North Suburban Needle Arts Guild

This week I gave a lecture and taught two workshops for the North Suburban Needle Arts Guild. What a great guild, there are quilters, doll makers, beaders, knitters, etc., basically all kinds fiber artists. I taught Painting Fabric for Whole Cloth Quilts the first day and using Tsukineko Inks the second day.

Because I consider these technique classes where I am teaching people how to use these mediums I do not want them to stress out about coming up with an image or needing to be creative, they can do that after they have learned the techniques, so I provide images that I have drawn for students to work from.

I love seeing the different ways people paint the images. There were so many beautiful paintings, I wish we had time to take these through being quilted too. I would love to see the stitching bring out the details.

For the Tsukineko inks class I have students work from old copyright free engravings of flowers, vegetables, birds and insects. I like using these images because the lights and darks are very clear, helping with the shading. I teach two different techniques for applying the inks and I have students begin the class working on white fabric and then progress to more complex images on light hand dyed fabric (dyed with RIT in the microwave).
Such a fun group, we covered a lot of techniques, everyone was relaxed and did wonderful work.

I will be teaching these same two classes in April at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago, if you are interested in learning these techniques I would love to have you in my classes.