On Anticipation

It has been a week of plotting and planning and over excitement. I have been thinking hard about the here and now because that is the theme of a workshop I will be doing next week with Rosalie Dace. She is a famous South African teacher who spends a good part of her year teaching in the United States, so we are doubly lucky to have nabbed her for a three-day workshop which she will be giving at St Francis Bay. I am over excited because I did a workshop with her some years ago, and so know that a feast of creative fun awaits me. The instruction sheet for the here and now workshop begins with the words “Unleash your inner artist and make a quilt that no one else could make as you develop a personal design… ” I am sure the quilters who are reading this are green with envy.

In preparation I have been combing through my stash. We are encouraged to choose a personal symbol, motif and colour, hence the preponderance of plum coloured fabrics in the photograph of my selection.

Yes, those are small square mirrors lying on the background fabric. I thought that this may be the time and place to use them. Watch this space.

The week has held a double dose of anticipation because I have booked for more quilting workshops later this year at the…

Interchange Quilt Festival

The biannual South African Quilt Festival is happening in August this year under the title and theme of Interchange. (https://www.quiltsouthafrica.co.za) The booking for classes opened this week. There are many enticing classes to choose from, including classes with six international teachers.

I will be learning about Kantha stitching with Dorothy Tucker from London. When I read that she is “known for her expertise in Kantha and in exploring how these intriguing quilts can inform contemporary textiles” I was sold. The when I saw that one needs to bring several small pieces of thin, soft, worn, thoroughly washed white cotton fabrics and small scraps of transparent silk and muslim for a day of hand sewing and discovering how to stitch “fascinating variations of the running stitch”, I was completely sold. This is the description for Dorothy Tucker’s class on An Introduction to Kantha. I have also signed up for a second day of delight at her Contrasts in Cloth class where we will explore the “emphemeral qualities of old Kantha”. Then there is also her public lecture Kantha: The Art of the Embroidered Quilt to look forward to.

There are also public lectures by the other international teachers Lyric Kinard, Sue Spargo, Angela Walters, Anita Grossman Solomon, and Jacqui Gering. And of course I have booked for those too.

And this is not all that I am excited about. I will also be doing classes with two South African teachers. With Sue Cameron I will spend two days learning new techniques and embellishments, and will come away with a six page fabric journal. At the last festival I did her course and was very inspired. See Post #6. On textiles and texture

Last but not least I will spend a day with Marline Turner who will show us how to master hand applique.

To keep calm amongst all this excitement I have been stitching away and finished this small quilt, which you have seen before while it was in process. I was pleased (and excited!) to find that leaving a bigger space between the rows of stitching created an interesting ridge in the design.