Houston Mixed-media Demo

Thursday in Houston brought an afternoon of demo's at the Mixed-media forum. I had a blast showing everyone how to marble and stencil on wool fabric...yes we've used the Tsukineko inks on cottons, but wool? Why not! We also dyed our silk sari ribbon to match, and even some pearl cotton to stitch it all together and embellish it with. Here's a photo of some of the pieces I demo'd, I did use some of them later to make a special gift for my daughter.

Houston Pincushion Classes

I also taught a couple of pincushion classes at Houston Quilt Festival. Friday night was our "Daddy's Necktie Pincushion" class, and we made pincushions out of silk neckties. I took a ton of neckties for them to choose from, there was just enough really, with just a few to spare.The pincushion takes 6 necktie "ends", so they could swap around with each other if they chose. I also took some fun buttons and beads for decorative pins, gotta have some fun with embellishments! Their pincushions really turned out pretty, I know they'll enjoy them for years to come.

Sunday was my last class before heading out to visit my daughter in Texas! It was small and cozy, and  I even knew a couple of my students. They created the prettiest little Crazy Patch Pincushions, so proud of all of them!

Saturday's Nuno-felted Scarf Class, Houston

Yes, Saturday in Houston was Halloween, and there were a lot of folks dressed up and celebrating! That afternoon I taught a class in nuno-felting, one I normally spend 5 hrs. teaching with a lunch break I had to do in 3 hours - and we even dyed our scarves! The only way to do it was to start with a smaller scarf; normally I use 6 ft. long scarves, but for this we used 5 ft. scarves that were not as wide. We all had fun! The students loved the dyeing, and made some spectacular scarves. Here are a few pictures of some of the scarves.

 Beautiful scarves my students dyed, ready to be embellished and felted!

Gorgeous scarves created by my students, love that poppy red on the lime green! And also the gorgeous colors and fibers on the other, so happy and cheerful!

Beautiful festive scarf of many colors, love it!

 Adore this scarf of purples and blues and the embellishments she used.

More finished (but wet) scarves in beautiful rich colors, each one a work of art!

Saturday Sampler in Houston

Saturday at Fesival was a busy day! First I participated in Saturday Sampler, I demo'd how to sew the Spiral Rose on the sewing machine. I'd had lots of long sections of silk neckties from my "Daddy's Necktie Pincushion" class the night before, and made a red

silk necktie rose out of one of them. Then I brought the extra's and offered them to the attendees for 2/$1.00 - a great price for silk! I did the demo with jelly-roll strips, and made about a dozen during our 2-hr. sampler. If you missed it, there's a link on the Home page of my web-site to my Youtube video on how to sew them.

Festival, Day 2: Felted Lattice Scarf Class

The second day of teaching at International Quilt Festival in Houston had me busy as a bee teaching my Felted Lattice Scarf class to a large group of students, many of which had never felted before. But I love teaching felting, truly this is my passion, I love sharing my knowledge and experience and watching them take off down their own personal creative path. Large classes are special, as everyone can learn from each other's individual style. And this class was no exception, we had an awesome mix-up of students, they loved selecting their own "goodies" from my "embellishment buffet" of yarns, Angelina. curly mohair locks, bamboo and silk to go with their hand-dyed wool fibers. Here are a few photos of some of the scarves, so proud of each and every one of them!

 This talented spinner chose a wonderfully sun-shiny color palette of fibers and found the perfect yarns, bamboo and goodies to really step it up!

A wonderful colorway of roses and pinks formed the base of this beautiful piece.

 This happy gal created her work of art with lavenders and blues, stunning colors for her!

 This lovely piece was created as a gift for a very lucky recipient, beautiful!

 Love the teals and greens in this gorgeous work of art, nice long fringes.

 I adore the colors and layout this gal used to make this one for a fall table runner!

 A beautiful airy scarf in colors that matched her jacket (see it on the left?) perfectly!

 Beautiful golden hues in this extra-long scarf, will be perfect for this tall lady!

 Love these colors of greens and blues, and she used the perfect curly fiber accents!

 A lovely scarf in colors of Monet, looks great on this gal!

 This student created an elegant simple scarf in beautiful shades of sky blue.

 The gentleman who created this beautiful piece chose my fave shades of green, love it!

 This lady chose the perfect color palette to go with her hair for this gorgeous piece.

 Loved the eclectic mix of colors and fibers this creative lady used in her work of art!

 This experienced felter created a beautiful Christmas table runner, notice how she took the time to tuck under her fringed edges for a very clean, elegant, symmetrical look.

Loved the fun colors and goodies used by my "teacher's pet"/helper in her scarf. It was amazing she did this in addition to all the help she gave me in passing out all our tools, getting water, and clean-up - what an angel! And a fun, wonderful class too, I thoroughly enjoyed it, as I think they all did.

Crazy Quilt Placemat Class

The morning after packing up my booth for Houston Quilt Market started out bright and early for my first Festival class: my Crazy Quilt Placemat. We had a wonderful variety of fabrics in our class, everyone chose their own from chickens to Christmas, Asian-inspired to good ol' traditional Texan. The students all pieced the top for one placemat, then played with fun stitches to do their decorative-edge stitching over the seams. Most finished one and some even started cutting out the rest! Here are a few pictures from class, loved seeing all the different fabrics they picked.

 I loved the jewel-tone fabrics this student chose for her placemat, gorgeous!

 This sweet-spirited lady was such a delight to have in class! She did a wonderful job, and her fabrics reflect her happy joyous attitude.

 We were blessed to have a Bernina thread expert in class! Loved the eclectic mix of colorful prints she chose...not unlike the beautiful vest she wore in class that she had created.

 Loved these chicken placemats! This gal cleverly fussy-cut her centers with chicken fabric and used a nice range of value, scale and color.

 Some of my favorite colors! And I loved that pop of orange in the center.

 This gal is going to be all ready for Christmas! She ambitiously cut some of the rest of her mats while in class so she'll be ready to finish in plenty of time.

Can you tell this gal is from Texas? Loved her folksy color palette, and she has room in her simple center to stitch a Texas star.

 Beautiful Christmas prints in a nice range of color, value and scale, these will be gorgeous!

Doesn't this color palette remind you of a morning glory? A nice subtle color palette to match her dining room.

This creative lady used beautiful Asian fabrics with a touch of gold metallic in the print. She's making them for a gift, and is going to add black napkins to the built-in napkin loop and bamboo chopsticks, won't that be stunning?

And just so you can see how they'll look when they're finished, here is my Crazy Quilt Placemat pattern everyone started with that has my signature built-in loop for the napkin. So proud of all my students, they did a beautiful job with their mats!

Houston Quilt Market - Day 2

There is always excitement in the air on the big opening day of quilt market, and this year was no exception! I finally got my booth set up the evening before, I may have been the last one out of there this time. But it turned out pretty good; I'd done lots of new patterns using Andover's new "Little House on the Prairie" line of fabrics and Woolfelt, and had a great response to them in spite of the nasty weather. My "Magic Apron" pattern was a big hit, so named because not only is it comfy and easy to make, it fits a multitude of sizes and looks great on everybody! My new "Prairie Pouch" is also a fun shoulder bag with 2 flap styles, and can be made up in linen, cotton, velvet, home dec fabric, lots of possibilities there. My sister even found me a couple of western branding irons to hang the pouches on! The Easter Egg Placemats are made up in the Prairie Flowers line of small prints, but would also be so cute in hand-dyes and batiks, don't you think? Remember how Mama would sell her eggs to the Oleson's store?

Great-grandma Ruth and I, modeling my new "Magic Apron" styles.

 Lots of new designs featuring the new "Little House on the Prairie" fabrics and Woolfelt.

 Nellie and Ms. Beadle from the TV show doing book-signing in the Andover booth, there's my new Magic Apron centered right behind them!

 There's my new Magic Apron in the center of Andover's booth, I think they liked it!

 Pics from my market booth.

And Mama made a tasty pie on the show too, so I included a new Woolfelt pie pincushion pattern in our line-up: shown here are pumpkin and cherry, the cherry "filling" being made of the new Adobe Red Woolfelt color. And for my 100th pattern: a new "Anna" doll pattern, as my first Annie's Keepsakes pattern was a doll, I thought it only fitting I should make my 100th one a doll design too, especially as this year marks our 25th year of business! I had found this great wagon at a local antiques flea market, and it really looks like Pa's wagon from the original show. It was the perfect size for my doll and pies display, but needed a horse to pull it. So I did a "retro re-do" and brought my Hobbyhorse design out of retirement, updating his cart to just a set of wheels. He was a big hit too! Here are a few pics of opening day at Market.