Beacon Art Show and Sweatshirt Makeover Workshop

Friday night was the opening reception for the annual Beacon Art Show at the United Methodist Church inSan Luis Obispo.  I was wonderfully surprised and honored when the judges announced that they purchased my art quilt for their permanent collection.  Every year they choose just one piece of art for it.  Above is the picture of my quilt, " Gothic Grace."

This year's theme was "Blessed and Soaring."  I was all over the board thinking of ideas for it, tall redwoods, birds, etc. One day I was looking at one of my ice-dyed pieces on  my design wall when I saw the lines of a rose window in it. Rose windows were first used in the tall Gothic cathedrals  of Europe as the crafts guilds of the time tried to build taller and taller structures to reach to the heavens. I thought this would be the perfect idea for the theme.

Below is the original piece of fabric. It is an ice-dyed piece.  I block printed the smaller circles in the window and machine appliquéd them to the background. I added rick-rack trim and handmade fusible black, bias tape to create the lines. It has some  hand-quilting on it as well.

Below is a picture of me receiving the award. 

 Thanks to my son for taking photos. 

Yesterday I was an assistant to my wonderful friend, Kathy Howard, who was teaching a workshop on turning sweatshirts into art wearables through deconstruction and reconstruction. 

Above is a picture of Kathy, in her beautiful sweatshirt/jacket starting the class. Kathy also taught a lot of fabric manipulation and piecing techniques, including but not limited to seminole piecing and square within a square. She has been making beautiful quilts and wearables 

for many years and had great tips and shortcuts to share with the group.

  The class was presented by the Bear Valley Quilt Guild of Los Osos. They were a wonderful, fun group of women with whom to share the day.  It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot.