Craft Napa January 2019. Registration for these classes has already opened up and I know some classes have already sold out.

Work in progress Succulent Love class Craft Napa 2019

The classes I will be teaching are Succulent Love January 13 9- 5pm. In this class students will explore drawing and painting succulents on paper and fabric and design patterns using succulents to make a fabric collage. I will be providing many of the materials, paints and hand-dyed fabrics to use for this workshop.

Finally the Pet Faces class on January 12 9-5pm. Student's will be working on a small pet portrait collage working from an 8 x 10' photo enlargement of their favorite pet or other loved animal photograph. We will look at how best to make enlargements, scale, color and fabric choices and hopefully students will go home with a completed, stitched pet portrait.

Craft Napa is a fun-filled inspiring few days when you are surrounded other creatives, quilters, mixed media artists and not to mention Napa Valley, wineries and wonderful shopping opportunities. Friday night is the Craft market when many of the teachers and local vendors set up tables selling glorious one-of-kind items, fabric, books etc. This is not to be missed.

I hope this post has been inspiring and if you wish to attend any of these workshops/classes with me don't hesitate to contact me for more details or share this post with a friend who might also be interested. The pool is calling as California heats up for another hot summer but maybe after I go and "fiddle with some fabric" first

Teaching and Quilt Shows

May 12, 2018

Springtime is quilt show season. Early April was the Foothill Quilt Guild show in Auburn, I entered 5 quilts. At the beginning of the year, I usually plan on making a large art quilt. Last year I made 'Melman, the Vulnerable Giraffe'. I entered him in this show and later he was juried into The World of Color Exhibit at IQF Houston. This year I made 'Bullseye X Nine'

The story behind this quilt; I met a customer dropping off t-shirts for a quilt, at my local coffee shop and she had her two dogs with her. Since I am always looking for subjects for my pet portrait quilts, I have no pets of my own, I took photos. I loved this one of Bullseye with his great big black eye. I manipulated the photo into three values; black, white and grey which I had never done before.

I made one 18" block for this quilt in black, white and grey. I made up pattern pieces with freezer paper so I could then make colored blocks. I made 3 more blocks thinking this would be a 4-patch quilt. It was looking good but I needed more. I had decided to use my own hand dyed fabrics in bright complementary colors and then used a commercial fabric colored in a darker color to use for the black areas. My choice now was to make a 9-patch so I had to make 5 more blocks. I was now on a bit of a tight timeline to get a photo of how the finished quilt would look to enter it into our show. Once these were done I laid the black and white one in the center of all the colored blocks and really it did't look right, so I had no choice but to make one more block!

Bullseye on my design floor figuring out colors and layout.

I hadn't realized how tricky it would be to figure out the dog and background colors in the correct layout. I seemed to go around in circles! Anyhow I figured it all out and got the quilt quilted and finished during the week before the show and guess what I won 'Best of Show!' That is the first time my work has been recognized at that level. I was truly happy and amazed.

Finally the highlight of the show for me and many others who were viewing the show was when Bullseye and his owners came to visit the show and the quilt.

Last weekend was the Pine Tree Quilt Guild show in Grass Valley. I did enter a couple of my quilts but spent most of the weekend hanging out with Artistic Alchemy as we were promoting our Tahoe retreat in September. We each had examples of our work and goodies for sale and we got 5 new sign-ups for the retreat too.

In April I taught two fabric collage classes for the River City Quilters Guild and the Santa Clara Valley Quilters Association. Both classes were maxed out and I was very impressed with what students achieved. Here are some of the work in progress photos form those classes and in time as students send me photos of completed works I will show those photos too.

Completed student work from Fish, Frogs and Reptiles Fabric Collage class

If you wish to learn fabric collage from me look at my Calendar page to see details about the retreat and up coming classes and contact me. I will share details of my classes at IQF Houston and Craft Napa soon.

Loving Student Work

April 15, 2018

Its been a few weeks since I was teaching these classes and a couple of students have sent me photos of their completed projects. It is really gratifying for a teacher to see that completed work because you then know they enjoyed the workshop enough to spend time working on it and to complete that piece and not add it to their pile of UFO's.

This was a pet portrait created by Joy of her cat. In the first photo you see how she had made her pattern and some of the work in progress made during the class. And then the second photo a couple of weeks later when she has finished the collage process, decided on her background and finished it with free motion quilting and some borders. I especially love the addition of the leaves.

This piece was from my Fish, Frogs and reptiles class and Penni decided she wanted to make the Triggerfish. You can see she had fun fussy cutting the butterflies and dragonfly in the first photo. Then in the finished one I love the small frog riding on the tail, the pink lips :) and that she went to the extra effort of making all those small fish. They are perfect. She cleverly found a batik fabric to use as the water and then the addition of the spotted bubbles is so fun.

This is one of the Pet Portraits from the class I taught for Pinetree Quilt Guild in Grass Valley. This was a two day class when students had to spend the first half of the first day drawing their pattern from the photograph. Now in my 1-day Pet Portrait class we use a photocopied enlargement to work from. This lady did a great job and you can see how it changes once the free-motion quilting is added. A dramatic improvement when another element is used, texture and more detail.

The Pinetree Quilt Guild holds their annual quilt show the weekend of May 5th and 6th at the Nevada County Fairgrounds and is always a wonderful show. The ladies from the class I taught are planning on exhibiting all the Pet Portraits together for a mini exhibit. I can't wait to see it. I will add a few photos of some of their work-in-progress here.

If this type of fabric collage speaks to you and you would love to learn the technique for an intuitive method for selecting and cutting your fabric, it looks like you need to join me for 4 days of Fabric Collage Addiction at Zephyr Point this Fall. Look up the Artistic Alchemy Blog for more details and see the fun teachers that you can hang out with Artistic Alchemy