Virtual Studios at Quilt Festival

These are some of the other gals who participated in the virtual studios. Cheryl Prater, a former Chicagoan, who was very funny and I wish I had more time to hang out with, she seemed like a real hoot! In front is Debbi Crane who had some wonderful art books, she alters them and also makes her own bindings, gorgeous! And then there is Julaine Lofquist Birch, the creater of one of my favorite little quilts, Green Goddess Dressing.

You can see more pictures from Virtual Studios on the the Quilting Arts website at Make it University.

Fauna

Our group quilt "Fauna" in the Quilting Arts magazine booth at International Quilt Festival Chicago. photo by nina this time.

Kelli Perkins sat across from us in the Cloth Paper Scissors Virtual Studio, she was making these beautiful little paper beads, total eye candy. This is my sisters picture, I could never get a clear shot of her there was always a crowd in front of her table. You can see pictures of her beads on the Quilting Arts website.

The Artgirlz had all sorts of fun things in their booth like these little felted balls that you could decorate and make into bracelets, necklaces and other cool stuff.
They reminded me of my felted ball ornaments I made at Christmas, so I brought them over for a bit of show and tell.

Chicago Quilt Festival

This is the offical greeting party for quilt festival. You can find Laura and Frieda at the ArtFabrik booth.
This is my sister Deb working on her fabric book and me painting in the virtual studios being observed by Allison from the cool sister art duo Art Girlz.

Here I am with our group quilt Fauna in the Quilting Arts booth. My sister cut off my panel with the chameleon when she took the picture. Tomorrow I will have my daughter Nina take a picture.

Frieda thought we all needed to get our picture taken with Alex Anderson, who was sitting two booths over.

Nothing but the utmost in professional behavior at Lauras booth.

Flora and Fauna

Flora detail
Flora and Second Nature are our two group quilts that came before Fauna. They can be seen on the Quilting Arts Website here. If you havn't seen Fauna yet, you need to go pick up a copy of Quilting Arts magazine (April May issue).

I will be painting a sample based on my latest quilt Arbol de Vida at the International Quilt Festival/Chicago friday from 2-4 in the Quilting Arts magazine's Virtual studios by Make-It University. This piece will probably turn into my donation for the Silent Auction at International Quilt Festival/Houston. I will also be at the virtual Studios on Saturday from 2-4pm.

Fantastic Lecture on Creativity

Sir Ken Robinson is author of Out of Our Minds: Learning to be Creative, and a leading expert on innovation and human resources. In this talk, he makes an entertaining (and profoundly moving) case for creating an education system that nurtures creativity, rather than undermining it.

Click on the picture of him in the sidebar on the right to see the lecture that took place at the 2006 TED (Technology Entertainment Design) conference.

Virtual Studios at Quilt Festival

International Quilt Festival/Chicago is coming up April 13-15. This year Quilting Arts magazine is expanding beyond Make-It University classes to also have virtual studios. Two to four different artists at a time will be creating art throughout the day friday, saturday and sunday.

My sister Deb and I will be guest artists on Friday and Saturday afternoons from 2-4. I will probably be painting with textile paints on one day and painting with Tsukineko Inks on the other. I think Deb will be working on artist journals.

Dad, I love you and will miss you terribly

March 26, 1935 - March 27, 2007
I am flying to Maine in the morning and will be off line for the next 5 days.

New felt hat

This is another felted hat just like my brown one (pattern from Fiber Trends. This one is knit with Knitpicks Merino Style wool. It is lighter weight and not as fuzzy as the brown hat knit with Lambs Pride bulky. It took about a skein and a half of the color Storm and I used a little Black and Tide Pool to knit the band.

Fauna Makes the Cover of Quilting Arts!

Here is what Pokey had to say about it on her blog:

"Here's a sneak peak of our next cover of Quilting Arts. (I just got my advanced copy yesterday). This is a detail of “Fauna”, a collaborative quilt by Kathy York, Vicki Hallmark, Frances Holliday Alford, Judy Coates Perez, and Julie John Upshaw. Never before in the history of Quilting Arts Magazine have we dedicated eight entire pages to a single quilt, but it's that amazing. (I still have this quilt in my possession as we'll be featuring it in our Quilting Arts booth in Chicago.) Subscribers, this issue is being mailed as we speak, and for those who pick up Quilting Arts on the newsstands, expect to see it April 3rd."

The seahorse is from Kathy York's panel of Fauna. Congrats on making the cover girl!

I am so thrilled that Fauna is making its public debut on the pages of Quilting Arts. Pokey and her staff have done such a fabulous job with showing the quilt, each panel is featured on a seperate page of the magazine with a full page photo. The photography is exceptional. Just wait until you see the photo of Vickies cactus panel, (the reason our quilt was rejected from Houston) it is jaw dropping gorgeous!

Lace Shawl #2

Well, here is my second attempt to knit the Print O The Wave Stole by Eunny Jang. The top picture is the finished shawl as it came off the needles. Not much to look at. Once the shawl was blocked it was amazing how much bigger it got, this is a twin size sheet folded in half the long way. As I began pinning, it became quite evident I picked up a lot more stitches on one side of the shawl than the other to knit on the border. Thats what I get for not counting stitches and just winging it. The nice thing is that it is not noticible at all when the shawl is wrapped around a body. It is soft, drapey and warm made in Knitpicks Alpaca Cloud. I am happy to say that the shawl does look much more like it is supposed to this time.