SAQA Conference, Santa Fe and Auction

I just put the finishing touches on my one foot square auction quilt for the 2013 SAQA Benefit Auction. Although the final deadline is June 1, I wanted this finished before I head to the SAQA Conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico this week. I can't wait!

Travelling in the Southwest a few years back, I spent a day in Santa Fe and loved it. In fact it is the place I met the inspiring tree that is featured in my first tree quilt, "Standing Still", made just after I left my day job.  Here it is!

The sky was bluer than blue that February day. Below is a photo of the amazing trees I met. The online forecast for this coming week is sunny sunny sunny for Santa Fe. Did I mention sunny? Hubs will be home taking care of all feline needs.

Thought I'd share just a few pictures from my 2008 visit to Santa Fe as I anticipate the sights I will experience in the upcoming week.

Chile peppers drying on an adobe wall.

Beautiful buildings and art along Canyon Rd. (gallery row!)

Jane Sauer Gallery (formerly the famous "Thirteen Moons" Gallery) where you will always find quilted art.

Native Americans selling their wares (mostly silver jewellry) at the Palace of the Governors.

There is an awful lot of ironing awaiting me. I've just dyed another 36 meters of fabric. The pile of un-ironed fabric now stands at 91 meters. I am preparing to be a vendor at the Ottawa Valley Quilters Guild show on Mothers Day Weekend. I hope to finish some of the ironing today, but whatever doesn't get finished will surely be waiting for me when I get home!

Student Work

From time to time I have the pleasure of sharing the work that students make in my classes. Sometimes I take pictures in class, but often they send me photos after class.  I'm delighted to share these photos today.

Lois took my two-day "In Full Bloom" class at Dragonfly Fabrics here in Ottawa and designed this rose quilt from one of my photographs. Beautiful. It still needs to be cut away from the muslin and placed on a flattering background.

Jenny took my "Collage Tree" class at the Lively Heritage Arts Guild, just outside Sudbury, Ontario last Fall. She created her own tree rather than working from one of my patterns. This normally only happens in my two-day "Collage Tree" class where students design their own tree. I like that it is different from mine :-)

Sherry-Lynn was in the same class as Jenny and used my "Branching Out" pattern. Instead of adding appliqued leaves as I did, she quilted the suggestion of leaves into her background.

Ghyslaine took my "Collage Tree" class at Dragonfly Fabrics here in Ottawa and just completed her tree. She dyed her own fabric for the background and leaves.

Sharon took my "In full Bloom" class in St. John's, Newfoundland last winter, and recently sent a picture of her completed poppy quilt. I hope you can see her beautiful free-motion stitching by clicking on the photo to bring up a larger version.

Claudette took my "In Full Bloom" class in Toronto two years ago at the York-Heritage Quilt Guild. A very fresh approach to the poppy using pinks.

Anne-Marie completed this wonky-pieced quilt in my "Liberated Strip Piecing" class at the Ottawa Valley Quilters Guild.  Stunning colour and also some lovely free-motion quilting.

Albertina always adds her own creative twist to things, as she did in this quilt called "Echo". It was started in my "Liberated Radial Piecing" class at the Ottawa Valley Quilters Guild.

I taught Part 4 of my "Uncommon & Unforgettable Threads" class at Dragonfly Fabrics in Ottawa on last a week ago. Judith is nearing completion of her thread sketch. We discussed some ways she could add more depth to the climbing vine with the addition of both darker and lighter threads.

Ruth completed two thread paintings since the last class.  Love that little bottlefly, which is thread-painted on organza and water-soluble stabilizer in a hoop.

Ruth's orange is a stand-alone thread applique, painted on fabric and two layers of regular stabilizer in a hoop. Good enough to eat!

SPAM and Posting

Due to an ever increasing amount of SPAM being posted to my blog, I have had to move to `moderated`status. Your posts are important to me, and I thank you for your patience. Your comment will appear as soon as I have a chance to approve it.
Elaine

The Grand National Quilt Exhibition: Local Colour

The Grand National Quilt Exhibition is a national Canadian show that takes place every other year at Homer Watson House and Gallery in Kitchener, Ontario. A detail of  "Red Iris"by Carolynn McMillan, was chosen for the postcard above. You can see the full view of this beautiful work on her blog.

If you are in the Kitchener, Ontario area between April 21 and June 23 you can take in this exhibition, featuring about 50 works from across Canada.

Two of my works, "Red Stool", and "Invitation" (pictures below) were juried into the show and will be on display. The official opening reception is on Sunday, April 21, from 2 to 4 p.m. I won't be able to make it for the opening, but will view the show on a teaching trip to Southern Ontario in May.

Red Stool, 2011

Invitation, 2013

Spring has officially arrived in Ottawa. Look what is growing in my garden!

See You in France at Quilt en Sud

Come join me at Quilt en Sud, May 30 - June 2, in Saint Jean de Luz, France. Quilt en Sud is a volunteer-run show that is held every other year. The City is located in the Basque region of France, near the border to Spain, in the French province of Avignon.

I will have about 10 of my works on display in "la maison de l'infante", the pink building you see below on the Saint Jean de Luz waterfront. One of the organizers sent this photo a few days ago.

For more information on the artists exhibiting at the show click on Expositions. I'll be there in person to interact with visitors, except for the two days I am scheduled to teach.  Check out all the courses being offered. Mine will be in English with French translation.

Nova Scotia Lecture and Friends

I'm on a roll tonight, so I may as well finish blogging about my fantastic trip to Nova Scotia! Tomorrow is prep time for a class I'm teaching here in Ottawa.

Here are a couple of photos that Barb Robson took at my lecture in Mahone Bay

Barb has posted a lot more photos here.

My flight didn't leave until Tuesday night, which gave me some more time to tour around. Ann took me on a drive to Lunenberg to visit Laurie Swim in her home, studio and gallery. It turns out that Laurie has a new cat named Sheba, adopted from the local rescue. So here is Laurie and her cat.

I had a few snuggles with Sheba too. She's that kind of cat!

Laurie invited rug hooker Felicia Knock to join us. Felicia brought her beautiful colour box of hand-dyed wools. Hookers use them for rugs, but we saw the potential for quilts. I couldn't resist two pieces! This is Felicia with her beautiful fabrics, with Laurie to her side.

A big thank you to all the quilters I met in Nova Scotia for your hospitality! What more could I ask for than a trip with friendly quilters, beautiful scenery, good food, and of course a few felines!

Nova Scotia: Mariners Quilt Guild, Dartmouth

After Mahone Bay, I travelled to the Mariners Quilt Guild to teach two half-day workshops (Free-Form Curves and Flip n' Sew Curves). While I have been to Nova Scotia many times, I had never visited Dartmouth, just north of Halifax. It is a lovely small city with lots of bays and bodies of water and beautiful vistas. Our classes took place in a large and well-lit classroom at St. Mary's University.

I spent two nights with Deanne Hemphill and her two beautiful cats, Purry Como and Purry Mason. While Purry Mason eluded me, except for this photo of Deanne holding him, 

Purry Como was everywhere, and what a charming cat he is!  Isn't he handsome?

He loves to ham it up for the camera.

Students learned to cut and piece curves free-hand without a ruler, measurements or pinning. For most it was the first time working this way. Some found it stressful, while others found it liberating. All turned out a great piece that will either serve as a landscape or as a background.

Tina and Christina completed their pieces from the afternoon "Flip and Sew Curves" class by the next night when I saw them at my lecture. More on that in my next posts.

Nova Scotia: Peggy's Cove

On Monday morning, after my three days of teaching, Margaret and Deanne took me on a road trip to the beautiful and iconic site of Peggy's Cove. I took a few photos, and decided to do a separate blog post as these photos should be enjoyed on their own. Here is my favorite photo: a classic fishing village photo.

We stopped for lunch ... I had another lobster roll, and a piece of amazing gingerbread cake!

More photos of the lobster traps and fishing shacks.

The famous lighthouse on the rocks. As you can see the day was rather grey and threatened rain, although it cleared up later.

This photo was taken somewhere between Peggy's Cove and Mahone Bay, on the drive back to deliver my Monday night lecture to the Mahone Bay Quilters Guild.

I could easily live in a place like Nova Scotia.

Nova Scotia: Mahone Bay Quilters Guild

If I hadn't told you in the subject line of this post, I'm sure you could have guessed where I spent most of the last week by this photo of lobsters in a pot. I returned last night from teaching and lecturing for the Mahone Bay Quilters Guild and the Mariners Quilt Guild in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. While working with the Mahone Bay guild, I was billeted at the lovely ocean-side home of Ann Phelan and her husband Bruce. Check out this view from their back deck.

This was my bedroom ... another view of the ocean. After my three consecutive days of teaching, I just laid there on the last morning staring at the beautiful ocean! Ann's house has a wonderful southern exposure so it is filled with light.

I think you can see the view a little better in this photo.

I spent two days teaching my "Beyond Stippling, Part 1" and "Beyond Stippling, Part 2" free-motion machine quilting workshops. There were 20 eager students in class, and they all worked very hard and amazed themselves by their abilities over the two days.

This is Ann, whose home I stayed at. I kept teasing her that she was my "lobster provider". Although she herself does not like lobster (something I don't understand) she cooked two lobsters (which you see in the pot at the top of this post) and I enjoyed lobster sandwiches each day of the workshop. At night I enjoyed haddock and other delicacies that Ann prepared. She's a wonderful cook with a huge collection of cookbooks, and makes everything from scratch with only the freshest of ingredients!

Much to my huge surprise, look who registered in my class!! Yes, this is Laurie Swim, probably the most famous quilt artist in Canada, and definitely the one with the longest career. I've been saying it has been 30 years but found out on this trip that it is actually 40! Laurie has been a huge inspiration to me, and I so appreciate her show of support in coming to my class! Check out my blog post of  September 20, 2011 to learn more about Laurie. She was also interviewed on the CQA blog. Laurie makes her living from selling her fine art quilts. She has a studio and gallery in the UNESCO designated town of Lunenberg, Nova Scotia. She has been featured in Magazine D'Art, picked up by the Globe and Mail, and has two works in the Nova Scotia Art Bank.

While I was in Nova Scotia, the Maritime Fibre Arts Retreat was taking place at the Atlantica Hotel on Oak Island. You can read more about that on Barb Robson's blog.  We headed there after my first day of teaching, to find more than 200 fibre artists congregated for the weekend. There were quilters, felters, stitchers, spinners, bobbin lace makers, doll makers, rug hookers, etc. Look who I found: some well-known folks, including Margie Hennen, Penny Behrens, and Kate Madeloso

We had dinner with retreat participants at the Inn's restaurant.

After the workshop, student Linda Mills took all her practice sandwiches from my free-motion classes, attached them together, and sashed them. She did a great job. I think if you click on the photo you can see a larger version with more detail.

Here are some other samples from the class. I believe these are by Sandy Ternoway.

There are a lot more photos of the workshop here on the Guild's blog.

Next post will be about my visit to the Mariners Quilt Guild in Dartmouth.