Got back last evening from teaching

a two day class to 11 fiber artist.  I think I was in Fruit Cove, which is somewhere  between St Augustine and Jacksonville, FL  right at 2 hours worth  drive mostly the interstate from my place.  I generally look up where I am going with Map Quest to get my mileage and to have some sense of where I am going,, which is a good thing.  Sometimes my GPS with a mind of it's own, sends me in the wrong direction.  Or tells you, " you have arrived"  and there is no there, there.
What a wonderful group.  Most of them were not quilters in the sense that you normally think a quilter is, as those who use the  quilting stitches for more than just holding the layers together or  who make quilts to sleep under.  There were several painters in the group but none who paint on fabric in the way I do, some had used textile paints. 
     I also had a very accomplish quilter in the bunch named Jayne Gaskins who has a piece in this year's Quilt National and in talking to her I learned that this was her second acceptance and that each time, she had submitted   only one piece, the one she felt was her best effort.  Interesting....

Here's a list of those in the class in no particular order, definitely not be seating order, Julie, Roz, Laura, Dana, Victoria, Susan, Jayne, Virginia, Gretchen, Amy and Ellen

 

     Here's  a look at every one's  piece as they were working on them and a few that were finished at class end, leaving them to go home and stitch (I am not saying quilt because some of them will not be doing so in the traditional sense. 
    Forgive me, if I give you the wrong name for  each class attendee.   I am awful with name,  Now faces, I will remember and their pieces I will remember, 
     Everyone was instructed to send me a picture of a flower they wanted to paint,  From those images I made them a line drawing and enlarged it to class size which was a maximum  of 20" x 30" I also made them a smaller version just in case they did not want to tackle the larger size.  Those were 15" x 20

Ellen, holding a copy of the photo she sent me of the flower she wanted to try to paint.

Susan and her Hibiscus

We had a lively discussion in class  about this flower and concluded it is an orchard. 

 

Laura

 

 

Virginia chose to draw her own design based on an enlarge photo of plants growing in her neighbors yard.

 

Gretchen, she too sent a picture of a Hibiscus that she chose to paint blue instead of red as her picture depicted.

This is Amy and her Passion Flower

 

 

 

My two hour drive that I planned to have coming home turned into one with heavy rain at time, thunder and lightening and traffic accidents with miles  long  backups.  3 hours and 30 minutes later, boy was I happy to pull into my garage. 

 No matter where you've been and how much fun you've had, it is always so good to get home safe.