New Class! Alternatively Bound and Stitched

I'm really excited to tell you about my new class, Alternatively Bound and Stitched, that I will be teaching in Long Beach at International Quilt Festival, Thursday, July 26th.

The focus of this class is not only learning 3 alternative binding techniques that work great with art quilts but also developing strategies for free-motion quilting designs, making a quilt sandwich, discussing; batting, basting, threads and needles, transferring designs to fabric and marking quilts for stitching more complex designs.

Along with making quilted and bound samples in class, there will also be a powerpoint with examples of different ways to think about what kind of stitching motifs to use for quilting.

As I began writing the handout for the class last fall, I found that I had so much information that I wanted to include, that it became a 17 page ebook! that each student will get on a disk in class.

The ebook is a pdf and can be uploaded to a tablet and opened in either kindle, ibooks or other apps for reading pdfs.

I emailed myself the pdf and opened it on my ipad and it worked beautifully.

I have already been asked about selling the ebook, which I will probably do when I have a chance to figure out the best way to do it. Right now I have A LOT on my plate to deal with, so please bear with me. Hopefully in the fall after I've moved and resettled I can get to it. In the meantime come take my class! ;-)

Are you going to International Quilt Festival Cincinnati?

This will be my first time teaching at IQA's newest location. I've never been to Cincinnati and am looking forward to spending a long weekend there this spring. Hopefully I'll still be in Chicago then and can make a road trip out of it instead of fly (so I can bring more stuff, lol).

If you'd like to take a class with me at festival I'll be teaching:

Tea & Ephemera  Thursday, April 12th

Color Theory,  Friday, April 13th

Heavy Metal Play Day,  Saturday, April 14th

Each of these classes are process based with lots of time to experiment and try out new techniques and media with minimal supply lists. Check out the catalog and sign up now!

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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!

Day 1 in St. Paul, what a week!

Last Tuesday, I drove 400 miles from Chicago, IL to St Paul, MN, the longest road trip I have driven by the way, to teach 4 classes at the Minnesota Quilters Show and Conference. It was a wonderful show put on by an all volunteer committee, very impressive!

Nina, my daughter and class assistant, painting fabric and then her coffee cup.

My first class on wednesday was Painting Fabric for Whole Cloth Quilts. I always enjoy teaching this class so much, it's probably one of the most information packed classes, squeezing as much info as I possibly can into 6 hours. This was my smallest class of the week with 11 students, the rest of the week's classes were full with close to 25 students.

All week my classes were held in a huge room with plenty of space for students to work.

There were a lot of wonderful paintings, the class created freezer paper masks, textured backgrounds, gradated colors, worked with glazing paint to create more contrast and intensity with color and painted fine lines and details. I always provide images for my students to work with, so they don't have to stress about being creative while they learn new skills.

It's so fun to see the different ways people paint the images, while they practice the different techniques.

Nina's painted fabric that she worked on in class.

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Hitting the road to St. Paul

I have been busy for the last week, packing supplies for teaching 4 classes at the Minnesota Quilters Show and Conference this week. I have never been to Minnesota before so I am looking forward to seeing a little more of the midwest. Now add to this pile 2 more suitcases for clothes for me and Nina and then I am also dropping my son off at the airport for a trip to the east coast on the way, so we also have to fit him and another suitcase in the car, good thing he packs light, lol.

The tall stack of boxes is all metal kits for my class Heavy Metal Play Day. Each student is getting an awesome metal tool kit courtesy of Walnut Hollow with aluminum and copper metal sheets to work with. I am also teaching this class in Long Beach at International Quilt Festival next month so if you havent signed up, you should, you get a about $40 of free supplies with this class! It's a total deal!

I took my first full weekend off in a long time to go to the Chicago Blues Fest, what a blast, 6 stages playing awesome blues music and it's FREE! Here's a video from 2 years ago of a couple of my favorite musicians at the Blues Fest, enjoy!



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Are you going to International Quilt Festival Long Beach?

July and International Quilt Festival, Long Beach will be here before you know it. I am so excited, I love being in Southern California and teaching in Long Beach. The class catalog is out and registration has begun, so I wanted to let you know I will be teaching three classes this year.

Thursday, July 28

Tsukineko All Purpose Inks
Tsukineko Inks have a broad range of applications for painting fabrics. You'll learn effective blending and shading techniques, working with wet and dry brush application methods on white fabric and light hand dyes. You will be amazed at what these inks can do.

PS this class has a required supply fee for the basic color set of inks, if you want to take the class but already own these ink colors, email me after you have registered and I can arrange to order 12 additional colors to supplement the colors you already have.


Friday, July 29
Heavy Metal Play Day
Spend a day working with craft metal and discover a variety of ways you can add flash to your mixed media projects. Learn several embossing techniques, working with an assortment of tools to create designs with dimension and texture on aluminum and copper. Methods for joining metal  to other media and adding color with alcohol inks will also be explored.

Each student in this class will receive a Creative Metal Tool kit ($29 value) and aluminum and copper metal courtesy of Walnut Hollow.


Saturday, July 30 

Tea & Ephemera
Your mixed media cup will runneth over while exploring a number of ways to add visual texture and imagery to mixed media work with tea bags, yes, I said tea bags! printed abaca paper, colored pencils, textile paint, rubber stamps, transfers and paint sticks.


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Preparing for my first teaching gig of the year

After living in Chicago for 5 years, I feel bad admitting, I have not seen very much of the mid west, If I am not getting on a plane to some distant location, I am usually trying to get in a little bit of time to make new work and playing catch up for my next teaching gig. So I welcome opportunities that get me out to see other parts of the mid west.

Now, I am getting ready for my first teaching trip of the year with the Ann Arbor Quilt Guild next month. I have never been to Ann Arbor but I have always heard such great things about it, so I am really looking forward to my visit.

On Friday March 18, I'll be teaching Tea and Ephemera which is a fun introduction to multiple mixed media techniques, incorporating tea bags, printed abaca paper, paint sticks and more.

Saturday I am giving a lecture on Inspiration and Sunday I am teaching Fiesta Ornaments. I've been told there are still a few spots left.

This is a really fun class with painting on fabric instruction, an opportunity to sew aluminum craft metal and do some decorative embossing. An added bonus in this class is each student gets an embossing tool courtesy of Walnut Hollow. Click here to see some of the awesome ornaments students have made in other classes.

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International Quilt Festival Houston

I am so excited Festival is next week, I can hardly wait! Although, I really do need time to pack, you have no idea how much teachers have to bring. Thank you Southwest for 2 free bags!

Even though it's a ton of work to prepare for, Festival is the highlight of my year, I love it! Gorgeous work to see, loads of inspiration, fun shopping, reconnecting with great friends, awesome events and classes, it's just the best! Those of you who still haven't been, you really should find away to get there one of these days, you won't be disappointed.

Here's a rundown of my teaching and demo schedule at Festival.

Tues, Nov 2-   Tsukineko Inks  (6 hour class)
Wed, Nov 3-   Color Theory  (6 hour class)
Thurs, Nov 4-  2 - 4 pm - Mixed Media Miscellany (Tea & Ephemera demo)
Fri, Nov 5-      12:40 - 2:40 pm - Open Studios at Make It University
Sat, Nov 6-     10 am - 12 pm - Open Studios at MIU
                      2:45 pm - Origami pop up book workshop at MIU
                      5:30 pm Surviving the Runway at MIU

then for the grand finale, dance until we drop at Gala on the Green at 7 pm! Woo hoo, too much fun!

If you see me at festival, please stop and say hi, I love meeting my blog readers.

Productivity!

Don't you love it when you feel like you have accomplished a bunch of stuff on your todo list? I had a really productive day yesterday, I feel like my batteries have been recharged. I am preparing to teach Tsukineko Inks and Color Theory in Houston at International Quilt Festival in November and I have sooooo much to do. I don't think students realize all the hours that go into preparing to teach classes, the actual teaching is the easy part.

I am happy to say my tsukineko Inks class is full, yay! Yesterday, I tore enough white fabric and dyed a rainbow of light colored fabric for a class of 30 (25 is full) to use in the inks class, ordered over a thousand dollars worth of ink for kits, printed and stapled handouts and another 150 pages of images for students to work from.

I have been running my color theory class online for a couple years, but have not taught it to an actual classroom full of people, so I have been adapting a lot of the materials to be used in class over the last several days and last night printed 400 pages of handouts and charts. Today my goal is to collate them and put them in individual packets and refill paint bottles.

When I began teaching I started transfering paint to these boston round bottles with screw tops, it saves so much wasted paint and is also much easier to use in class with lots of students.  These are great bottles since they are squeezable and the screw tops make a good air tight seal. Now I love having my paint in them for my own use too. You can order some for yourself here.

Tea & Ephemera, round 2: Sunday morning

Sunday morning I think all of us were tired and happy, glad that we had such a wonderful opportunity to spend this time together making art and friends. Knowing that these were our last few hours were a little bittersweet.

Preparing fabric for everyone to use before hand really helped the class be more relaxed and we got to more techniques before our short time together was over.

Thank you so much to all the staff at Interweave, Cloth, Paper Scissors, Pokey, my fellow, incredibly talented, instructors and especially the students who made it such a fantastic week. I can hardly wait until we get to do it again!