Adventures and Teaching in Victoria, British Columbia.

You never know who you meet in your travels! A few days before I arrived in Victoria, British Columbia I received an email from Hilary Perrot who had noticed I was coming to Victoria. She moved from Ottawa to Victoria 12 years ago. In Ottawa we belonged to the same fibre arts group, Out of the Box. Around 2001/2002 she gave a talk for our group about dyeing. At the time she had a business called Fabricadabric, selling her hand-dyed fabrics. I went home from that talk and ordered my first dyes, fabric, and a book about dyeing. Hilary was always generous with information about supplies and processes. It was great catching up with a mentor and inspiration at Murchies Tea and Coffee.

My hotel was downtown and only a couple of blocks from the main tourist attractions.  Having been to Victoria several times, and as recent as two years ago, I sought out things that were new to me. However, I did go take the requisite shots. The hydrangea outside the Empress Hotel are always impressive.This was high tourist season and there were a lot of tourists!

Victoria is the capital of British Columbia, and you will find the provincial parliament buildings right across from the Empress Hotel and the harbour.

Empress Hotel

Victoria Harbour

My lecture, as sometimes happens, took place inside a church, and I got to deliver it from the pulpit. Yes, I got to pretend I'm a woman of the cloth again ... not untrue, is it?

Over the next two days I taught workshops to the Victoria Quilters Guild. Here's Elaine finishing up her hosta leaves. They only need to be attached to a background and quilted now.

20 students showed up to make hosta leaves.

Donna decided to try them in a different colour. Cool, eh?

On the second day of workshops I taught Liberated Strip Piecing.

This was my own sample that I used to talk about forming a composition. Students got to contribute and critique.

I'm pretty pleased with the results of the class. I'm sorry, however, but I cannot remember the names of all the students I met in eight classes. If you see your work here you can let me know and I will be happy to add your name.

Donna contemplates her design.

Daphne's resulting piece is really fun and playful.

Love the fence post bottom on this piece.

Fun with polka dots!

Modern in solids.

After the second class I had dinner with fellow Canadian teacher and friend, Daphne Greig, at a favorite restaurant in Sidney, just north of Victoria. Sea Glass Grill is along the harbour and is a beautiful location with fantastic food. I spent a fair bit of time before and after dinner photographing.

Next blog post will be about how I spent my last day in Victoria. However, I realize I haven't posted yet about the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. That will require a separate post for such an impressive place. A big thank you to the Victoria Quilters' Guild for inviting me to your beautiful city.

An Inspiring Week of Serendipity at Haliburton School of the Arts

Any time you see photos of deer on my blog, you can pretty much assume I've been teaching at the Haliburton School of the Arts. Last week's class was Serendipity Strips and Curves. The class is about cutting and piecing free-hand without rulers or measurements. It is intended to get students comfortable with free-form and liberated methods of construction, and introduce them to a variety of ways of constructing and designing free-hand.

We started by cutting curves free-hand. This one is Lynne's finished work.

We moved on to cutting curved blocks free-hand, and then designing with them. Once you get a stack of these blocks made you won't get any sleep because the design possibilities are endless. I encouraged Korleen to cut her blocks rectangular instead of square. I like the result.

Libby delved into her hand-dyed fabrics (from last Fall's "Dyeing to Quilt" class), as well as batiks and hand-painted fabrics to turn out this diagonal design.

Bill decided to work with his Tanzanian batiks, and add a few surprise turns into the design.

Tuesday night was the faculty reception at Rail's End Gallery. Each Tuesday night during the Summer School, there is a reception at the Gallery so students can meet instructors. All instructors are encouraged to submit a work for the show. This year I sent "Invitation".

 

 The class really got creative learning how to build free-form curves on a muslin foundation. 

Lynne: 

Liz: 

Korleen:

Susan:

This was a piece I started demo'ing on, and then finished to submit for the art auction on August 7. Proceeds from the auction go to student scholarships. This would be "Femmes FATales 4"

Students learned a method of free-form strip piecing, and how to design and construct with it. Bill started the wonderful trend of hanging these works on the classroom window. They glowed like stained glass!

Bill's window on left, Lynne's on right.

Libby's finished piece

I want to call Susan's piece "Shards"

Holly:

Liz's piece is reminiscent of chocolate, butterscotch and sherbet!

Each day I provided a demo, and then the class sewed and designed all day. Some chose to sew in the evening as well!

Here's the group shot. Back row, L to R, Libby, Lynne, Holly, Bill, Sherri, Susan, and Korleen. Front row, L to R, me, Liz, and Sheila. About half of the students were return students.

The last assignment was to form a radial design with free-hand cutting and sewing.

This lovely spring palette was created by Liz.

Lynne managed to finish hers.

 Sheila successfully combined the two halves of her radial design with the strip-pieced design from the previous day.

I realize now that I missed taking photos of some works that were not prominently displayed.

It is always wonderful to spend a week with such an inspiring and adventurous group of students! I am back home now with some catching up to do in the next two weeks before I head off to teach in the Okanagan Valley. 

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!