Festival: where to begin...

It has taken me a couple days to catch up with life enough to start writing a blog post about our adventures in Houston. I have been to Festival every year for the last 13 years, this trip was a lot of fun but way more exhausting than any trip I have ever taken. Teaching at International Quilt Festival entailed so much planning, packing, shipping, focus and talking... since I was also teaching a workshop for Make It University and doing two sessions of Open Studios in addition to my two 6 hour classes.

I started Open Studios early on Wednesday night since MIU was short someone to start the night, so I spent 3 1/2 hours demonstrating embossing copper, meeting people and talking about various techniques. Here's a look at my table.

I think I always have too much stuff at Open Studios because I never know what people want to see the most, so I tend to bring a lot of smaller art work, especially things people may have seen in the magazines so they can see the work up close.

The little canvas and copper cover books really seemed to appeal to people, I think I will have to add that to my regular workshop offerings, it will need to be a two day workshop though.

Working across from me was my good friend Leslie Tucker Jenison from San Antonio.

Following Leslie was Alma de Melena Cox who creates beautiful and bright mixed media collages with fabric paint and wood.









Thursday morning I taught Mixed Media Painted Fabric, luckily I had thrown in a few extra kits because I had 3 additional students in class for a total of 28.

This is a class that has concepts very different from a lot of ways we are used working, like painting objects by painting the background to create the imagery. Layering paper images and paints, seeing colors come through from underneath and adding layers of color on top of color. It pushes people outside their comfort zone and hopefully has them thinking and looking at things in a new way.

It was fun seeing a few familiar faces from my old Austin days!

It was great getting to meet Susan Bruebaker Knapp in person after getting to know each other by email last year. She was very ambitious and painted a huge piece of cloth.

It can be so hard getting people to stop working and put their pieces on the wall!

Such a fun class!

More festival pics to come...