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Interweave's Create Retreat is fast approaching and classes are filling up!

The retreat is going to be located in Lisle, Illinois, which is a suburb southwest of Chicago. You can fly into Midway (a smaller airport) or O'Hare, it's about the same distance from either.

I will be teaching two classes: Painting Fabric for Whole Cloth Quilts and Magical Metal Altars.

Painting Fabric for Whole Cloth Quilts (Wed, Aug 24, 6 hours)

Magical Metal Altars (Thur, Aug 25, 6 hours)

Click here for more detailed information about the painting class.

Both my classes have pretty small supply lists, which is always good when you are traveling by plane. I will be supplying the paint, fabric and metal (for the altars class), you bring paint brushes, rinse water containers, a paint tray and a few other things for the Altars class. The Create website shows the supply list for each class. For both classes, I'll provide patterns to work from if you want to concentrate on learning new techniques or you can bring your own designs to work from.

If you sign up for the Altars class and are local, I'd like to encourage you to bring your sewing machine, Bernina will be providing machines but they are shared for this class. I will bring one of my machines from home as well for students to use. 

There are many wonderful teachers you'll recognize from the pages of Quilting Arts and Cloth Paper Scissors magazines and many teachers from last summer are making a return this year, check out this great class line up.

Last year was a blast, click here, if you want to check out what it was like. I hope to see you there!

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A little fun in St Paul

The last class I taught in St. Paul was Tea and Ephemera, I have to apologize for not having photos, but it was a long week with four full day classes and the day ended before I realized I hadn't taken any photos. (I'll have lots more photos next month when I teach in California)

While in St Paul, Nina and I went to the History Center which was right up the street from the hotel and saw an underwear exhibit from Munsingwear, I loved seeing the old ads

and these great displays of bras and slips over the years.

look at those pointy cups!

I also thought this sphere from another exhibit was very cool.

The view of the Minnesota state capitol from the history center window.

I got such a kick out of returning to the hotel room at the end of a long day of teaching to see this cute origami towel dog laying on the bed. Maybe my son Ty should think about adding towel folding to his origami repertoire.

I guess Minnesota is the place to buy viking helmets :)

 and next time I need a diving helmet, I'll know where to go.

A beautiful church behind the hotel.

Before Nina and I hit the road and drove 400 miles back to Chicago, we stopped for breakfast at Mickey's, a family owned diner that opened in 1939 and has been open 24 hours a day, 7 days a week ever since.

We had a great breakfast, two perfectly cooked eggs, bacon and a mountain of crispy hash browns!!! If you get to St. Paul, I highly recommend it.

The drive home went fairly well except for the flat tire I got 100 miles north of Madison, Wisconsin. Thank goodness I was close to an exit and as I drove off the highway, I saw the backside of a Walmart with a garage door with TIRES in big letters over it! Luckily, it ended up just being a cracked valve, which only took half an hour and $12 to fix.

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St Paul Day 3: Metal Workshop

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

My third class in St. Paul was Heavy Metal Play Day, I was so excited to finally have the opportunity to teach this class after planning it almost 2 years ago. 

The first half of the class we concentrated on working with aluminum; embossing it by sampling the various tools in the kit, there are 10 different tips and embossing wheels, embossing the aluminum by rubbing over a leaf texture plate, coloring it with alcohol inks and alcohol based markers, then embossing pre-colored aluminum and sanding it to reveal the silver color on the raised design. 

In the second half of class we worked on copper, creating a more detailed image. Because the copper squares are a heavier gauge, they are sturdier and able to handle a lot of elaborate texturing and embossing, giving the images a lot of dimension. After the embossing was finished the copper was painted with alcohol inks and finally the embossed design was stabilized by adding a self hardening filler to keep it from getting crushed or dented.

One of the really wonderful things about this class is each student gets a metal tool kit courtesy of Walnut Hollow with several sheets of aluminum and copper, more than a $30 value, free. 

I'll be teaching this class at International Quilt Festival in Long Beach, Friday, July 29th. There are still a few spots left in the class if you'd like to join in the fun.

Tsukineko All Purpose Inks in St. Paul

My Tsukineko Inks class was a large one with 25 students. In this class I teach two different techniques for applying the inks to fabric. 

In the first half of the class we use a dry brush method with the Fantastix applicators that are dipped into the ink. Using the Fantastix pen tools are kind of like dipping a marker into an ink well and drawing with it. 

In the second half of the class we use paint brushes, mixing the inks on a palette and work on light hand dyed fabrics. 

These inks are really wonderful because they do not change the hand of the fabric and once they are heat set they are permanent.

I'll be teaching two classes using Tsukineko Inks in Houston at International Quilt Festival, November 1st and 3rd, I'd love to see you there!