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This summer, I had the good fortune to take a week-long workshop with Paula Kovarik at Arrowmont School of Arts and Crafts.  The workshop was called "Follow the Thread," and was aimed at teaching a process of generating quilting lines that are not just the standard repetitions, but that originate from an idea or inspiration, with the line developing from there, and then changing as the thread leads one on.  I deeply admire Paula's work , and leapt at the chance to do a workshop with her.  (You can see other posts of mine about Paula's work here .) Paula's own work is often "whole cloth"--that is, the cloth is one piece of fabric or simply pieced, and the focus of the work is in the stitching. I don't imagine myself ever doing whole-cloth pieces, but was confident I could still learn a lot from Paula. I had two goals for the workshop.  The first was simply to further develop my skills and confidence in machine quilting.  This is the aspect of quilting...

I will be taking a week-long workshop with Claire Benn in early October on "Lines and Rows: Rhythm and Repetition."  Claire describes the aim of the workshop:  "to focus in on the power of the repetitive mark, building lines and rows to create cloth that has rhythm and simplicity."  This will be a chance to followup on work I did with Claire in 2014  (which led to my Accident II quilt) and also work I did with Dorothy Caldwell in 2013 .  Claire asked participants to prepare ahead in various ways, including laying out 100 of the same thing in lines or a grid, looking for pattern everywhere, and narrowing one's focus to a small number of types of marks/shapes of interest.  I've spent the last few weeks, since the close of my show, working on this, and look forward to developing ideas further at the workshop.  I have a humble goal in mind, which is to make fabric that I can then turn into table napkins.  I've long made napkins for our own use ...

My show was up for six days after the opening.  The gallery is in a multi-purpose building (a couple of studios and one business), so people are in and out, but no one is attending in the gallery.  I didn't want to leave the quilts unattended, so I set up a makeshift studio in a side area of the gallery and worked there from 12:00-5:00 each day.  It was interesting to see what it was like to dedicate five straight hours to studio time.  Since my regular studio is in my home, I tend to move back and forth from one kind of activity to another. The study with my computer is just across the hall from the studio, and all too often, I go in to check e-mail, and then get sucked into responding, following up on things, going to other links, etc.  Being at the gallery gave me a sense of what it would be like to have a separate studio, at a distance from home.  I still checked e-mail from time to time on my phone, but I don't like typing or web-surfing on the phone, ...