Teaching Visit to the Okanagan.

I spent last week in the beautiful Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, teaching at the Cherry Tree Quilts retreat. Cherry Tree Quilts is a full-service quilt shop, with a wonderful assortment of contemporary and modern fabrics, located in Summerland, British Columbia. It is owned by Barb Gillespie. She is featured in the photo below.

During my visit all my Northcott fabrics were reduced by 25%. I kept joking that "Elaine Quehl" was on sale.

My accommodations were in Barb's home, with this beautiful view of Okanagan Lake. If this looks familiar to you, it is because I have likely posted a similar photo before. This is my third year teaching here. There will be a fourth, as I am booked to come back the last week of September 2016.

Quails are a common sight in the Okanagan. I always try to get photos but am never very successful. This Mama Quail and her teenager showed up outside my window so I was finally able to get a photo.

Quails can run pretty fast!

Sunday morning I had a chance to visit Summerland's Farmers' Market on Main St.

My lecture took place in the store's classroom on Sunday afternoon. Check out these red chairs. Nicely coordinated with my Red Stool quilts and the red outfit I was wearing!

My five-day Art Quilt class took place in the United Church hall. You can see the class diving into some dyeing exercises on day 2.

Joan, who took my 5-day dyeing class last year, showed us the lovely cover-up she dyed after the class.

The class learned a lot about composition and design, and then had the chance to try out their design skills. The first exercise was a "seat of the pants" exercise, while the second involved designing a pattern.

We posted all the finished or nearly-finished works on the wall on Friday morning and spent some time discussing them and providing feedback.

Here's Beth showing her partially-finished poppy, that she designed a pattern for.

Not all my photos turned out great due to lighting issues (I wasn't using my normal camera as I was trying to lighten up on the amount of "stuff" I needed to take).

Here's an interesting piece by Effie. The jumping off point was a cross-section photo of some logs.

Connie and her poppy buds on a moody background.

Doreen's lines are simple and dramatic on this landscape.

A whimsical design by Kathy, featuring polka dots.

Wonderful abstracted cityscape by Elaine.

A landscape I could walk into by Marilyn.

Miriam did a fine job of creating depth with stairs that get progressively narrower and darker.

Roxanne created a story quilt about her travels from Alberta to British Columbia, with the deep purple triangles representing the Rocky Mountains.

We managed to stop for a class photo on Friday. 

Twenty eager and creative students! What a great week we had and I am feeling so inspired by them.

I see this same rose on Barb's property every time I teach there, but I don't always get a good photo. This time I'm happy with my photo :-)