West Coast Week One: Richmond and Langley

I can't believe it's been nearly two weeks since I left home for my west coast Canada teaching trip, and I haven't managed to blog yet! I am starting today. I have the weekend off before I start my third week. I'm still on the Sunshine Coast and will be ferrying to Vancouver Island tomorrow and driving to Victoria to visit the last of four groups. I've seen so many amazing things in the last two weeks and the weather couldn't be better!

My trip started with a lecture for the Richmond Textile Arts group in the City of Richmond, just south of Vancouver. The lecture took place at the Richmond Cultural Centre, a beautiful centre with many cultural and artistic events happening.

I was shown the quilt that the group made to celebrate Canada's 150.

They received a grant to undertake the project.

What I like about the project is that everyone contributed pieces representing their favorite Canadian authors. I see some of my favorite books in the quilt.

A decorated piano was set up outside the Centre, and I met this young pianist who was happy to pose for a photo. Check out the heart-shaped glasses :-)

I gave a presentation called "A Design Journey", that talks about what I've learned about composition and design throughout my career. Many of my smaller works were hung for everyone to view and the remainder were laid out on tables and walked around the room by volunteers after the digital portion of my presentation.

The next day I delivered two lectures to the Langley Quilters' Guild in Langley, BC, as well as a mini workshop in the afternoon between the two meetings. This is one prolific group. Their show and tell took somewhere around an hour!! The two days of workshops that followed took place at the hotel I was staying at, which was very convenient for me. Day 1 was In Full Bloom. Most students chose to create the peony design. That seems to be the case this year. I received the following photo from Kathryn Davies who had finished her piece only a couple of days later.

The second day I taught a class on Hosta Leaves.

Nancy, who likes to create her own designs, asked if she could use the methods I was teaching to create her own hosta leaf. Of course, this makes the class even more interesting for me. It turned out well, didn't it?

While I was in Langley, a couple of students sent photos of pieces they just completed, that had been started in workshops with me. The first one, a blue rose, was created by Margaret Jessop Jones, and was started in my 3 day "Inspired by Nature, Designed by You" class when I taught it on Salt Spring Island two years ago.

The second photo came from Mary Zimmerman, who took my tree collage class in South Carolina in winter of 2016. I am always happy to see students finish.