What i did at CREATE… or how Cheryl got her groove back.
As you may know, this summer has been extremely busy and while I am happy to have made my sister’s wedding flowers, after the initial design they were a bit monotonous to make. I felt pretty uninspired, and because my work schedule freed up, I spent Friday 8/27 at CREATE in Rosemont.
Now, I don’t have pictures of the event because I was silly and didn’t bring my camera, but you can see some other great recaps and pictures here, here, here and here.
Of course, I saw all of my friends there, and that alone was incredible. The hardest working staff I’ve ever run across, Pokey Bolton and Lindsay Murray were there, and Pokey says I’m going to love Houston, which is getting me super jazzed up to go. And that’s just 10 minutes into the event!
My class was thread painted art quilts with Elin Waterston. Elin is an incredible artist and it was so wonderful to learn from a teacher like her. Patient, kind, and extremely talented. She really demystified the process and I had a great time working on my project (which will be in another blog post for the return of Technique of the Week!) Elin is co-author of the Art Quilts at Play and the Art Quilt Workbook, some of whose techniques I have tried this year.
I got to have dinner with some new and old friends, including Belinda Spiwak.
CREATE also had a “store” onsite that not only showcased Bernina sewing machines, but also a wide variety of Interweave titles and other books and supplies so you can take your creative juices home and continue working.
To wrap up our evening, it was time for the Artist’s Faire, and it was AMAZING. Several artists had table “booths” and you could walk and browse lots of art supplies and original art. The art was amazing! Beautiful stuff from Kelli Perkins, Jamie Fingal, Jane Lafazio, and many many more. Also lots of vintage collage materials from various vendors and some amazing collage artists from the pages of Cloth Paper Scissors. Of course, it was the place to be, and I ran into my friends Melanie Testa, Judy Coates Perez (click her link for super cool recaps of the event) and my new friends from the Chicago Modern Quilt Guild! (HI Karen! HI Sue!)
Want to see the few things I got at Create? Commence the showing and telling!
The book and TAP (Transfer Artist Paper) are both going to be used later this year for a Technique of the Week! And of course, they had all the newest magazines, so I picked up the latest QA GIFTS. It is such a great issue.
I loved the ephemera booths. There were lots of them, and if I were a collage artist, I’d be in heaven, but as it were, I saw a couple of things I HAD to have for my creepy victorian parlor. (You know about my year round haunted parlor, right?) So this tiny (and I mean tiny, these do not even come close to fitting around my neck) set of faux pearls and the cool eyeglasses and case only cost me $6 total!
This is a gorgeous teapot from Altered Ever After, and is featured in an issue of a magazine this month!
These lovely brass findings were super cute on the gorgeous sample artworks by Rene, and I picked up these tiny sets for a future project.
So, that’s about it, and I have to say that I came home SUPER jazzed up to start creating again, and I wish I had allotted more than one day, but the wedding was important and that’s OK. There’s going to be another one, and that’s great too. I think the folks at CPS and QA have a lot to be proud of, and I am looking forward to going again next year!
Art Quilt Workbook homework for Chapter 2
Using the practices in the book, this was the quilt I made. My theme is Pomegranates. After all, it’s the year of the Pomegranate for me. It uses some of the principles and elements of art. My scanner cut off the borders, which are only a half inch. Also, this is not quilted yet, but I did “pillowcase” bind it.
Lots of Updates- Long Weekend
I have lots of updates as I had the holiday day and alos an extra vacation day that made this weekend very fun. In addition ot the quilts I will post shortly, there was much work on my online art classes. For the Art Quilt Workbook group, I did the exercises and quilt for chapters 2 and the exercises for chapter 3, but not making a quilt from those. I also finished catching up on my painting for the online color theory class.
I had originally thought that the color portion of the chapter 2 from the Art Quilt Workbook would overlap the Color Theory class nicely. They were very different exercise. The Color Theory class is only theory. The chapter from the workbook is about color “feelings” and choosing based on warm and cold. Two differnt exercises but I’ll be well versed when both are finished.
Online Art Studying
I am extremely fortunate to be in Judy Coates Perez’s new online Color Theory class. I won’t show you the whole exercise so as to preserve what I paid for and to not give Judy’s work away, but I am having a buch of fun learning. It’s my first online art class.
I am also in a group studying the chapters from the Art Quilt Workbook by Jane Davila and Elin Waterston. I finished my chapter 1 exercises a bit late, but they will have to do.