New Year's Goals and Sandi Cummings Workshop

January 6, 2007

My first workshop of the New Year, and the first workshop toward achieving my goal this year, was with Sandi Cummings .

My goal this year is to learn as much as I can about quilting/fiber art/surface design as possible. My plan is to study with as many fiber artists/teachers as I can, in order to learn techniques needed to design and construct fiber art quilts. Since I'm new to quilting overall, I have to play "catch-up" in a very serious way. I don't want to take 10 years to learn what I can learn in one year. I've basically catalogued all the techniques I believe will be important in the design and construction of art quilts, and have looked at numerous art quilters websites to see if they will be teaching in my area. With those schedules, I've mapped out a whole variety of classes teaching various techniques!

This past Sunday and Monday I went to Poway, CA near San Diego for two workshops with Sandi through the Friendship Quilters Guild of San Diego (super nice and friendly group!). Sandi taught "Freeform Units with Inserted Strips" on Sunday, and "Double your Fun" on Monday. Both classes were excellent, and using her techniques, it was clear that the design possibilities are truly endless! Sandi was very patient, gracious and helpful (as a newbie, this was very appreciated!). A couple samples below:

Last week, I signed up for a Quilt University class! I've never taken a class online, so I'm excited to see how it works. The class is "Cotton Dyeing Basics" with Marjie McWilliams . Since I signed up right before it started, I'm still waiting for my supplies to arrive, but fortunately it is not a problem, since I have until mid-February to complete all my lessons! So far, the class discussion board is in full swing, and Marjie has been faithfully answering questions and reviewing other students' work online! Believe it or not, there are students in my class from Taiwan, Sweden, Australia, Belgium and more! Amazing how we are all in one class together!

Tomorrow I leave for Santa Barbara to take a workshop with Rayna Gillman . Rayna and will be teaching two days. The first day will be "Printing with Found Objects" (on fabric), and "Jump-Starting the Art Quilt." This will be a perfect complement to the hand-dyed fabric class! Rayna has been extremely helpful pre-class, answering several e-mails with questions about supplies and the like. I'm looking forward to meeting her and learning from her--her art cloths and quilts are wonderful!