Good morning from Calgary once again,

We woke up today to sunny clear skies and "warm" temperatures (about 5 degrees Celsius as a high today - everything is relative!) and they are supposed to stay around that for the next couple of days, which is a nice change from the 20 days or so we've had of very cold temperatures.

Yesterday it was our first meeting of the 2010 at the Flying Needle Quilt Guild in Millarville. I had a lovely drive out there early in the morning, with good music playing on the radio, and a fresh cup of coffee from Starbucks; my car was stuffed with all I would need to teach the Workshop that day: Introduction to Fabric Painting. You can see the image to the left. That's the finished project.

The project took longer than I had anticipated, so they didn't get to quilt it, but most of them who could stay until the end of the afternoon got it finished, and even stamped, as you will be able to see by the photos I have attached below. We started the day as usual with our show and tell and our short business meeting, with all the news about the next workshop in May. Beth did a really good job of introducing Weeks and Bill and telling us about the classes they will offer in March when they come. They sound very exciting. We are going to have a trunk show on Friday evening, March 12th I believe it is, which is open to everyone. So, among all the sewing and creative stuff we will be doing, we need to think about taking out the pots and pans and baking something yummy to share with the attendees.

Back to the workshop. Here you can see Carol hard at work and Pat and Patsy too.

We started working on the leaves, and once those were finished, then they went on to work on the pear. The thing with Calgary's climate is that everything dries very quickly, so the important thing about the paint is to achieve the right consistency so it would stay wet while blending, and not to add too much paint because then it gets difficult to work with. It's a balancing act! I kept saying too them, "too much paint", "not enough paint" (you could see the fabric still); "too much water", "not enough water". I believe that by the end of the day some of them wanted to hit me with their brushes over the head! LOL

And this is me, with my ugly painting apron. I bought it ages and ages ago. It had been a class sample and I never liked it, so I never thought I could give it to anyone else either! One day I was going to do some painting and was looking for my old painting apron and found this one, and decided it was perfect for my needs. It covers my clothes nicely and then if I need to clean my brushes I can do it right there without worrying about getting the fabric dirty. I feel that in time the apron might actually look pretty nice with all those paint blotches across the front!

And below, you can see some of the finished art work, ready to be heat set and quilted.

Ladies, you all did great! Congratulations! Looking forward to seeing them all quilted in February!