Creating in the Middle of Things, Part 2

I spent last week teaching workshops at the Greenwood Quiltery in Guelph, Ontario. During this time I stayed with my sister in Waterloo. She goes to bed early and I am a night owl. This time I was prepared to actually create some of my own work on a teaching trip. The fabric was dyed, the pattern designed, and all I had to do was start creating. I am happy to say that I was successful at completing a complete quilt top during this trip! OK, some values need to be tweaked a little, but here is my striped dahlia.

In my December 8, 2010 blog post titled Why I Wish it were Summer I shared a photo I had taken of a striped dahlia and the shibori fabrics I had dyed on a pole to create the flower. This project seemed a little easier to create on the road than Red Stool (post below). That one is just too hard to take on the road.
I taught 4 different workshops last week. Below Sharon shows off the piece she created in my Liberated Radial Piecing class. By the end of the class she had almost completed this very cheerful radial design.

Upon my return to Ottawa, I was invited to meet Helen Heaney, President of the Austrian Quilt Guild, at the home of friend and student Anneliese Villeneuve. Anneliese is just about the closest thing to an angel on earth you will find. She devotes much of her time to volunteering with Victorias Quilts, a charity that delivers hand-made quilts to cancer patients. Anneliese has been a wonderful supporter of my art quilt career for many years. Helen has been President of the Austrian Quilt Guild (which Anneliese is a member of) for eight years, and has seen the membership grow from 250 to 700 during her time there. I shared some of my quilts with her and she had fun shopping out of my store of hand-dyed fabrics. Here we are, left to right, Helen, me and Anneliese.

Upon arriving home I was also able to pick up the more than 100 meters of fabric my friend Denise ironed for me while I was away. Several teaching bookings have been firmed up during this time so I have contracts to prepare and those dreaded taxes to finish! It will be a week of paperwork and more teaching locally.