Asheville, North Carolina

Before giving my lecture and workshop I had a day to run around exploring Asheville and meeting up with friends.

My friend Carol Sloan drove up from South Carolina. Carol and I met online when she took my very first Color Theory class and then a year later we met in person when she drove to Atlanta to take two workshops that I taught at Fiber on a Whim.

Our day began with a trip to Discount Shoes. I fell in love with these rubber rain boots, if they would have had my size, they would have been mine!

After walking around the shops in downtown Asheville Carol and I met up with online friend Gwen Diehn, the author of many fabulous books on nature crafts, journaling and book making, it's very possible you may have one of her books on your shelf.

We met at a wonderful tea shop called Dobra. We sat on floor cushions on a raised platform behind beaded curtains and had tea, pita bread, herbed goat cheese and olives. Dobra has a wonderful other worldly feel.

Gwen and I also made a toast to our good friend Melly Testa who was going through her last chemo treatment that day.

After tea, Gwen treated Carol and I to a private tour of Bookworks where Gwen often teaches classes. Lucky for us, she was meeting an after hours journaling group there. Bookworks was on our list of places Carol and I had wanted to go that day, but we thought we had run out of time to see it.

What a fantastic facility, they have all kinds of book making classes and you can rent studio time as well.

There are several printing presses and a wonderful collection of wood and metal type. There is also a set up for screen printing and equipment for making paper.

It's funny, I never thought about it until now, but I think I am sort of like a great dane, I don't really feel tall when I am around other women until I see myself next to them, LOL!

Fiesta Ornaments with the Asheville Quilt Guild.
We had a great day making ornaments and we learned something new and very important!

Plastic sewing machine feet do not sew well on metal! This was the first class I have ever noticed this problem, I guess in all the other times I have taught this class, no one has ever used a plastic foot.

The problem was the foot gripped the metal too tightly and did not glide along the surface, causing the ornament to not move forward while sewing. Once the foot was changed to metal everything worked great.

These two ornaments have been painted and stitched but have not been embossed yet. Isn't the painting is beautiful?

There were a lot more ornaments made but several people had packed theirs away, too shy to put them out for the camera, but I can tell you, there were many fabulous pieces.

What a great time, Asheville is my kind of town!

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Festive times in Ann Arbor

The Fiesta Ornaments class is always fun, since there are a variety of different materials and techniques involved. The first half of the class we spend leisurely painting and during the second half we break out the tools.

The little fabric paintings are combined with heavy weight interfacing and colorful hand dyed fabric, then quilted and finished with a satin stitched edge.

Decorative edge craft scissors and x-acto knives are used to cut the metal frames.

The frames are then stitched to the quilted ornaments, people are always a little nervous about this step until they see how easy it is to sew.

Then the real fun begins when we pull out the embossing tools to decorate the metal with decorative designs.

Aren't they wonderful?!

An Ornamental Fiesta

At Create I got to teach one of my favorite classes making Fiesta ornaments. I saw several mother daughter teams at Create, what a fabulous time they always seemed to have together.

You know why this woman has such a huge grin? She had never painted before, aren't her ornaments fantastic?

I love having teachers in my class! they are always the best students ;-)

Here's my teachers pet finishing up her stitching on one of the Bernina 440's we were so lucky to have in our room. What a great machine, I would love to have one in my studio!

Beautiful!

International Quilt Festival Long Beach: Day 2 Fiesta Ornaments

Friday evening I taught Fiesta Ornaments. In this class everyone gets to paint, do a little quilting, and sew and emboss metal.

I always have students tell me how thrilled they are to walk out the door with a finished object!

An Ornamental Fiesta

Try your hand embossing and sewing metal, painting fabric and quilting. This is a fun class loaded with techniques. Inspired by Mexican tin folk art, these fun and festive ornaments incorporate painting with textile paints, quilting, embossing and sewing metal.

an ornament can even have doors.

Here are some examples of the beautiful ornaments made by students in the Fiesta Ornament class.