Road to California at the Ontario, California Convention center is already two weeks past.... all a huge whirl!
I enjoyed my classes with Esterita Austin and Cindy Grisdela - more about that below - and loved viewing the amazing quilts and seeing lots of friends. I did a small amount of shopping including some Cherrywood hand dyed fabric, a new foot for my trusty Viking machine and a little folding umbrella printed with Van Gogh's "Starry Night". It seemed appropriate since my little quilt depicting part of that wonderful work was part of the Cherrywood Van Gogh challenge on it's tour stop at Road.
In fact, my favorite part of my time at Road was participating in the artist book signing in the exhibit. Karla Overland, the owner of Cherrywood organized a group of us artists who were attending to sit in the exhibit on Saturday afternoon, sign the gorgeous catalogue she put together and talk to the public about our work and our inspiration for our entries in the challenge. It was great to meet the other artists, it felt like a sisterhood!
The next stop for this traveling quilter is in late March - Empty Spools Seminars at Asilomar in Pacific Grove. My ultimate favorite place! I'm looking forward to a workshop with Melissa Slobotka whose award winning quilt "Santorini Sunset" I admired at Road. Here it is below....
I enjoyed my classes with Esterita Austin and Cindy Grisdela - more about that below - and loved viewing the amazing quilts and seeing lots of friends. I did a small amount of shopping including some Cherrywood hand dyed fabric, a new foot for my trusty Viking machine and a little folding umbrella printed with Van Gogh's "Starry Night". It seemed appropriate since my little quilt depicting part of that wonderful work was part of the Cherrywood Van Gogh challenge on it's tour stop at Road.
In fact, my favorite part of my time at Road was participating in the artist book signing in the exhibit. Karla Overland, the owner of Cherrywood organized a group of us artists who were attending to sit in the exhibit on Saturday afternoon, sign the gorgeous catalogue she put together and talk to the public about our work and our inspiration for our entries in the challenge. It was great to meet the other artists, it felt like a sisterhood!
Here are a couple of very short video views of the exhibit.
Cindy Grisdela's one day class on "Artful Improv" was a bit out of my wheelhouse, but stretching oneself is a great thing. I enjoyed making these improvised components and by the end of the day I had a good idea of how to put them together using some of the design principles Cindy talked about. In fact, I've been working on it the last week or so and the finished product is below. I'm thrilled that Cindy will be coming to teach at my guild Westside Quilters in 2019!
in Esterita Austin's class we painted with metallic paints on parchment and then with a hot iron magically transferred the painting to organza. Here is mine waiting for an idea how to include it in a quilt. Whether i do or not it is a very interesting technique to put away in virtual toolbox for a later time.
Exhausted at night in my hotel room I still had just enough energy to work on an unfinished project from a workshop with Maria Shell that I took with me along with my Featherweight machine. I stitched all these colorful vertical rows together while I was away and am now comfortably at home putting in some hand stitching. I hope to debut it finished soon!
A few more quilts from Road I admired: Lenore Crawford's raw edge fused pine cones
And Linda Anderson's amazing painted and stitched Chinese actor.
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