Look at what I found when I opened the curtains today:

The bits of color are a reflection from the window. Now it really feels like the Sierras in November.

Yesterday, I had to clean up my stuff and move upstairs to another classroom. I took a long walk around the golf course and watched a couple of coyotes cavorting on the greens. In the afternoon, students for session 2 began to arrive. My new roommate is from British Columbia – Vancouver Island. She has lived in Africa and is a very interesting woman.

Now, let me just tell you that I am so excited to be taking a class from Charlotte Yde. She cracks us up with her Danish/English. But she makes wonderful quilts with amazing surface design.

Here are some examples:

Here some samples from a book of techniques that we can do:

Today, I started with a positive/negative exercise. This is a design that was provided by Charlotte:

I traced this design on wonder under paper. Then ironed it to one of two fabrics that I had chosen. I cut out the white spaces. Then placed the remaining piece, with paper still attached, on another fabric. I removed the paper from the cutouts and placed them in their respective places and ironed them to the underneath fabric. The paper is removed from the other section and it is ironed to another piece of the second fabric. You then have two positive/negative pieces. I then did some quilting and here is the result. This was a great way to jump in and do something fun.

Charlotte does this wonderful technique with metallic organza overlays that are stitched and then the organza is cut away to reveal design underneath. I brought a piece of complex cloth that I had done in the Jane Dunnewald class, last spring:

I have turquoise metallic organza that I am stitching and then I will do the cutting:

The menus and desserts are sort of repeating from last week, so there is no dessert du jour. Be sure to check Kristin’s blog to see what photos she is sharing.

I am so thrilled to be here this week with several quilters from my former home in Santa Rosa. Also, I have finally gotten to meet Carol Taylor, whose work I love,love, love. She sat at our table for dinner tonight. I also had a nice chat with Jane Sassaman about the resurgence of handwork among young women. She asked for the blog addresses of my daughters as she wants to see what they are doing and how they are networking via blogs.

I am a little late posting, but my roomie needed to get some early shut eye for a flight home to Virginia, where she is employed as a rocket scientist. In fact, Hollis Chatelaine had two rocket scientists in her class!!

We had such sad news yesterday. Elizabeth Barton was taken to the hospital early this week with what they thought was asthma brought on by dehydration due to the altitude. Next day they said they were doing more tests. Then we heard that she had a heart attack. Yesterday came word that she has blocked arteries and needs by-pass surgery. She lives in Athens, GA, where here husband is recuperating from surgery so her daughters are trying to get here to be with her. She had been to the doctor in GA and they said she was just tired from taking care of her husband. This is a classic case of the medical community ignoring the signs of heart disease in women. She is skinny and would not appear to be a candidate. They had to punt here at AQT with fill-in teachers.

I had a great dinner with Kristin and her mom. It was nice to have a more intimate setting after several days of dining with all the quilt divas.

OK, you want to see what I have done. Not much!! I had a melt down on Wednesday and totally diverted from my intended design. Here is my design wall. The piece on the right was in my head and needed to be done. I diverted from my trapezoid shape and went with what I feel comfortable doing. Collaging squares. I painted a piece of organza in several colors and cut it up and made the collage on the right. The premise of the class was to pick a shape – come up with several designs, pick one and do some studies and then work the shape in to a larger piece. No one else in the class was doing this. I felt quite out on a limb.

Here is a close up of the collage which will get lots of Perle cotton and machine stitching before it is finished. I call this spring sunshine.

So, Jeannette was disappointed with my diversion and being the goody two shoes student that I am, I pulled out the trapezoids and auditioned new backgrounds for it. I worked up a new design and have cropped it with paper to show the final layout. I am playing with those sticks of fabric. I am not sure what I will use in the final piece. This will be titled Pathway or something similar.

I am glad that I went back to it. The discipline of working through this was very good for me.

Liz Berg has started a new series that involve doors. She has dyed lots of cheesecloth and has used it for these collages. I think they are just wonderful.

Here is the sunset I saw walking back to my room yesterday;

And here is a beautiful reflection of a pine tree in the windows of the hotel.

I have my supplies moved to my new classroom with Charlotte Yde – can’t wait! I’m spending the day processing the last few days and working on Miles’ sweater. Maybe I’ll work on those sticks on the Pathway. I will soon have a new roomie, and I am excited to see some Santa Rosa friends here for this next session.

I am tired. I stayed up too late and got up to early to keep up with the latest returns and to cheer for the regime change that is about to occur in our country. We all cheered this morning when we heard that Rumsfield had resigned. My blogging friend, Dee, e-mailed me when it happened and so I was able to let everyone know.

Here are the photos for the day. I forgot to take a photo of my work in progress, but here are a couple of great quilts that were entered in the Crazy eights challenge – it is the 8th year for AQT.

This one is called just Crazy Number Eight.

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This one is titled Eight is Enough – four friends in the Jacuzzi – the boobs are the eight.

Here is the 2006 T-shirt, designed by Susan Shie:

And of course, the dessert du jour:

Tomorrow night, Kristin La Flamme and her mom are coming by to take me out to dinner ?¢‚Ǩ‚Äù I am looking forward to seeing her again. She is coming early to do the walk around of the class rooms. I have not been doing much e-mailing because I have to go online to my Internet mail server and it is a pain. So just know that I appreciate your comments very much, but I am not replying for awhile.

First of all, let me just do a little happy dance around my hotel room as I watch the returns come in. A message has been sent. Will it be heard?

Now, to my day here in gorgeous Tahoe. It was bright and sunny today – not a cloud in the sky. Not so for the northwest where the rain has finally stopped, but not without leaving a lot of devastation in its wake. I am happy to have missed it.

Today, we took our basic design and played with it some more and then selected a design for out big project. Here is what I did with two of my pieces:

Here is some other work from around the room:

Here is how I left my design wall, as I was auditioning fabrics:

And, of course, the Dessert Du Jour:

We had a preview of AQT 2007. It will be for one week, only, and it will have a lot of new teachers. More about that, later.

I am in that blissful state of being creative a

nd enjoying the creativity of others. My class with Jeannette Meyer is just what I needed to jump start my qult making. Out first exerise was one that I have done before, but have always enjoyed. She cut a poster in to 12 pieces and gave us each one to recreate – paying attention to the nuances of color ande value.

My section was the top left piece.

Next, working with black and white paper we were to take a simple shape and make 4 designs with the shape in a different place. You can see that some people in the class didn’t quite get it.

With the help of Jeannette and the class, we selected our favorite design and worked in fabric – using various criteria.

Here are my first 3:

The top 2 are contrasting value – that is close, but you can still see the design element and also a contrast in texture and fabric design – done 2 ways. The third is to contrast a very grayed color with its pure color. I used tow fabrics for the design shape. I am working on another variation of this – picture tomorrow. Hey, I am working in a series!

Here is more of the eye candy for sale -some gorgeous art cloth:

And, of course, the dessert du jour:

I am missing mucho rain in Portland. Mr C e-mailed me to tell me how bad it is. He also gave me a list of all the things he is going to accomplish while I am away. What a great guy!!