I'm off to Houston to be Active in the Quilting Scene!

Well, the weather in North Texas is getting me ready for Houston and the International Quilt Festival! It is in the 70's with 100% humidity! My class supplies are packed, my schedule is set to meet my network of friends for classes and lunch, my shopping list is growing (don't tell my husband) and I also have my list of vendor booths to go by and say "Hi! What's new?"(not all of us say "Howdy" in Texas)!

Oh, who are my network of Vendor Friends? Well, if you keep up with my blog you have read about Quilting Adventures. I love these ladies, they put on the best workshops! Barbara and Alice will be in booth #916. The QA ladies have a guest book to sign, and I think there is a drawing from the people who sign their guest book!
Then I have to venture off and see my new friend Frieda Anderson in booth #438, I wonder what beautiful hand dyed silk and cottons Frieda will have when I get there?
Now, Quilting Arts Magazine, booth #1244, I have to get my 2010 calendar and I think some of the books on my list will be in their booth and I'm sure there are some other tempting items!!!!

This will be my third year to attend the International Quilt Festival and my second to take classes. Last year I met so many wonderful women through my classes and was so surprised to meet so many that travelled from other countries for the festival and classes! Because of the friendships I make through the classes, and the knowledge passed on by the awesome instructors I look forward to this event every year and this year I decided to volunteer! On Thursday afternoon I will be with my friend, Gail Dentler, (Oprah isn't the only one with a friend named Gail!) at the Studio Artist Quilt Association (SAQA) booth answering questions and signing up new members! What a great way to network and expand our visions!

Well, I guess that is about it. I'm going to take my laptop and try to blog each day to tell you about my classes! So have a great rest of your week and a great week next week everyone, I'm off to stay with my brother and sister-in-law in Houston (Best Bed and Dinner in town! My SIL is the best cook ever!) and IQF!
Jules

Phantom Tree

Phantom Tree is one of the quilts I started at my workshop with Quilting Adventures in Boerne last month. The background fabrics are batiks from my stash. The tree is hand dyed silk that I bought from Frieda Anderson.

I really had to think about how I wanted to quilt it and how I wanted to bring out the three. Really I didn't want to bring the tree out too much, I just wanted it to fall into the background and I didn't want the background to dominate the tree. I was searching for a harmony between the two. I love the contrast of colors of the background and the movement of the batiks, so I decided to use the movement of the colors to drive the quilting. I echo quilted the tree and used my Fabrico fabric pens to give texture to the tree and emphasis the turquoise color in the tree.

Now, I'm sure you are wondering why the quilt looks askew...I planned that. I didn't want it to be an even sided quilt. Since there are bolder limbs on one side of the quilt, that side is a bit larger than the other side. The right side is an inch larger than the left. Just had to do it!

Day Three Quilting Adventures with Frieda Anderson

Today was our last day with Frieda Anderson and it was a complete joy. Frieda is a wonderful teacher and quilter and I feel blessed to be able to spend the past three days with her and the wonderful group of women who joined me with Quilting Adventures.
Frieda did a wonderful job of explaining and showing us how to start, progress and complete our machine quilting. I will admit, machine quilting has not been my area of expertise in the past, but from this day forward, it will improve! It was refreshing to listen and watch and then execute what we were learning today. Heck, I have needles that are self threading in my stash and had no idea what they were or what to use them for! Now I do and they are now my favorite notion!

Frieda, thank you, thank you, thank you for the wonderful learning experience and encouragement on stepping out of the box with fusing, quilting and sharing your beautiful hand dyed fabrics.
To all my new Quilting Adventure Friends, I hope you all arrived home safely and are ready to practice...practice...practice, and fuse...fuse...fuse. The time we spent together was so enjoyable and I love making new quilting friends! Mona, I hope you feel better!
To Barbara and Alice (Quilting Adventures), I will treasure the conversations and the encouragement that each of you shared and gave me. I admire your drive to allow us to learn under the best teachers in the quilting world. I'll be back!!!
To my blog followers, if you want a great group of ladies to retreat with, Quilting Adventures is the best! I promise, if you go on your own or with a friend, you will go home with a lot of knowledge, fabric and friends!
Happy Quilting!

Day Two Quilting Adventures with Frieda Anderson

Today was a great day. Freida had us put away the projects from yesterday and design our own project from the pictures we brought. Last night we had to complete some sketches from our pictures. I did two tree sketches that I really like, but to be able to complete the process in a day, I selected the easier one, duh.... Anyway, when I started placing the fabrics for the sky, I really liked the way it was developing, so I lost the idea for the ground and just did a beautiful blue, green, tan and purple fused background. It is always hard for me to start of selecting fabrics, I always end up changing my mind 100 times. This one turned out way different than I first expected.
After I was real happy with very excited about the background it was time to audition the tree fabric. This was just as hard as the background, but once I layed down the brown and turquoise fabric, I was pretty sold on it. This is one of Frieda hand dyed pieces and it is just beautiful, it actually looks like leather with turqouise layed on it. I just love to hold it!


The pink fabric you see in the corner is the fabric I picked to be the oak leaves of the tree. I'm anxious to finish this piece after I get home. It is really going to be stunning in my entry way!
Tomorrow will be our last day, Frieda is going to have us quilting all day and learning her techniques for beautiful and fluid quilting. Today she gave us a slide show of her studio and quilting examples.
It was a great time today. This group of ladies are the best. We have ladies here this week that are doctors, lawyers, CPA's, retired and fiber artists. All very supportive, genuine and challenging themselves to use the right side of the their brain!

Day One with Quilting Adventures and Frieda Anderson

Sunday and yesterday were great. Getting to know Frieda Anderson and meet the other ladies who came to the annual Fall Quilting Adventures has been a blast. Sunday we had a gathering to get acquainted and show what we have been working on and/or have finished from the last workshop. Then we had a "get to know" session with Frieda and saw a lot of her quilts and hand dyed fabrics, beautiful colors! Yesterday we had our first full day of creating a tree quilt. This picture above is how mine turned out. I love the vibrant colors. It is all hand dyed cotton except for the tree trunk, stems and roots ~ that is hand dyed silk. All of the hand dyed fabric I used today was from Frieda's stash (kit) that she handed out for us to use. We all opted to skip our break yesterday afternoon and continue working. Here are some pictures of our group.




We had homework for today. We had to create a few sketchs to create our own tree quilt today. We'll also be using our own fabrics...and what we want to buy from Frieda!