Week Two, Haliburton School of Art + Design

It's a long weekend here in Ontario, and I've been doing laundry and putting away stuff for the past couple of days. I returned home Friday night after two weeks of teaching in Haliburton at the Haliburton School of Art + Design.

This post is about my second week, in which I had ten brave and eager students join me for a week of learning to liberate themselves from precision quilt making. I showed them five different ways to create free-form quilts. Thankfully someone suggested a photo of the class because last week I completely forgot to take a photo of the group in my dyeing class. From left to right are Shirley, Alison, Judy, Charlotte, Anne, me, Terry, Mary Anne, Kim, Cheryl, and Katharine.

This is just a small sampling of the photos I took. Here, Alison holds up her sample of "flip n' sew curves".

Mary Anne finished all the blocks for her "Reflections" piece. This method is addictive!

Cheryl decided to leave half of her blocks plain and piece only one side.

Anne's "liberated strip piecing" project.

Shirley's "liberated strip piecing" project in the process of being pieced.

Judy's:

Mary Anne's liberated radial design.

Katharine's half-finished liberated radial design.

During my week I had the pleasure of photographing a few amazing sights. This little fox (I think it is a fox) was sitting on the middle of the road having a good scratch when I drove out of the college one day. He retreated to the edge of the woods. This was captured with my cell phone camera, as are most of the photos I share on my blog these days.

So many inspiring classes were taking place around me, and that is one of the aspects of teaching in this venue that I enjoy. Almost across the hall Jay Dampf was teaching his annual "Animals in Art" class, and this little gem by Marian Kujtan was sitting on an easel just outside the classroom. She gave me permission to share her red fox pouncing in the snow. 

In the last year I got in the habit of taking photos with my cell phone while on the road. My DSLR Canon is just too heavy and takes so much space when I'm flying. However, after getting blurry photos of deer the previous week, I hauled out my Canon with mid zoom lens (which I did take with me), and got some very clear photos of the deer near my cottage. 

After witnessing this sight from a distance each day as I drove from cottage to college, I finally figured out where to park to capture it, and was once again thankful to have my zoom lens with me.

There is something about red, isn't there? And while I know they have been done before, and many times, I am facinated by reflections, to the point where I'm considering doing a series on them. However, I'll start by reading up on how painters approach them. But first, I am going to have to update my website, write a newsletter, and figure out how to sell the remaining kits from the classes I taught this spring. There are quite a few blue poppies, a number of red poppies, a couple of peonies and a few hosta kits left. When I have some time I will get them up in the shopping cart on my website and they will be available for a limited time until they are gone. I will post here when they are available. Soon, oh so soon, my vacation will begin :-)