A class with Lura Schwarz Smith

Our quilt guild hosted Lura Schwarz Smith today and everyone had a great time...Lura is well known as an TOP award national award winning quilter who makes intricate quilts with faces drawn with tsunieko inks....We had people from as faraway as Raleigh, Atlanta and Charleston driving to take her class...she did a great job and everyone drew some great looking faces with the inks she specializes in. She always found something positive to say about everyones work.

This is what I drew in class today . Fabric drawn with tsunieko inks which can be bought at www.jukeboxquilts.comThis is the original photograph...she is a cutie...Kim's niece...guess i will have to give this to Kylies mom or to Kim to give to Kylies mom! I think it would look good framed under the Christmas tree for her mom...right now I cant think of another thing to do with it...

Practicing shading with the tsunieko inks...
Lura teaching...she was a great teacher...working hard all day long using every teachable moment she could find...

Ann Stalnaker and Ille Waters working hard on inking thier grandchildren.
Marlene Seabrook-O'Bryant drove from Charleston to take the class...Marlene is a very interesting person...the first woman hired by the Citadel...and she is also a hoot...I run into her all over the place at all the best quilt spots like International Quilt Festival...a few hundred thousand quilters but I found Marlene!! or did Marlene find me? We do that alot at quilt shows!
Marsha Boasso having too much fun...knowing Marsha she was picking on Connie....and MARSHA WHY didnt you take all your l eftovers home with you...I didnt need them:>
Connie...I hear her now...I can do this I will learn how to draw...
Diana...another of our travelers...from Raleigh NC drove down 5 hours to take Lura's class...

the weeks slew of daily drawings

i definitely have a fascination for these now....and keeping it up like crazy...which is something of an amazement to me...I rebel at ANYTHING i have to do on a daily basis...something to do with that a daily job is enough commitment???? SO HERE THEY ARE!!!!

These have all changed since i scanned them so i will be rescanning and post them again later today or tomorrow I HOPE:>

And these are my portraits drawn by one of my very talented kindergartners...I think shes pretty good even if i dont have a ponytail!

Apparently this artist has become a

quilter too....this was made up quickly from the block heap that i had sewed up earlier this month...wild wonky log cabins...Jeff is racing it off to somewhere to see if it can get sold...evidently it wowed everybody that saw it...and i do have to say its pretty cool for an innovative quilt with handprints...not your average handprint quilt....

yes i know crass commercialism but lets face it....do we really like to be starving artists living in hovels???Not I nor Jeff....

These last i zapped together from a couple of prints that I took pics of and then I inserted them using paintshop pro into the quilts that we got ready for the show in Aiken...and it was MUCH faster:>

This was sooo quick that i am looking around to see what else I can zap together...my quilts, jeffs artwork....ez pz....

I also discovered how to turn out a dvd on this Mac and that was well just so time consuming NOT....amazing how quickly we turned these three quilts into a dvd that actually worked!

My altered fabrics sooo far and

Just to remind you of our great trip:>
This is the cover of Kristi Steiners altered fabric book I am a woman who......in this fun freeing class Kristi teaches 8 techniques to alter fabrics...someone please add to the supply list dont bring fabric you cant paint on...I brought a bunch of Kaffe Fassets and had a hard time messing them up since I think they are perfect the way they are...

This is the only page that I have almost finished....its the collage page...I am sure more beads are coming...everything here is glued together...this page is inkjet transferred images with acrylic medium....you surely do have to rub alot to get them to transfer to fabric...the two on the left lifted and moved around...practice practice practice is needed here:> The one on the right did MUCH better....but i rubbed MUCH more...
This is a stamped page...we all had a great time using everyone's stamps...I blotted it with Sues rust colored stamp pad to get the odd color ...got better at it the more i blotted it with the ink pad...this was supposed to be done with walnut ink but i thought it was too dark..started to dunk it in my tea butt....there was none for once...This is another dyed and stamped page ...it was dyed with Kristis creative dye kit from Country in the City which is supposed to be great for dyeing laces and other fibers too...as well as paper...


This is the second piece of fabric that i did ...i call it the murdered fabric because I did everything to it trying to get it over the uglies...finally got decent overdying it and then I tried to mess it up again making sloppy stenciled fleur de lis...too much paint


This tag was made the same way and I splatted it with hmmm...well they have a tip shaped like a stamp pad inker...but makes these wonderful spots...why didnt i buy some while i was there....got everything else but these!:<

Dyed, dried out by the daffodils and then stenciled using a piece of plastic that wraps clementines....Kristis looked like fish scales but i was in tooo big a hurry when
This was done with gesso mixed with whatever was on the table...then you draw and stamp in it...fun technique

so many more pages to go....and beads to add and trims and who knows what else....after all i am a woman who loves to make art...any art ....

So I promised i would blog our trip to Random

Arts in Saluda NC but darn it took me a while to get to it. We had a terrific time on our trip to Saluda NC to take a class with Kristi Steiner making an altered fabric book...


OK so one of the reasons it took so long was this journal page of our nite and day in the WNC(western North Carolina) mountains of Saluda NC....It takes you from the beginning of our trip to Saluda....if you follow the road.....it was a great trip with great company!!

We spent the nite at a great motel...The Saluda Mountain Lodge....all new, great beds...and an awesome view of the valley...

We went to a terrific little place called the Wildflower Bakery and Cafe for breakfast. The food was awesome....fresh baked breads, danish, a wide assortment of cookies and even fresh dog cookies....YES Kim of course I bought some for my furkids Charley and Jazz!


Then it was on to Random Arts on a lovely spring morning in tiny downtown Saluda NC....here are pics of the town ....Evidently Saluda used to be a booming railroad town with 37 hotels back before the railroad stopped and the depression began....Shots of Main Street...Saluda is now on the Historic Registry because of all the old buildings...down the street the other way...this is an old gas station remodeled into a neat little cafe...hear it has great breakfasts...
We parked in back of this suv advertising GS cookies...too funny....
Our fearless leader during this trip...Ille scoping out the store...and upcoming workshops are behind her ...alot of nationally known artists wander thru this shops doors...


Jan the owner of Random Arts chatting the crowd up! And it was very crowded....twenty or so people in this store...Randoms Art started life as a stamp store but evidently was quickly changed to an altered book and art store...the shop is crammed with all kinds of goodies to alter just about anything...and all kinds of neat things everywhere you look...they even have stuff hanging from the ceilings!!
Lots of goodies for the altered book fan...very interesting stamps...and different from the normal ones at Michaels or Hobby Lobby.....
Ille checking out the stamps...I wish i had gotten some of them...

Shot toward the front door...which
Still shopping
Ille and the owners partner in front of the store...evidently this used to be a movie theater and then a gym for the local highschool.
Kristi Steiner warming up to her subject matter teaching her students altered fabrics. The class project- an accordion book using 8 different fabric altering techniques...it was alot of fun...and I will blog the little i got done next...meant to work on it when i got home but you know how that is!!!


Ille really working on that piece of fabric. I think i killed at least one or two peic
It was a very busy day and every one was working hard....an awesome lunch was served from the Saluda Grade Restaurant...

These daffodils at the church kept guard over our altered fabrics as they dried....
Margaret and Sue with thier loot...there were two margarets on this trip...

Margaret heading down the block to the grocery store for snacks for the trip home...

Thompsons grocery store....