Learning New Things

I'm getting very excited about attending ArtFIBERfest next month - in a very few weeks I'll be up at Fort Worden with a bunch of my peeps taking three days of wonderful classes. I'm taking a traditional rug hooking course with Mary Stanley
where we'll make one of these sweet little houses. I think I'm going to make mine a mermaid house and decorate it with shell buttons.
The second day I'm taking a fabric book class with Kristen Steiner who is a wonderful teacher and about the sweetest person I've ever met as well. The class is a fabric accordian book and the class includes lots of fabric altering and embellishing techniques - yum.

The last day I'm taking another fabric book class, one that appears to be not as structured as Kristen's, called Sew FAB(ric) Journal with Pam Garrison. This book has paper pages sewn in. I'm thinking the cover with give me ample embellishing opportunities
as well as being an easy, relaxed project for the last day.

When I return I'm taking two on-line classes at Joggles.com -'encrusted crazy quilts' and 'fabric art picture frame' with Alma Stoller - Alma is teaching at ArtFIBERfest and it was a difficult choice between her class and the rug hooking one, so I was happy to see her teaching at Joggles. I've never done an on-line class like this before - I think it sounds like a lot of fun.

Today I learned about a new learning resource on line, Quilt U. I'm looking forward to taking a class there after the first of the year as I believe my plate is quite full for the rest of this year.

In the Spring, there is ArtFest. I didn't go last year and I really missed the 'kick in the pants' it gives me to push my art somewhere new. I was very lucky to get all of my first choice classes - a precious metal clay class with Catherine Witherell ,



Symbolic Icons with Anahata Katkin






and Creative Characters with Karen O'Brien on the last day of the retreat.






My head is spinning with the thought of learning all this new stuff. Lots and lots of photos to follow.