August 27, 2014

We just had a fun and engaging week with David Taylor, the fiber artist form Steamboat Springs, Colorado (not David Taylor the fabulous watercolorist from Australia who will be teaching here next year! Although they both like and buy my Crazy Ties.)

I have long admired David’s award-winning work, having seen it all over the internet and also some of the major shows, so it was a pleasure to finally meet him and have him here to teach a workshop.

Everyone brought a great photo to work from, each different than the others. David had everyone start with the eyes. It was sort of erie to walk through the studio that first day and see all those eyes peering at you.

Joyce L was working on a cute portrait of fox. I love her fabric palette spread out around her.

Corinne had a wonderful picture of a blue-footed booby bird!

Sandy’s focus was flora rather than fauna, with this bright yellow flower.

Helene had a picture of one of her dogs.

And Korinna was working on a cat. Korinna was our longest distance winner in this class, having come from Germany!

These next couple of pictures show the progress after a couple of days.

Every day David provided demos and discussions about the various steps of his process.

The remaining pictures were taken on the final day. You can see that some people made more progress than others, but the reason is different than you might think. David told me, rolling his eyes, that everyone was having so much fun chatting, laughing and telling stories that they weren’t spending enough time focused on their work! The class even went on a field trip to a local quilt fabric shop, Log Cabin Fabrics, during class time one afternoon.

David brought several of his art quilts with him, of course, and everyone oohed and aahed and had him hold them up for pictures.

Here is the paparazzi!

This is the quilting on the back of David’s bird quilt. Simplily amazing.

One of the demos on the last day was how David puts on the binding on his finished pieces. He thinks of the binding as framing his finished work.

It was a good week all around with good food and good weather to round out the experience. We hope to have David back again in the future!