Road to California's Melinda Bula's Class

Road to California is one of my favorite quilt events and I attend regularly. This year was no exception and I took a class with Melinda Bula. She's an excellent teacher. The class was her New Rose. Here's my version.

RIcky Tims Quilt Retreat

We're back in LaVeta, Colorado, home of Ricky Tims, where we're going to attend his Quilt Retreat. This is my fourth year to attend, aren't I the lucky one? I highly recommend this five-day retreat which is held in an independent study format. Mornings begin with a topic of the day to explore and words of wisdom from Ricky himself. Then it's off to quilt and make magic for the remainder of the day. This is a week of pampering at its very best. The food is superb, I've always stayed at the LaVeta Inn so the accomodations are fine, and you quilt as long and as late as you wish. The big plus is that Ricky is available for advice and assistance for the entire day. I certainly enjoy going every year.

The quilt pictured here is my friend Barbara's Kaleidoscope from the previous year. You can learn more about Ricky's retreat on his website www.rickytims.com.

Southwestern Fiber Arts Festival

I belong to the Southwestern Fiber Arts Guild and was privileged to be able to teach for them again this year. Next year's festival will be on October 30 at Amado Territories here in Arizona. That's south of Tucson for those of you who are not Zonies.

Imagery on Fabrics Class

It's off to Springerville, AZ, to teach Imagery on Fabrics, which is the class that garners the most attention. Springerville is near the New Mexico border and is about a 4-hour drive from Phoenix. I'm providing a Power Point presentation and have brought printers so that my students can put their own photos onto fabric sheets. I prefer Printed Treasures or Electric Quilt fabric sheets and highly recommend either of these two brands. One advantage of the EQ sheets is that there is a 13" by 22" fabric sheets so that your images can be larger. I do teach the posterizing, which is another way to enlarge your images on fabric. This technique uses "tiles" or multiple pages for your image. It can be very effective for art quilts.

Tucson Wool Festival

Kathy Withers of Withers Ranch has an eight acre working ranch where she holds the Tucson Wool Festival every October. I taught classes in felted spiral making, embellished felting and creating silk paper. In addition, I had a vendor booth where I sold our line of felting tools, silks and felting books. Kathy gives tours of her ranch throughout the day and those are very popular and her gallery is always filled with colorful fibers from her animals and her wonderful novelty yarns. Visit Kathy at uniquedesignsbykathy.com for your fiber needs or to get the dates of her festival.

Back in Phoenix!

Hurray, we're back in Phoenix! Yesterday it was the Arizona State Fair where I spent the day judging quilts. What a fun day. We've arrived safely in Phoenix and will start teaching quilting and felting classes here in the studio right away. Watch for details.

Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival

Today we are vendors at the Wisconsin Sheep and Wool Festival. This is the first year for us and it appears to be a wonderful show. Our big seller for today is the Conversion Kits that adapt the Featherweights into felting machines that we call "Feather Felters". The adaptors make the machine transition from a sewing machine into a felting machine. I sold out of all I had brought for the entire 3 days before noon today. Who knew?

One fun happening was that I reconnected with two of my former students. Clare Thornley, who was one of my students at Midwest Folk and Fiber in Crystal Lake, IL, brought in her finished landscape to show me and then minutes later, a student from my landscape class last October at Amado Territories (south of Tuscon) appeared. It's it a small world, is't it? I was amazed.

My big deal of the day was finding a copy of "Feltmaking: The Why's and Wherefores" by Sheila Smith and Freda Walker. It's out of print and I have been trying to find it, and today I did! It was at Susan's Fiber Shop booth and I was thrilled to find it. I have Sheila's other books, but had been looking for this one for months to add to my personal collection. Yippee! If you don't yet know, Susan McFarland is the brains behind the Midwest Felting Symposium, where I had a positively fabulous time in late July.

More later on this show...

World Sheep Show

I taught "Sunrise, Sunset" at the World Sheep Fest in Missouri this weekend. Here are two photos of one of my students, Robin, creating her needle felted sunset from a photo she had taken. If you look carefully, you can see her inspiration photo in the first photo here in the lower right corner. Robin also was awarded first place in the needle felted category for her cat, which was marvelous!

I had a vendor booth as well and the big sellers at this fest were my purses. The "Mermaid Bag" sold first so it is now gone, in case you were thinking of it. Not to worry, tho, I have more felted purses.

We're in Bethel, MO This Weekend

This weekend I taught the Sunrise, Sunset needle felted landscape class. Here is one of my students from Illinois who got up at 4:00 AM to drive to Missouri to attend the class. It was a fun but rainy weekend. I was lucky that my class was early on the first day because it literally poured the next morning and the tents and tables were soaked. My traveling partner Terry brought home a Great White Pyrr puppy from the festival.

Arriving at the World Sheep Show

We have arrived in Bethel, Misssouri, for the World Sheep Show. It is a historical old German community that bursts with "sheep and show" on Labor Day weekend. I'm told it's been happening for 30 years now. There are even open-air church services on Sunday. The red brick building is a Bed and Breakfast.

Notice the sign?