23 Greens

Well, I finally have caught up on my sleep after coming home from a great retreat in upstate New York at the Hudson River Valley Quilt Art Retreat. I added some photos but it can't do it justice - the scenery was beautiful and the weather crisp but the best part was the amazing women in my class. There is something very special about these retreats. The locations are always in beautiful places but the personalities and gifts these woman bring is unreal. It is a thrill to be able to teach them and by the end of class they have taught me so much more about life than and the soul of a woman that I could ever have thought.
Some nights, over a glass of wine, we would stay up until 1 or 2 in the morning talking. I didn't want to go to bed fearing I would miss something precious. We became The Gang of 10 and bonded like a family in ways. Helping each other, laughing and teasing and there where a few tears, but not many. Just the process of releasing your creativity to the surface makes you a little raw and vulnerable. Welcome to my world. I try always to make it a safe place for my students, so they can feel free to be themselves and push out their creativity. Then the fun starts to happen.

Connie, our story teller, would start to tell a story and we would move closer
to hear. Her stories of Marvin the Mechanic who is, in reality, Mark, her husband, made us laugh so hard we would wipe tears form our eyes. They would tease me about being from California and I teased them back about them being from the East Coast. By the way, did you know that they had Slip and Slide and watched Soupy Sales on the East Coast, too? Who knew!
There where 3 doctors, 2 nurses, a CPA, a retired quilt shop owner, an owner of a kitchen design business and an art teacher/comedian. So we where covered for anything should a disaster strike.


One day we needed more fabric (of course) so we all went into Woodstock about 30 minutes away. Cute shop there called Woodstock Quilting. As we are walking down the street to have lunch with our heavy bags of fabric, one of the girls, Wendy, a beautiful soft spoken blond leans over to me and says "You know, I went to Woodstock when I was 17." Wow! I know someone who went to Woodstock! Are you impressed yet?
There was a little problem with my supply list (of course). I don't know where this list came from, or what year i wrote it, but the supply list said to bring 23 green fabrics to make a small pansy. Oops! I guess I forgot the hyphen in between the 2 and 3. But really, you can never have too many greens when making flowers. OK, that's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Now for their flowers:

Here are students work. They are not done but you can see how close they are to completing.

Susan's orchids - she has only been quilting 6 months.

Carol's tulip. Wow!

Kathy's subject matter is from a picture she took on a family trip to the Galapagos Islands. It looks prehistoric.

Carolyn's sunflowers. She started with the picture then did her own interpretation. Fabulous.

Lori's water lily.
Her background fabric looks like ripples in the water.

Kathy's passion flower. which is perfect for the very passionate woman.

Wendy's fuchsia. This is her second background fabric and we all squealed when she pulled it out. Wendy very carefully chose her fabrics and had a lot of unique fabrics in her Clown Car she kept pulling amazing fabrics from. I want a car like that.
Sharon's lotus and lily pads. She has not yet added the detail to her petals but her choice of base petal fabrics made this flower.

Connie's sunflower. This flower bloomed before our eyes . She started with a picture her son took and then took it from there. I love the way she added her leaves that make the flower swirl.

Can't wait to go back in November, 2011. The East Coast girls ROCK! Hey, I think that's a song!