Hudson River Valley Art Workshops

The Hudson River Valley Art Workshops is a wonderful B&B nestled in the beautiful Catskill Mountains in upstate NY in a little town called Greenville. I know a lot about Greenville; I spent a small part and some of the happiest days of my childhood there. It was a "one-horse", one blinking light town. There was a central school - K-12 and a little Baptist church down the road where we spent many evenings at potlucks and prayer meetings. I lived with my aunt on 173 acres of land - magical land, that held many adventures. Well back on track, I will be teaching at this wonderful facility for a week starting Oct 31 and going through Nov 6 of this year. The name of the workshop is "Inspirations from Nature". I love teaching week-long workshops, so much meaty material and the added bonus of getting to know everyone so well. It's so rewarding and fun. I'm excited.

SO WHAT WILL I BE TEACHING? !

I'll be covering lots of machine skills along with microwave dyeing and a few surface design techniques. Here's a preview. Most quilts start with a slight mottling of the background, done in a designated microwave using procion mx dyes. Sometimes I'll do it twice so I can use more than 1 color. I love this technique as it takes the flatness away from a solid colored background.
Sometimes I'll do extra wide strips with stamping to lay on top of the bigger piece - hopefully to create more depth and texture in the background.

It's an effective technique and still subtle enough for the more interesting foreground.

Sometimes, I'll use an unusual color and just the one color to microwave dye the background such as in the piece below.

This next piece used a very light color for microwave dyeing - just a suggestion of color to give some movement. So the first thing we'll be doing is "Preparing the Background".

We'll also touch on the use of fabric manipulation to create texture in fabric - things such as fabric and thread crimping, twin needle work - techniques that will add interest to a surface.

We'll also cover different ways to machine applique, to create some fun and interest in the applique itself.

Machine needlelace is great to incorporate it into quilts (below) - this will be covered during the week...

along with dimensional thread work lace done on wire,

and more fun with threads making thread fuzzies.

Bobbin curls using the heavier couching threads

as well as fabric curls.

This is only a small sampling of what we'll be doing, more to follow tomorrow. I think it will be great fun with lots of wonderful things to learn - hope you'll join me.

PS - It's also the most beautiful time of the year in upstate NY with its fall foliage.