Conference

I went to a fabulous conference last weekend. The Texas Federation of Fiber Artists has a get-together every other year. It moves around the state. Dallas hosted this year.


The weekend kicked off with a fantastic gallery opening. The sign says "New Horizens in Fiber 2008." The piece on the far left is an amazing felted piece hung from a dramic metal frame. That's by Rhonda Douglass. And then there is Lu's ginko quilt. I'm not sure who made the third piece, but don't they all look amazing together?!
Fantastic flowers too, yes?


Another example of the gallery doing a beautiful job hanging works that really complement each other. The piece in the middle is Susie Monday's. I'm a big fan. (Susie blogged about the conference here.)

My Encrusted Cobblestones was in the show. I am really proud of this little quilt. (In fact, I'm working on developing a workshop using the techniques and design idea from this project. I used the same ideas for the chocolate piece. Scroll down to see that. I think it will be called "Layered Grid Fabric Collage." Email me if you're interested.)

If you're in the area, don't miss seeing the show. It's a wonderful collection of fiber art.

ArtCentre of Plano
New Horizons in Fiber
Through March 1
1039 East 15th St., Plano
Tuesday through Saturday 10 am to 5 pm

On Saturday we had two workshops! I took a silk dying and shibori class from Carol Lane Saber. It was just a three hour class, so really just a taste of the process.

We used large plastic cups in place of pvc pipe (er... bamboo) for our shibori.

Here is my silk in the dye.And here is the wet finished piece. Nice. It has potential, I think.Lu and Pam enjoyed the workshop too!I did try some clip dying too. Results: not great. But the clips are lovely.
My afternoon class was silk screening with Dawn Zero Erickson. (Dawn doesn't have a website?!) Here she is doing an example.

I've never done silk screening and I really enjoyed it. I tried lots of images on lots of different fabrics, including some of the silk I dyed in the morning. I guess I was so busy that I forgot to take pictures.

On Saturday evening we had a banquet with Joan Shulze as our keynote speaker. Joan is a quilter and a poet. I was really drawn to her idea of making visual haikus. She made a series of small collages using only what was on the work surface, or the floor, kept the design very spare and mounted the pieces with frayed edges and raw finishing. Lovely.

It was great to hang out with a bunch of other fiber artists and explore new ideas and techniques. It was good motivation to continue to develop some workshops and find opportunities to spend more time with such fun people!