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 highly recommend a trip to the airport to see it.

On Thursday I gave a lecture and Friday taught my Tea and Ephemera workshop where we draw and paint imagery on tea bags then create collages on fabric; experimenting with a variety of processes from printing with thermofax screens to working with shiva paintstiks and stencils, rubber stamps and collaging printed abaca paper and decorative tissues.

Back to packing!

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 this fabric to work through the next 5 techniques.


It's a pretty action packed class to get through all 10.

It would be great to do this as a 2 day class working at a slightly more relaxed pace with more time dedicated to each technique, then have the second day to incorporate all the techniques into one larger piece.

And for those students in my class that were interested in the beautiful wooden block stamps we used, as well as all of you reading this post, they are from The Indian Block Company. I'm fairly certain the company Colouricious will have a booth selling them at International Quilt Festival, Houston this fall.

Everyone was very productive creating a lot of unique fabric and most importantly had a lot of fun doing it.

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 first half of the class I show a power point explaining the various terms relating to color theory with graphics and going through all the color schemes with fabric swatch examples along with samples of my art quilt work that falls into the various categories.

One of the first charts we make is a basic color wheel with primary, secondary and tertiary colors created from red, yellow and blue.

It's funny how every class has an over achiever, who takes the project to a higher level than required :-)

Actually this gal is a fabric dyer who wants to really understand how to attain exact colors when mixing dyes.

I think she's well on her way.




After lunch I show another powerpoint with examples of how colors interact and affect each other so that one can choose colors to enhance mood, visual activity, depth and contrast. Then we get on with our next charts.

This is exercise is mixing complimentary colors, one of my favorites! I love the beautiful color palette you achieve when doing this, look at those gorgeous greens and browns made from blue and orange.

The class has 6 charts in all, we usually get through about 3-4 in 6 hours, but everyone has the experience they need to continue at home.

I teach an online version of this class too, but right now the class is on hold until after I move later this fall, am resettled, get a new web host and have the site up and running again.

Linda took my Tea & Ephemera class last year and brought in this fantastic pillow she made with her collaged fabric, it's backed with a rust colored ultra suede.

Beautiful!

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 as well when students are working on machines they're unfamiliar with, that said the Bernina 550's were a dream to work on and everyone got the hang of them pretty quickly.

The main thing I learned was making quilted samples as big as 12" x 12" were a little too big to finish before lunch. Luckily we had a 2 hour lunch break and since the show hadn't opened yet, students could take the extra time to finish.

Everyone did a wonderful job with the three different binding techniques in the afternoon.

From now on I'll have students precut fabric and batting and work on smaller samples in the morning and the timing should work out just right.

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 new.

It's a fun, relaxing class, no stressing out over matching points or even stitches here! 

The cool thing is it has very short supply list (pencil, paintbrush and cup for water) and everyone in the class gets a $29 tool kit free! 


Check out some of the great work done in previous classes.

free motion quilting designs were this students inspiration for the peice with the leaves

It's amazing the kind of dimension you can get with the copper

A little color added with alcohol inks

Take a break from stitching for a Heavy Metal Play Day!

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 space to put wet fabric. 

We did start to run out of time when it came to drawing on the fabric with calligraphy and ruling pens, so there aren't any samples showing that, but I did demonstrate it, lol.

Now that I've gone thru it one time, I could see this class working well as a multi day workshop with one day spent covering all the different techniques and then the next day combining them into larger complex cloth.

 

We were just getting to scratch the surface with combining and layering multiple techniques by the end of the day.

 All in all, it was a fun day.

Embossing Metal at Shake Rag Alley

It was so nice to teach a few small classes for a change, don't get me wrong, I enjoy the energy and excitement of large classes (25 students) at festival, but day after day on your feet circling the room on those carpet covered concrete convention floors can get tiring. 

At Shake Rag things were very relaxed by comparison, with eight students in the metal class and one of them was a 12 year old boy who stepped in to fill the spot of his grandmothers friend who was unable to make it. This is his work below, he did a lot more work than this, cutting up and manipulating the metal and experimenting with what it could do, but these were the pieces he wanted to show.

I enjoy having young students in class, as long as they have the attention span for a 6 hour class, because they are often more courageous with their art making and this in turn can be inspiring to the  adult students.

We use two different methods for coloring the metal; alcohol inks and art markers.

When embossed designs have a lot of dimension, it's a good idea to use a filling paste on the back to give more structural integrity to the big spaces so they don't get crushed.

I was thrilled to see so many lilacs in Wisconsin, I love them. I know they are in Chicago, but there aren't that many in my neighborhood and I will miss them when I move back to California.