Houston Classes

I wrote about my class with Judy Coates Perez and now it's time to write about all the other wonderful classes I attended.

I really enjoyed the Friday Sampler class.

There were 25 teachers!  I couldn't make it to all the demos so I had to pick and choose a few favorites.

I sat in on Lesley Riley's TAP class.  I am a huge fan of TAP (transfer artist paper) and it was great to learn from the inventor of the product.  I have been using TAP for a few years now but I did learn a thing or two about the product.

Lesley is one of those teachers I have been friends with on-line and it was great to talk with her after class.   It is so wonderful to meet my on-line friends in person!

 Phillipa Naylor, quilter extraordinary, spoke at the first luncheon I attended on Thursday and was very entertaining.  She has a beautiful British accent and is very funny as well.  She started out as a fashion designer and is always dressed impeccably and to top it off she is a fabulous quilter who does everything on her home machine.

 I need to practice more so I can quilt like this!

And this!

 Fabulous fiber artist, Susie Monday, was demonstrating how to make stamps from foam.

 I love her quilts!

I really liked her paint palette: an old magazine.

Brilliant!

JB Scharf from Celebrate Silk taught about using silk fabrics and batting.

She sold me on silks.

I bought some over-dyed kimono silks as well as a piece of hand dyed silk in the vendor's mall all because of her presentation.

I also attended a very interesting demo on using sheer fabrics but got so wrapped up in the topic I forgot to take a photo.

Saturday's luncheon (I think it was Saturday, could have been Friday, no I'm pretty sure it was Saturday) was a great learning experience with a panel headed up by Lesley Riley.  Jamie Fingal, Caryl Bryer Fallert and Pokey Bolton were on the panel and discussed Finding Your Artistic Voice.

After the luncheon I got to meet Sue Bleiweiss, Caryl and Lyric Kinard.

All are fabulous artists and delightful people.

I was thrilled to meet Jamie Fingal as she had emailed me with hints on how to make it through my first time at Festival after I sent out an email to a Quilt Art list with my reservations about attending the first time.

On Saturday I also attended a three lecture classes: Art Quilting Trends, Finding Creativity and Foundation Piecing.  One of the best things at the Festival (in my opinion) was Open Studios sponsored by Craftsy. Four "rooms" of continuous classes on Quilting, Stitching, Embellishing and Painting - all for FREE! A lot of the classes were about topics I knew how to do but it was great to hear more from "the experts" and pick up new hints and tips.

 I wish I had made time to go to more Open Studios classes.  

Every class I did attend was wonderful!  I know some of the teachers taught more than once in Open Studios but these were the classes I attended:

Cyndi Souder demoed Curved Piecing.

Cyndi was very informative and entertaining teacher.

 Someone must have asked a really hard question when I snapped this photo.

 I loved this quilt of Cyndi's dog on his daily walk.

Jamie Fingal taught about stamping on fabric.

 Leslie Tucker Jenison taught about free motion quilting for art quilts.

Patt Blair taught a fabulously easy way of making a faced binding on art quilts. 

 And Pokey Bolton taught how to make art postcards. 

 Pokey's Pet Project raised over $10,000 for Friends for Life, the only No Kill Shelter in Houston.

 I made 6 postcards for the project and purchased this one made by Pokey.

I know at least 3 of mine sold as there were 3 left on the board the last I checked on Saturday.  Hopefully the rest of them found a home before the end of Festival.