Sorry for the long silence. My laptop developed the dreaded black screen and it had to take a visit to the Apple Store. All my photos were on it so I had to wait until I received it back to start blogging again. I have been on the road teaching so will catch up with all the wonderful student work over the next few days.
In the middle of March I spent 5 wonderful days teaching in Texas at Quilting Adventures.
It was fun to get to know and teach with Jane Sassaman, Melinda Bula and Flavin Glover.
One evening Jane shared her wonderful quilts.
It was so fun to see her version of her leaf sampler.
Flavin's quilts were fun I loved to see the variety of ways she interprets the Log cabin block.
Melinda's quilts were amazing.
What I loved was that for the week each one of us focused on nature but we all taught totally different techniques.
I had 12 great students in my class. Each designed a different quilt using wool, cottons, velvets and embellishments. Many were about their life and travels and others picked a theme that appealed to them.
Mary designed a quilt using my tree idea adding all the places she had lived and adding imagery that had a personal meaning from those special places.
Jean loves chickens and decided to use embellished feathers to make him dimentional.
Patti loved doing all the embellishment stitches on the leaves of her tree.
Rita has taken many classes from me and this time she started this new quilt.
She also brought her owl quilt to show me the progress she was making. Rita designed this quilt in a class she took from me last year at Asilomar.
Lisa has also lived in many places and wanted to incorporated her travels in her quilt. I love her Toucan she was starting to embellish.
Fay was very new to wool appliqué. She really took to the embellishment adding dimension to all the images on her 'Favorite Things' quilt.
Evelyne lives in Calgary and had taken a class from me when I was at 'Out of Hand' last year. She spends her winters in Arizona so come over to join us in Texas. She wanted to make a quilt of all the images she loves in the Southwest. I think she will have a great time embellish this one.
Sarah Scott brought all sorts of wonderful fabrics with sentimental value. Her goal was to incorporate them into her quilt and then add images related to her family.
She seemed to be really enjoying the hand embellishment.
Connie wanted to create a piece about her family farm. It was fun to see this develop. She used many ribbons and lots of hand dyed velvet.
Patsy started this piece with me in a previous class. She was ready for more stitches and layering. It is very fun to see how many students return to my classes to add new techniques and stitches to their pieces. I love to see these evolve.
My hope is that one day I can teach a 5 day embellishment class were everyone brings an appliquéd piece and we can then spend all the time embellishing with wonderful stitches and fibers. As more and more people return to do my classes I am thinking this maybe feasible in the near future.
Suzanne took on a larger project. Drawing her design then applying it to the background using her sewing machine. She decided to do it this way so she could enjoy doing some hand embellishment.
Alice is a master at machine embellishment and wanted to learn a little more hand work. I can't wait to see how this little piece evolves. She was adding velvet berries and stitches which really popped on her black background.
Alice started the piece below in a previous class and brought the finished piece to share with me. I love her soft colors and use of stitches and rick rack on the branches.
It was a treat to spend 5 days with all these gals. Their creativity and enthusiasm was infectious.
Many thanks to Deb and Kim for arranging such a special week.
Creative Stitching
Sue
