Summer long artquilt exhibit at the National Quilt Museum, Opening Today!

I am very excited to announce that 5 of my quilts will be in an exhibit at The National Quilt Museum in Paducah, KY with the Chicago School of Fusing gals; Laura Wasilowski, Frieda Anderson, Melody Johnson, Emily Parson, Anne Lulle and Jane Sassaman opening July 15 and running through October 4, also exhibiting with us is the amazing textile sculptor Susan Else.

There are also several other fantastic exhibits at the museum happening at the same time. It just might be worth a trip to Kentucky!

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Southern California here I come!

I have been really busy the last week preparing to spend the second half of July in Southern California, with a quick trip up to Northern California to see my mom between teaching at Idyllwild Arts and International Quilt Festival. My bags are quickly filling with lots of supplies, I just hope I have room for clothes!

I'm looking forward to making new friends in my classes and seeing some of my near and dear festival peeps!

There are still some spaces in the Idyllwild painting retreat, Art Quilts: Painting & Surface Techniques if you'd like a creative getaway in the scenic mountains of Southern California, next week!

This is going to be so fun! On the first day we are going to work on color. Through a series of color exercises, you will learn how to mix paint colors to create the colors you want, learn how colors interact and affect each other and know what color combinations will give your art the most impact.

On the second day we are going to learn about painting on fabric; how to avoid paint bleeding, how to paint backgrounds, use freezer paper resists, paint smooth gradations, work with transparent glazes to build up color and contrast and how to paint fine lines and details.

On the third and last day we will add mixed media techniques to fabric; collage with sheer paper imagery and tea bags, use paintsticks, colored pencils, rubber stamps and transfers.

It's going to be an information packed 3 days, sure to give you the tools you need to take on your next big painted quilt or mixed media textile project. Check out the details and register now.

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A Sunny Day at the Antique Market

After getting rained out last month, it was so nice to spend a sunny day walking around the antique market down the street. I love living in the city! This was the day for seeing lots of awesome type, this thrills the graphic designer in me to no end.

When I was 18 and a student at Santa Rosa Junior College in California, I was the campus poster person for the student activities office. I designed posters for campus activities on an old letterpress machine using type just like this. I wish I could go back and use that press now, what fun I would have.

This is the type I couldn't live without.

I think these one foot tall letters spelling CUTE should be mounted on the wall over the bathroom mirror, for those days when one needs a little reminder :-)

My dog, Abby, grazing with the elephants.

Put a bird on it!

Beautiful glass!

I love this vintage store sewing machine parts bin.

It even had some needles still in it.

Indigo (nina) and I had a great day!

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Unusual clouds over Chicago

Last week we had some amazing clouds pass over Chicago, they were very ominous and threatening and had that slight greenish tinge that no one feels comfortable seeing, unless maybe you're a storm chaser.

It was really wild to see the undulations and circular rotations in the clouds. I couldn't help wondering what might come next, considering the night before we had a storm that brought golf ball size hail that blew out the 100 year old skylights in the Garfield Park Conservatory.

The wind picked up considerably with the clouds and it was a little intimidating going out on the roof of our building to get a good view, but it was too fascinating to resist. Oddly enough the clouds just kept moving east at a pretty fast pace and never let out a drop of rain.

Happy 4th of July!

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Sign up for Create before it's too late!

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.