Finished minis

 Here are some finished impromptu mini landscapes from our class this past weekend!  

Thank you 2 Friends Quilting!

 We spent 3+ hours yesterday playing with impromptu mini landscape quilts.  A huge thanks to the participants who were excellent company and good sports about being guinea pigs for this latest workshop, and to 2 Friends Quilting in Haydenville for hosting.  As usual, we made a wonderful mess, and everyone left with a landscape that was either quilted or pin-basted and ready to quilt!   The pics are everyone hard at work - hopefully there will be finished pics to share later on.  These quilts are small - ideal for framing under glass or turning into greeting cards.  

Every time I teach I end up thinking about art concepts in a new way.  This class had lots of discussion about value and contrast, paying attention to how one fabric can look dark next to light colors but can look light next to dark colors, and about how thread color and value can either blend two fabrics together or be used to separate them and make them stand out from each other.  We also talked about shading, and about how the viewer's eye is always drawn to the area of highest contrast when looking at an image.  Now that I think about it, we packed quite a bit into our three hours together!    

Thank you Paper City Fabrics!

A warm thank you to Paper City Fabrics in Holyoke, MA for hosting my flower quilt workshop last weekend.  The classroom was large and full of light, the students were delightful, and wonderful progress was made playing with trillium, an orchid, and irises!  Spring is on its way, even if we’re in the midst of the Ides of March.  These are works in progress, but I’m hopeful that folks will send me snapshots of their finished pieces.  

It's Happening on March 8, 2025

My flower workshop at Paper City Fabrics in Holyoke, MA was unavoidably postponed last fall, so it's happening next Saturday instead!  This class is particularly fun because folks can use the patterns provided or create their own.  Every piece is unique because of the scrappy collaged background.  Check out the details/sign-up here:

Flower Art Quilting Workshop – Paper City Fabrics

Flower Collage Workshop in Holyoke

Looking forward to my October 19 gig at Paper City in Holyoke, MA.  We'll spend the day doing raw edge applique flowers on a fabric collage background.  Patterns provided for trillium (easy), lady's slipper orchid (medium), and iris (difficult).  If you've taken this workshop before, you can bring a flower picture to work from and I'll help you make your own pattern.  (If you bring your own photo, please print it as large as you will want the finished flower to be.)  Sign up on their website.

Silver Bay Students

My students at Silver Bay were real troopers this week!  Not everyone is a night owl, but great progress was made in our evening class, and by the end of the next afternoon folks had designs and fabrics cut out and ready to quilt!  Those doing flowers even found time to get some stitching done.  I learned about some new techniques that I'm eager to try, and it was delightful to work with students who had a genuine interest in art and quilting.  Many thanks to the Silver Bay staff who made the workshop possible and who also helped with my pop-up exhibit.  

I even found time to reconnect with old friends, dip my toes in the lake, go for a paddle, and watch a hummingbird pluck gnats out of mid air for breakfast during the morning bird walk.  I saw the milky way for the first time in years, including some of the Perseid meteor shower, and had a lovely midnight  conversation with a staff member who assured me that the spirit and magic of Silver Bay are still present and meaningful to younger generations.  Many things have changed since I worked there in the 80's, and I continue to be fascinated by how, when I'm there, I see both what's in front of me and my memories from the past several decades.  It's a very unique form of time travel, and I hope to be able to go back to teach again next year.  

Watch for some of these scenes in future quilts!

Peony #1

This thread-painted quilt has been finished for a while, and I just realized that I posted it on facebook but never shared it here in the blog.  It's the first in what I hope to be a series of peony quilts.  With the dynamic edges, interesting negative space and subtle differences in monochromatic values, it's a continuation of my explorations into similar images of glass, water, and clouds.