Adventures of a Textile Artist Abroad

Caricature of a Textile Artist at a Wedding

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No, I haven't been abducted by space aliens or been lost at sea, but I have been too darn busy to write for quite some time. I spent much of the winter quilting and preparing for several solo exhibitions scheduled this year, getting ready for my son's upcoming nuptials, settling in to a new position at work, and best of all, travelling. I just returned from a trip to Great Britain last month where I was the Matron (I hate that word, sounds so old) of Honor at my best friend's wedding. More about that later. I have noticed that being a textile artist is somewhat like being a pregnant woman who notices babies everywhere she goes. Babies are cute, but wherever I go, I notice textiles. This trip started off with the purchase of some pretty high end textiles in the form of a custom order dress and hand dyed shoes.

The Road Less Travelled

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I spent a month last October looking for the perfect dress to wear to Anne's wedding, who by the way re-married her ex-husband after twenty some years of being divorced. After much trying on of elaborate textile confections, I settled on a design selected from a photo on the Internet. It was so new that samples were not available to try on when I visited the bridal stores. So, with blind faith, it was paid for and I settled in to wait out the four months required for it's creation. I arrived at the store with baited breath for the fitting, and found the dress wrinkled and covered with loose thread ends that I meticulously clipped off. Considering the cost of the dress, surely the owners could have afforded to do this themselves. Other than that I was pleased. It was made of lace and silk in shades of cappuccino and mocha, quite pretty and just the ticket for this special event. The wedding was in Wales, so I had it pressed at a charming little bridal shop made of stone and slate in the tiny village of Cowbridge; it looked lovely. Meanwhile, the run up to the wedding day was filled with pampering and preparation. Chauffers drove us to appointments to get our hair done, to have french manicures, massages and spray-on tans. The last is not an experience I would recommend for the faint of heart.

Welsh Daffs

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For this special event, I was ushered upstairs to a storage room containing a three sided camping tent. I was then asked to strip down, stand in the tent and hold out my arms and legs at various angles, while twirling in a circle, etc. as the attendant sprayed me in the face and everywhere else with a cold mist of slimy, sticky orange dye. I was then instructed to stand on a towel and flap my arms about for the next ten minutes to encourage the drying process. To complete this total degradation, the attendant was about 19 years old and appeared to be about a size two. She was probably thinking she did not get paid enough to do this kind of work and maybe she should please her parents and enroll in college after all. The whole experience enhanced my empathy for the inhabitants of Abugrabe Prison...the only thing missing was a few snarling German Shepherds!

Upon arriving in Wales I got a tour of the new marital abode, a country manor house, hey I was moving up in the world. I was introduced to my new bedroom and was pleased to be assigned the "Rose Room," which overlooked the "back garden," a 3 acre field dotted with ancient Elm trees. A pitcher of Welsh Daffodils graced the windowsill, as I arrived on St. David's Day. Over my bed hung a quilt I made for Anne 4 years ago entitled, The Road Less Travelled. Since I had completely forgotten to document this work, I was happy to get a photo to add to my portfolio.

The Pump Room, Bath, England
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A few days before the wedding Anne and I took an excursion to Bath, England which is about an hour an half away by train. As we exited the station and made our way towards the heart of Jane Austen territory, I spied a small sign hanging over the door of a little shop. After all these years I have developed a sixth sense about quilt shops, and sure enough, in this land of Roman England, Jane Austen and Georgian architecture I found myself perusing bolts of quilt fabric and purchasing a few fat quarters and some needles with self'-threading eyes for Anne. Oddly enough I had told her about them just that morning when she complained that she was having trouble sewing on a button because she couldn't see to thread the needle. Following this textile adventure, we toured the lovely new museum at the Roman Baths and raised a glass of champagne to Jane Austen as we celebrated the upcoming nuptials and Anne's Birthday with lunch at the Pump Room. As we walked around the corner to the loo, what should we find but a spectacular quilt about 15 feet long and ten feet high documenting all the royal lines of British Kings and Queens. It was a stunning work, but behind glass with a high glare so I was unable to photograph this amazing textile. (Note to self when making irreplacable pieces of art, spend a few extra quid on non-glare glass.)

So, you may be asking, what happened to the lovely silk and lace bridesmaid dress that traversed an ocean and back again to celebrate the wedding of a dear friend? I fear it is destined to become one of the world's most expensive quilts. I HATE it! It was uncomfortable to wear and unflattering. Although I have gained some middle-aged weight, I still only wear a size 10 dress. However, in the wedding photos this little number made me look three sizes bigger, a woman truly deserving of the title MATRON. So it currently resides, rolled in a wad at the top of my closet, waiting to either be dry cleaned or cut up. Another adventure waiting to happen. Cheers!

The Adventurous Life of an Art Quilter???

Unless you are a quilter, you may be asking yourself how a person can actually use the words "quilt" and "adventure" in the same sentence? Yes, quilters bear the burden of being stereotyped as little old ladies who sit home alone with their sewing and their cats. But things have changed in the last century or so. OK, so I do have a cat, well three actually, but I don't sit home alone. I like adventure. Perhaps that's an odd admission from a person who is too afraid to ride a roller coaster, bungee jump, water ski, snow ski... well you get the picture. But I do like a challenge, so in the winter of 2006 I signed up to go on a quilting cruise to the Caribbean. I had never been on a cruise, and never been to the Caribbean.. On top of that, I went by myself...alone! My friends and family were aghast.I flew down to Florida and spent a few days in Daytona with my son who drove me to Miami in his little sports car. I had a stylish ride. What a great start to my adventure. I checked into my room on board the ship and met the roommate that the cruise company had arranged for me. She turned out to be a very nice woman from California. So far, so good. Then we had to go on deck for a life boat drill, complete with life vests, life boats and whistles we could use should the ship go down in the dark. Gulp!! I'm starting to wish I hadn't seen that movie, The Titanic. However, a few drinks and a trip through the 40 foot buffet line took the edge off my anxiety. The cruise was sponsored by Quilting Arts Magazine so I was looking forward to meeting Pokey Bolton, (who I later learned is a descendant of Pocahontas, hence the nickname Pokey), as well as the instructors hired to provide us with quilting seminars during the voyage: Leslie Riley, Laura Cater-Woods and Arlene Blackburn.

Lesley Riley

I am not a person that is easily impressed by fame. I think I could sit next to a celebrity on an airplane and hardly give them a second glance, unless perhaps there was smoke emanating from their shoe or lap. After all, they are just people like the rest of us and they look a whole lot smaller in real life. But I was going to get to meet Lesley Riley and Laura Cater-Woods for cripes sake! One of Laura's art quilts was on the cover of the very first Quilting Arts magazine I ever saw, and I was totally in awe of her work. I can say that I was not ashamed to ask her for an autograph, and I was thrilled to bits when she commented on the quality of my first free motion quilting. After all, if Laura saw some potential in me, then maybe I could master this difficult technique. I was so celebrity struck that I forgot to take her picture.

Arlene Blackburn

I loved how the trip was organized. The two days at sea, were spent in the classroom with the other quilters taking seminars from world class instructors. The other days were filled with the adventure of five different ports of call. I should mention that one of the items on my personal bucket list was to climb on Mayan Ruins somewhere in the world, and low and behold, this was one of the options available on the cruise. But let me back up for a moment. The day before visiting the ruins in Mexico, we were scheduled to drop anchor in The Cayman Islands, so I signed up to go on a snorkeling "adventure." Now, although I had a roommate, we were not really interested in the same things, so I went on all the day trips by myself. I had plenty of experience with snorkeling as a kid. Our neighbors had a swimming pool and we snorkeled practically every day of the summer. So this was going to be a piece of cake, right? Well, I have to say, as I am sitting on the deck of the boat, listening to the safety sermon about how to wear your gear, and not to worry about sharks because there aren't any around here (right? don't they watch those National Geographic specials?), I started to have a tiny bit of anxiety. After all, no one in the whole world knew I was sitting on this boat, except perhaps the folks that took my reservation back on the ship, and I figured they were pretty busy people who might not notice I hadn't make it back until it was way too late. And then there was that movie I watched, about those two snorkelers who were left behind and died in Australia... never seen again. Well a true adventurer wouldn't give it a second thought, and besides I paid a ton of money for this cruise, so by god I was jumping in.

Yipes! Although I had great memories of snorkeling as a kid, I had completely forgotten about nearly drowning in the neighbor's pool. That little memory came flooding back about the time I hit the water. I was having difficulty breathing and kept swallowing copious amounts of sea water. I should mention that I had purchased a disposable underwater camera for the trip in order to capture a few Jacques Cousteau moments for posterity, and was determined to take some photos. Too afraid to stick my head in the water for more that two seconds at a time, I just held the camera below me and clicked the shutter. Upon development of the film, I was pleased to note that in addition to my feet, I did get several shots of fish and other sea life.

Now fast forward to the next day. I am sitting on the bus with nine other people on the way to the Mayan ruins, and now have a terrible sore throat and a fever, obviously the result of ingesting polluted salt water. But there is no way I am missing out on climbing those ruins. Our guide pulls out box lunches that contain tuna fish sandwiches and tells us to hold on to them until we reach the ruins, about an hour away. Now I used to be a microbiology technician, and I am already questioning the advisability of serving tuna fish in the tropics, but sit, as directed, with the sandwhich on my lap for an hour. As we exit the bus, we are told that there will be a lovely place to picnic at the end of the tour, again about another hour from now. I begin to calculate the time it takes for bacteria to reproduce and figure in another hour I could be vomiting, too. I decide to eat and walk at the same time. I am proud that I read the guide books and have liberally coated myself with heavy duty bug spray. No one else seems concerned about the mosquitoes. After I inform them that this is malaria country, I make several friends who want to share my heavy duty Deet. I am truly in awe of the ruins and am photographing them from every possible angle to get the best shot. Then I remember another Nat Geo episode about the crafty Fer de Lance snake that inhabits this area. I did not notice a first aid kit on the van. I begin to walk gingerly, but made it safely to the picnic grounds, which was on the bank of a breathtaking lagoon. I notice that no one is eating their picnic, apparently I am not alone in my opinion of the tuna fish. I am very glad to see a restroom, altough it is merely a hole in the ground with no doors. The roof is covered with palm fronds. The women take turns making sure the coast is clear from the males in our party. When it's my turn, I start thinking about how those Fer de Lance snakes are reputed to hide in palm frond ceilings, then drop down onto their unsuspecting victims. Death come rapidly. In my hast, I manage to drop my brand new, and expensive sun glasses down the hole. I decide to view this loss as a sacrifice to the gods that keep me safe from snake bite. Despite what you may think, I had the trip of a lifetime. And you thought quilting was for little old ladies!

Coffee with Kathy

Homeplace II: Cattle Barn, Lancaster, Ohio 2010

This has been a very productive year for me. I have clocked in a record number of studio hours, and after finishing my Quilt National 2011 entry in August, I was just plain pooped. Time for drastic measures. I instituted a self-proclaimed sabbatical from quilting for the entire month of September and did a number of things to rejuvenate myself and keep my artistic mojo working. I went to the zoo, got addicted to The Clothes Mentor resale shop and bought a whole new fall wardrobe, visited some galleries and went bicycling and hiking. I also decided to visit one of my old friends from the days when I lived in a log cabin in Circleville,Ohio ... Kathy. We practically raised each other's kids. I used to knock on her door and she would put on a pot of coffee and we would spend the afternoon chatting.

Slate Run Historical Farm , Canal Winchester, Ohio

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It was a beautiful day last Sunday, and I hadn't seen Kath for years, so on a whim, I stopped by and sure enough she put on the coffee and we got caught up. It got me to thinking about the time in my life when we were neighbors, and how I got started quilting. Well, I missed out on the hippie movement, except as a spectator, my mom would have had a fit. But, the back to the land movement in the 70's was just my style. I lived in a log cabin, gardened, canned, made homemade bread and noodles, even made sauerkraut, although I can't stand the stuff. Just before the birth of my first child I taught myself to quilt with the help of one of the few quilting books that was around then, The Perfect Patchwork Primer by Beth Gutcheon. I still have the well loved and well worn, black and white book.

Alphabet Sampler Comforter, 1979

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Not long after that I decided to join a quilt guild and worked up all my courage to attend a meeting without knowing a soul. The mean age of the group was probably somewhere around sixty, so I immediately gravitated to the two other twenty-something members and we became fast friends. About the same time I started volunteering at Slate Run Historical Farm and talked my two friends in joining too. The farm is a working farm frozen in the 1880's time period, with volunteers wearing appropriate historical attire and interpreting history in first person. I was in seventh heaven. I got to wear long dresses and quilt all day long, using the treadle sewing machine to piece the tops.

Slate Run Historical Farm

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Pretty soon we had a quilting revolution in full swing. We were making and hand quilting tops, including several friendship quilts, sewing a pretend wedding quilt and putting on a quilt show. We started having quilting bees, often after work, with both guys and girls in attendance. It was probably the first time in history that beer has ever been served at a quilting bee.

Little Red School House Baby Quilt 1979

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There is one bee that is forever etched in my mind. My two friends and I were attempting to quilt on a frame in my dining room, but our kids were driving us crazy. Every few minutes some child was crying or whining or having a runny nose. Then, after a while we noticed that we were just getting a ton of work done with no interruptions. UH OH! When six kids under the age of five are quiet for any length of time, something is wrong. I walked around the corner to the living room and stopped breathing for a moment. My son and his cohorts had taken the fireplace shovel and scooped about an inch of ashes from the fireplace, that contained a live fire I might add, onto my coffee table and were running their matchbox cars on the roads they had made in the ashes. As a good mother, (really? you didn't even notice they were playing with a live fire) I felt the need to provide a terse reprimand without laughing. However, as I looked at the children, it was hard to tell who was who, and I burst out laughing. Their faces were completely covered with ashes, except for white circles around their eyes. They looked like six little raccoons! I laughed until the tears streamed down my face, so I'm not sure if they ever knew they were in trouble. We were extremely lucky that no child was harmed in the making of that quilt, and that I still had a house to call home. What one does in the name of art!

Slate Run Historical Farm

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It's been a long time since those days. My baby is now 31 years old. I still have my children's baby quilts, and although I have given up traditional quilting, I still remember my quilting roots and try to honor them. If you have a moment, pull out some of your first work and see just how far you have come. And, don't forget to visit one of your friend's this week, she might just fix you a cup of coffee and you can reminisce about the good ol' days.

C'mon Baby, Let's Do the Mashed Potato

Poatato Dextrin Sample #1 - White cotton - purple liquid Rit dye

Anyone remember the dear departed George Carlin and his great humor? I love his shtick about Americans' need to accumulate stuff, or as George would say, sh*t. No doubt about it. I'm a material girl that loves her sh*t. The only thing better than getting new sh*t is getting sh*t cheap. I love the hunt of finding really good sh*t cheap. Finding a great bargain gives me a shot of adrenalin that keeps me going for days

Potato Dextrin Sample #2 - Mulberry colored cotton with bleach

My stash of quilt fabrics is a sub-category of good sh*t, and keeping it up to date is one of my satisfying occupations, so when I can get good textile sh*t, cheap, I'm in seventh heaven. I love to buy specialty fabrics, but sometimes making your own is even better. I've been wanting to try some potato dextrin dying, and when my friend Kris showed me some of hers I was sold on the idea. Well, potato dextrin is a specialty item that has to be purchased on the Internet, but I read somewhere that you could do it with instant mashed potatoes. Hey, cheap sh*t! I had to try it.

Potato Dextrin Sample #3 - White cotton - blue Rit dye

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I purchased a big box of really cheap instant mashed potatoes and mixed one half cup of the flakes to each one cup of boiling water, stirred well and let it sit until luke warm. Meanwhile I cut some squares of fabric and pinned them to a slab of composition board. Half of the fabric was white cotton and the other half was two different shades of purple, you could use any color you choose. I took my drywall spatula and smeared various thicknesses of potatoes on the fabric and left it outside to dry. I left it outside while I was at work, so I was not at home to check on the progress. When I came home I was downhearted. The pins had popped out and the fabric was all curled up, and big hunks of the potatoes had dropped off. I gently crinkled what remained to create the cracks needed for the dye or bleach to penetrate the fabric. I decided to go ahead anyway, despite the nasty appearance of my project. (Did I mention I'm cheap?)

Poato Dextrin Sample #4 - Deep purple fabric with bleach

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I did all of my work outside to prevent having to clean up a mess in my house, and also to insure good ventilation. I decided to use the bleach first. Never to do anything by halves, I used it straight out of the bottle and quickly ran to get my respiration mask because the fumes were so strong (a trip to the ER is NOT cheap). The results however, were amazing. It took about one minute or perhaps even less to get the desired effect. I quickly dumped the samples in a bucket of water and scrubbed the fabric to remove the potato flakes. Next I tried the Rit dye on cotton. The directions called for thickened dye, no other explanation given. How does one thicken dye? Who knows, so I just used the concentrated liquid which flowed into the cracks well. Unfortunately, when I'm dying, painting, etc., I am more like a 6 year old than I would like to admit. I want immediate gratification. I could only stand to wait about 15 minutes for the dye to set, so the color is a bit washed out in my opinion. I think if I had left it on for about an hour I would have gotten better results. Of the two, I liked the bleach process the best because you have no idea what the result will be. I thought sample #2 came out looking like Florentine marbleized paper. I hope to do some more dying before the weather turns cold as this is not a process you will want to do in your home. Anyway, give it a try, you might get some good sh*t, and if you're really cheap, you can serve the leftover potatoes to your dog or hang a few strips of wallpaper, I never thought they were fit for human consumption.

Eating Crow

There have been quite a few times in my life when I have had to eat the words that have come out of my mouth. This started pretty early on. One evening, around the age of ten, I was standing at the sink and crying because I had to wash the dishes and touch all that icky food left in the bottom of the strainer. I distinctly remember telling my mother that when I grew up I would never have to do such a horrible thing because "I'm going to marry a rich man and have a maid." Like that ever happened! I didn't even own a dishwasher until 3 years ago. Other famous proclamations included never working with children or becoming a supervisor in my professional life. (I have been the supervisor of children's mental health services at our agency for eight years now), and telling a previous employer during an evaluation that "I don't really need any goals, I just want to enjoy living my life." Just a minute while I pick a few feathers out of my mouth.

As a result of that last statement, my boss sent me to a Franklin Planner seminar on, you guessed it, setting and achieving goals, which I had to pay for out of my own pocket by the way. The seminar tied goal setting into your personal value system. Now I had a reason to set a goal or two. Ever since that day I have set goals in spades and have accomplished a lot, including going back to college and getting two degrees. I only mention this as this past year I set some goals that have really moved my art quilt career along.

I am basically a type B minus personality. It takes a lot to get me riled up. I am also notorious for putting things off. I do things when I "get around to it." I had been talking about getting a website, learning Photoshop, and getting in some galleries for several years, but never got around to it. Then SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) started their Visioning Project this time last year. You had to publicly declare your goals and keep an online journal on their website for the entire year. My goal was to develop some marketing tools, and I'm proud to say I just completed this goal and then some. I especially wanted to set up a website, www.SueKingArts.com, and a paper portfolio.

If you were a little mouse in the room on my first day back to college at the age of 45, you would have had the opportunity to see me have an anxiety attack when I was asked to turn on the computer sitting behind me. Honestly, I thought the campus was so overcrowded and we were forced to have our English Comp class in a computer lab! I had to ask a little twenty something where the "button" was that turned it on. A dear friend of mine helped me learn to do web searches and really saved my bacon on various research papers, so you know I'm a bit challenged when it comes to IT matters. But with many stops and starts, a battle with Walmart over the purchase of Photoshop Elements and guidance from both of my wonderful sons, I can say I was able to overcome the computer technology I needed to complete my goals. The results are the paper portfolio shown above, a website, this blog and new business cards. I am ready to get out there and market my work. It's gonna be a good year. I'm pretty sure I'm not finished saying dumb stuff, but I am very practiced at eating crow. It's an acquired taste.

QN OMG!

Well, if you are anything like me, you just love to purchase those glossy art mags at Joannes or Hobby Lobby, or Barnes and Nobles. Even though I've seen it all before, they are just too darn hard to pass up, after all, I carry one of those coupons for 40% off in my purse for just such an occasion. One of the magazines I like is Where Women Create. You know the ones with the stunning, to die for studios. The ones with cute little antique jars to hold all of your buttons and the antique sewing machines that are artistically placed in the room to give just the right touch of creative ambiance.

I also grew up loving fairy tales, and that is what those studios are ... fairy tales. Kinda reminds me of that line in Crocodile Dundee, where Dundee says Knife? That ain't no knife, eers a REAL knife. Well here's a photo of a real studio one month before entries to Quilt National are due.
Did I mention that I have battled an issue with procrastination all of my life?

I should probably just ignore one of the biggest quilting events in the country, but heck, it's only 40 miles from my house! How can you ignore that? Not to mention just to get in could be a career maker. Forget the part where the guy at Cord Camera told me last time that he couldn't figure out what QN wanted with their instructions for digital images, "Lady, National Geographic is not that picky." Or the part where they actually give an award to the person who has tried the most times to get in and finally made it. I was told the record was 7 attempts. With the event being held every two years, that's fourteen years of your life, hoping to hit the big one. Let's see, that means I have another 10 years to go if I don't get in this year. I'll be....uhhh...well... darn near 70 if I wait that long to get in. (I can't do math, thank god for art quilts, all those little pieces and yardage requirements to calculate with traditional quilts.) Anyway, hard as I try, I cannot let Quilt National go by without an attempt at fame and glory.

I have been pulling out all the stops this year to produce a quilt worthy enough to enter. When I say this year, I actually mean starting last week ( I did mention the procrastination issue). I am using those new silk screen techniques, have a groovy color scheme the judges are sure to love and keep chasing the cats off my entry every five minutes. But still things tend to go wrong. Now I have to admit I am a whiz at printing fabric in my printer, running paper bags and all kinds of fabrics through it (except maybe that one time when I had to go out and buy a new printer due to a severe jam.) But the last two days have been very trying, I have literally used up a 10 pack of ink jet fabric at $24.99, (all right so I did have a 40% off coupon, you do the math), and a whole brand new ink cartridge at $18.99, (I'm too cheap to buy the good stuff), and I was unable to print the big, enlarged photo I had my heart set on for the centerpiece of the quilt. Every print was completly unusable. Yikes!

Then I realized that God speaks to us in mysterious ways. If I had been able to print out that image, I would have screwed up the integretiy and compostion of the whole piece with my determination to do it a certain way. S0, I 'm out a few bucks and another trip to the store for more printer sheets and another ink cartidge, but I'm much happier with the version I was forced to make.

What am I making? There's a teaser in the corner of the photo, but I will say no more until I get my rejection letter in the mail, and last time I got a very nice one that I was proud to show all my friends. What's the saying? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Got to get back to the studio. There's plenty of time to clean it up after QN.

What I did on My Summer Vacation Part 2

Anniko Feher

Let's Face It Workshop

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No, I have not been abducted by space aliens. I am alive and well and still living in Lancaster, Ohio. But it has been one hot and busy summer for me. I had a solo show last week and have spent the entire month of July getting ready for it. With my " just one more quilt" attitude, I have been logging in some serious studio time. I have also been working on my SAQA Visioning Project like nobodies business and am proud to say that I accomplished my goal this week! I now have a beautiful little book to use as a paper portfolio (guess the fall will be busy too as I start to market my art work to galleries). There's no rest for the wicked!

Anniko Explaining her Technique for Portrait quilts

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Before the summer got so darn hot and crazy I did spend part of my vacation attending a fabulous quilt workshop on fabric portraits. I belong to the Common Threads Quilt Guild in Bexley, Ohio. What a fun bunch of quilters. God bless 'em. I am the only self-proclaimed art quilter in the group, but somehow they let me in. And for a group of pretty traditional quilters they bring in well-known art quilters to speak at our meetings and sometimes give classes.

A Face in the Making

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I had not attended any of their workshops before and decided this one looked really interesting. I love figurative work, but cannot draw people to save my soul. They usually turn out looking rather deformed or perhaps just ape-like, so hey, if she could teach me how to do life-like portraits I was waiting to be amazed, and honestly I was.

She Takes Shape
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Before she started with the technique, Anniko told her story of coming to the US from Hungary in the sixties. She had had hopes of becoming an artist as a teenager and going to art school in Hungary. However, due to the corruption of the communist government and the high cost of the bribes required to enter a specialized school, her parents enrolled her in a school for seamstresses. She hated every minute of her time there and soon came to realize that her sewing was the worst in the entire school. Many years later she learned about quilting in the US and has never looked back. She explained that many of her relatives were annihilated in the Holocaust. She was in possession of one tiny black and white photo of her grandmother and made the most amazing quilt of her that was just purchased by a museum for their permanent collection. What an honor for a girl who couldn't sew!

Completed Face

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Well, as we all sat down and prepared to work, I looked at the pattern we were going to be using that was generated from a photo of one of Anniko's friends. I started to feel the slightest niggling of anxiety beginning to stir in my gut. This pattern looked like a very intricate paint by number canvas. Each color of fabric was denoted by a number. Number? I hate numbers! We were to write the numbers on the backs of the various shades of fabric and keep them in order as we worked. Well, I'm sort of a laid back, do it if it feel right sort of girl, and I was very quickly becoming disoriented. I kept having to ask Anniko to come back to my seat, asking "what did you say to do?, Is this right? What area are we supposed to be working on?" I felt like an idiot. Meanwhile, all the traditional quilters are merrily progressing and are way ahead of me. OMG! I was going to be the one person who couldn't do it. The art quilter who couldn't make an art quilt. The laughing stock of the guild! However, an amazing thing happened, after a half an hour the technique just clicked and I got it. I wasn't stupid after all. I could do this. In another hour, not only was I not behind, I was leading the pack, and ooops, not following directions. All those little numbers fell off my fabric and I was using them in an intuitive way. Hey, this is my style after all. I am proud to say that I was one of the few to finish the face before class ended. Anniko told me that my face was "different from all the rest, and I mean that in a good way." It was very interesting to observe that while we were all using the same pattern, each face turned out completly different, and even more odd was the fact that the faces actually looked like the person making them. It was a lot of fun and I can't wait to get started on a quilt using my own photograph, but I've got just one more quilt to finish first.