Felting hats at the Appalachian Arts Craft Center

A small group joined me for hat making at the Appalachian Arts Craft Center in Norris, TN!  So much fun to make the hats in any colors you like, and in any style you like.                                                          

 Mary from Knoxville has the ball inflated , and started the first layer, coiling thin strips of merino/silk top onto the ball. This is the first time she is making a hat this way and it is going really well.

 Miriam from Knoxville has done this before, and she has a plan with decorating the inside as well. Nice fall colors.

 The second layer is draped from the top with shorter strips of the wool.  You want an even complete coverage all over the ball. Hippy hair. Lynn  from Knoxville blended white, grays and black. The colors will blend well when it is felted.

 Miriam's second layer is coming along really good, and making sure the layers are thin which will make for a comfortable hat. With all layers on the ball, it is wrapped with a few pantyhose tops to keep everything in place securely.

 Saturday was the perfect day to felt outside, so we bounced the balls to get the felting started

Here are the final results from a fun day. Different colors and styles make them all pieces of art, and art to wear! Thanks to the Appalachian Arts Craft Center, a wonderful place to have a workshop.

Quilt Camp at Ripley: Transfer Paint with botanical elements.

 Another great week at Cedar Lakes in October. This year there was very little colors at the conference center. Usually the trees glow with orange and yellow all over campus, but due to little rain we had all variations of green. Still inspiring for four days of transfer paint workshop using leaves in all sizes and shapes. Below are just a very small selection of what these wonderful ladies created.

 Marge from Dayton, OH had a lot of fun playing with bright colors. A little more heat from her iron would have given her even brighter colors, but the collage effect she created is very successful, in both pieces.

 Gail  from Atwater, OH made many more pieces the this, and used lots of color. They were bright and many leaves were large in her compositions. The "Dusty Miller" in the blue pieces became a favorite of mine, and the ones she generously gave me have already been used in a few pieces. I look forward to playing some more with the "tree shapes".

 Judith  from Butter, PA was able to make these soft color combinations which I have not see before. It is all a matter of how the colors are layered and the heat from the iron.

 The ferns has a very details look, and a very woodsy feel to them. Will make a beautiful small wall piece.

Judith is planning to make the three panels into a wall quilt, adding some embroidery and beading. Love the background colors she got from layering the turquoise and orange transfer paints.

 Kathy  from Pisgah Forest, NC used a slightly differnt approach to a few of her pieces by staring with a pale yellow fabrics as her base, and then adding colors on top. Several turned out very fun and unusual.

 She also tried painting the leaves themselves and transfer the color. Some brilliant colors and a fun background is the result. A purple ginkgo leaf is perfect!

 Carol  from Mayfield Hights, OH encountered a few problems with her iron and fabrics, but worked through the problems and had many very successful and very original pieces done by the time classes were over.

 She spent some time cutting paper stencils from several leaves, and achieved very strong colors this way.This is a beautiful collage style piece that will be perfect on her wall.

 A few more of Carol's pieces. A great sense of color and composition.

Beth  from Painsville, OH also had vibrant colors, and created some very crisp color combinations. Reds and greens have a very nice balance . Impressive that she quilted and finished this wall quilt in class.

Details from Beth's piece.

 Ellen  from Palms MI was close to finishing her small wall piece. The colors are soft with some beautiful details, stitching bringing the ferns and straw to life. Seed stitching all around in various soft colors will give it dept and texture.

 This was a fun week, thanks to all women in class. They were so open to let things happen and see where the colors would take them. I truly hope that all will continue "to play" with the painted papers and see what will happen and what wonderful thing you can create. Thank you for spending your time at Ripley with me.    QuiltCamp at Cedar Lakes WV, is an annual event. Check out the info on www.pegspatches.com                                                Next year's camp is Oct 14-19th, 2018

Transfer Painted fabric at John C Campbell Folkschool

Getting to spend a whole week at this beautiful campus in the North Carolina Mountains is a treat in more than one way. Nature is beautiful,  food delicious, weather could have been better, but company wonderful. Speaking of weather, great temperature but two days of rain and a tornado warning made us stay inside were a  very impressive amount of outstanding fabric was manipulated and became personal pieces of textile art.

 The Quilt studio at the Folkschool is large, well lit and has plenty of worktables, and very big design walls all around.

Chris Tucker from Ohio got off to a very good start and created all the fabrics seen here. She tried many color combinations, and actually finished a wall quilt in mostly blue and yellow. Some of my favorites are the pink/red and green four panels, which she plan to  make placemats out of. Chris has been in several of my classes and it is always a great pleasure to spend a week with her.

Chris Stanley from Ohio did some beautiful pieces with a slightly softer color palette. The reason for the softer shades is partly due to the iron and the heat it generated. Some colors need more heat and it is not always easy to control how the color is transferred to the fabric. Chris  made some outstanding small pieces, and finished one with border and machine quilting, and hopefully will use some of the other pieces in future projects.

Sue Schultz from Arkansas certainly was very productive this week!   She worked with all color combinations and then some. Leaves and ferns are glowing from her fabric pieces. She  finished a small piece and was almost done with the the larger wall piece, getting a lot of free motion quilting done. I know she will use many of the pieces for more projects, and hopefully play some more with the paint. Several of the small pieces would looks fantastic together in one piece. She achieved very strong colors, with great definition.

As part of several demos this week at the Folkschool I enjoyed showing and talking to several other student that were enrolled in other classes. It is always fun to talk with someone who is interested in what you do (thanks for taking the photos Sue!).

This last week of May was very  inspiring and I came home with lots of ideas, as well as some newly started projects. Many that I will share later as they progress from idea to finished projects, thanks to a small but very special group!

Transfer Paint workshop at Jerry's Artarama

Great weekend class with "Transfer Paints" on fabric at Jerry's Artarama in Knoxville

 Mixing and demo of the transfer dyes turned into paints.

We are already making a lot of mess half an hour into the workshop. A big group of ladies from Smoky Mountain Quilting Guild (Knoxville) and a few other surface design ladies mixed paints and painted papers. We had papers everywhere, with lots of interesting designs and textures, just waiting to dry and  be transferred onto fabric.

Hot irons created many beautiful designs onto fabric. Leaves and papers were used as resists to create patterns.

Take a look at the huge variety of designs that were made, basically using the same colors, it all depends on what you mix and how you layer the colors on top of each other.  

 Thank you to all that were at the workshop, you were wonderful. And thanks to Liz at Jerry's for having a large work area for us.
 I was so inspired by this group that I painted lots of papers the next two days. Many new ideas for upcoming projects are now on my list as well as new ideas to experiment with. A few hikes in the mountains will for sure add more new leaves to my collection. Playtime is coming up!