After my incredible time teaching on Denman Island for Artleap, I headed further down the coast to Berkeley, California.

This is the third time I have taught in the Berkeley area, and I truly hope it is just the beginning of a very long journey working with the quilters of this area. This time, I was teaching for the East Bay Hertitage Quilters. 

The East Bay Hertitage Quilters have a long history of supporting all types of quilting and quilters. Imagine what a guild founded in the late 1970s in Berkeley might be about, and you’ve got EBHQ. Many historically important quilters have been a part of this guild.

While there, I delivered a lecture and taught two workshops. The first workshop was Linear Blocks—Line into Shape. My students wasted no time getting down to business.

It is really hard to complete a quilt in a one workshop, but Mabry went home and finished hers over the weekend. I love how she inserted the maroon slivers to create additional movement.

I thought this was a really good use of the designer stripe from my book. Seeing this and what many other student ideas, I think I might design a workshop based on the single line and its friends who are all named Stripe.

I had a full day off to explore the Berkley area. Stacie Sharmen took me on great adventure to see the Artist Co-op in Emeryville. I am going to write an entire blog post about that, hopefully tomorrow, or maybe the next day. The Co-op features beautiful affordable live work spaces for artists

We also visited Hello Stitch which is a lovely sewing and quilting studio located in downtown Berkeley.

Stacey along with two other very smart ladies named Terri Carpenter and Kristen Takakuwa own this amazing sewing salon. Kristen is on the left and Stacie is on the right in this photo. 

In addition to providing all kinds of sewing services to their members, they also use their walls as a gallery space for featuring different artist’s and maker’s work. Sherri Lynn Wood’s work is currently on display.

On Monday, I taught Kitchen Sink Quilting—The Art of Making Do. I kind of love this workshop. I have been teaching it since I started teaching at the Calico Whale in Valdez, Alaska.

The premise of the workshop is that you take your left-over blocks and bits and use those elements as the starting point for your composition.

Some really interesting things can happen when you design with left-overs. Claire finished hers later that week! 

I also like that people can really get down to business especially if they have a lot of UFOs.

Good original work can come out of this process.

Because students design their quilts based on orphan blocks and strips, the entire room goes from bare design walls to explosions of color and piece work in less than 30 minutes.

My students were industrious and pragmatic. It was another great trip to Berkeley area. 

Mount Shasta– I have never had the fortune to get this great of a view. The flight attendant was just as interested as I was.

Back home I was greeted by the FISH. I have walked these steps to baggage claim many, many times, but I have never seen this Halibut.

How can I have missed something so BIG?

Which makes me think. We should always be looking. Who knows what we are missing. Especially in the places we have seen before.

PS- I hope to have my complete 2019 teaching schedule up on the website later this week.

15 Oct This entry was published on October 15, 2018 at 4:35 PM. It’s filed under About Teaching, News And Events, On the Road and tagged Berkeley, East Bay Hertitage Quilters, Emeryville, Kitchen Sink Quilting, Linear Blocks, Notes on Teaching. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.