Traveling and teaching

I have been remiss at keeping up with my blog recently. I’ve been pretty busy teaching, traveling and with making Custom T-shirt quilt orders! Having recently returned from six days in Houston at the International Quilt Festival I am excited to share some of my favorite moments and memories.

I found City Slickers quilt

The International Quilt show was celebrating 40 years of Quilt Market and 45 years of the show or Festival. They had a really impressive display of blue and white quilts, the Sapphire Celebration, that they hung from the ceiling in a huge square that displayed quilts from the front and inside. Photos did not do it justice. One quilt that they featured in the promotion of this show was Maggie Vanderweit’s quilt Indigo Party. I love its simplicity.

Indigo Party by Maggie Vanderweit

There were so many inspiring quilts that will have taken the makers months or years to make! As I walk around and look at the quilts on display and the prize-winning quilts, I say to myself I must try harder next year! To me the quilts look so much smaller hung at this event so my goal this coming year is to make a BIG quilt.

Being and Time by Natalia Lashka

I loved the unusual appearance of this quilt and the bright colors. It was made by a Ukrainian quilter who won an award for her other quilt, see below. The quilts were hand appliquéd, embroidered and quilted. She made unusual binding strips that she tied in knots and layered, something I had not seen before.

I love how Natalia was in her Ukrainian national dress. She spoke little English.

Walking around the World of Beauty quilts was wonderful but there are also all the special exhibits to see. Here are a few; Better World curated by Susan Brusker Knapp and Lyric Kynard (this I tried to get into in the summer), SAQA:Upcycle was inspiring, Altar Offerings by students of Jane Tenor-Coscarelli, Inspired by Endangered Species, The Bob Ross Challenge by Cherrywood Fabrics was so much fun, Pieces of my Life by Shuzuko Kuroha and Florence in my Heart quilts by Annamarie Brent. One impressive quilt was made by Shruti Dandekar and measured 210’’ x 86’’

Coronation of Chatapati Shivaji Maharaja

As part of the faculty at Houston I taught six classes in four days. As you can imagine this is pretty tiring with not a lot of downtime especially with events happening in the evening too. I was lucky enough to have a three hour lunch break which gave me time to prep and set up for the next class, then grab lunch and head to the quiet of my hotel room. I did share that room with quilt artist Sandra Mollon which worked out perfectly and staying at the Embassy Suites was an easy walk and we appreciated the hearty, early morning breakfast and free happy-hour.

My first half day class Sunlit Sunflowers

My fabric collage classes were all well attended and I think students loved learning a new technique and working on their projects. Many even finished which made me happy. My free-form cutting technique using no pattern pieces can feel alien to some students who are more used to the rigid rules of appliqué.

Fabric inspired by Scottish pheasant hunting scenes!

For my classes I do provide kits which does help speed up the project especially if you only have 3 hours. As you can see above this student brought her own color palette and fabric for her bulldog. I love this! This year I taught my pet portrait class breaking it down into two classes; making the pattern and then working on the collage. This was a success but I think next year if I can have it as a 2 day class then all the students can attend both sessions.

The special part of being at Houston are the people you meet. Some of them were students who have been following me on social media and are “fans” and so excited to meet me! That does seems strange. Meeting other quilters who’s name is so familiar or catching up with teachers that you rarely see. Having an interview with Ricky Tims was pretty special! And then I had a real life former astronaut in my class, Jan Davies who has spent 673 hours in space. I googled her!

A pleasure sharing the classroom with an astronaut Jan Davies

I arranged to meet Shanker and Mala from Dubai who have the only quilt shop in Dubai called Classic Quilts and they are the organizers behind the Dubai International Quilt Show. It was really interesting to chat with them about how they are trying to promote and encourage sewing and quilting in Dubai. I am lucky enough to be one of the teachers at their upcoming show in February 2020. I will be teaching a 2 day workshop titled Faces where students can work from a photo of a face or I will have kits and a pattern for my quilt Nameless Afghan Girl. I received permission from photographer Steve McCurry to use his famous photo.

Project for Faces workshop in Dubai

I hope I have caught you up on some of my activities and projects I have been working on. We only a few more weeks till Christmas and I just have 3 T-shirt quilts to make! That feels good. I will be spending the end of next week and weekend traveling to Rhode Island and teaching to the Narragsett Bay Quilt Guild. I’m prepping for that this weekend and looking forward to that trip although traveling form California I’m going to be in for a bit of a temperature change.

Reflections from the Artistic Alchemy Retreat

After spending five days at Lake Tahoe enjoying cooler temps it feels like Autumn is on its way. Last week was the Artistic Alchemy retreat that is held annually at Zephyr Point Conference Center at Lake Tahoe, NV. It was a wonderful meld of creativity, inspiration, beautiful scenery and amazing people. Artistic Alchemy is a group of 4 teachers; me, Sandra Bruce, Heidi Emmett and Mary Boalt. I was invited to join last year after Christine Barnes retired and I’m very grateful to these ladies.

We each present different workshops with up to about 12 students each. What I really like is that all the attendees come together for meals, an evening presentation and show and tell. On the last day we do a studio walkabout so we get to talk to everyone about what they have been making. There is also a workshop we call ‘Open Studio’ where students bring their own projects to work but still enjoy all the other activities.

My students working on their collage

My class this year was Pet Portrait Fabric Collage which went very well although I only had two students; Jan flew in from Seattle and Terry from Terial Arts or Terial Magic fame. I hope to change that for next year. I think they were happy to have all this personal attention whilst working through their projects. I didn’t put my time to waste and so worked on a couple of projects of my own!

Working on another Bassett hound

Jan brought in a photo of her cat that she worked on for her collage, added a textured blanket and layered background. We also spent an afternoon outside designing and making lino-cut images which was made more fun as a thunderstorm rumbled by!

Terry worked on a picture of her dog, Bodie. She decided to make it in white and blue fabrics because he is “just a white dog” I think it is coming along wonderfully with her choices of fabrics and use of values in the blues fabrics. Terry enlarged her photo by 300% and drew up her own pattern by drawing a larger grid and transferring the lines from a small grid placed over the photo. It took half a day to make her pattern but she did an amazing job.

Please send me comments if their is something you want me to teach next year. I’m never sure if students prefer to work on their own photos to make a personal quilt of their pet or whether I should provide a pattern. I have been thinking about offering my cow class Beautiful Bovines, that I’m teaching at Craft Napa in January. I have a choice of three cow faces people can choose from; the Highland cow, the my pink and green cow or a cropped face. I’ll talk about these in a later blog post. But cows are a popular subject matter right now and City Slickers will be on display in Houston and B for Bovine at the Quilt and Fabric Festival in Sacramento.

Beautiful Bovines Workshop

Another popular part of the retreat is that all of us teachers have a small store in Echo Peak conference room that is open for perusing at all hours. Sandra has a wide range of polymer clay earrings and buttons, Heidi has clothing patterns and books for sale, Mary has printed canvasses and covered journals for sale and I have an array of collaged bags, collage patterns and hand-dyed fabrics.

For sale Collage Bags Jane Haworth

My shop is now open here on my website, which has been in the works for a while! Here are a variety of patterns suitable for collage, kits that I have put together for the patterns and all these include instructions on my fabric collage technique. I am selling 6’’ Perfect scissors by Karen Kay Buckley, my favorites!, an add-on kit of glue, applicator and stabilizer for building the collage.

Kits available at my shop include pattern, instructions and fabric.

Not forgetting copies of the Quilting Arts magazine that features my cover art and instructions for making Pet Portraits.

Me, Tilly and Quilting Arts magazine

Terry put together a short Youtube movie about her time at the retreat and how she used Terial Magic in the making of her fabric collage. Look it up here. Its called Collage Quilting with Terial Magic at Lake Tahoe Artistic Alchemy Sewing Retreat.

Looking good on the last morning of the retreat

Hope you enjoyed reading about our retreat and by signing up for the Artistic Alchemy blog you will get all the updates for next years retreat. We open up registration in February. You will also hear from us over the course of the year with updates of our activities and inspirations.

I hope you too are enjoying the change of seasons.