June 2019 will be known in my head as the Wild Ride. I know I have had some crazy teaching trips, but this one was particularly complicated—the logistics had my head expanding and contracting. Going into it, I doubted I would be able to get from point A to M to 9 and then 20, but I did.

I started out with a red eye to Chicago with sons #2 & #3. I then loaded them onto a plane headed to Pittsburgh, and got myself on a flight to Rochester, New York for the  New York for the Genesee Valley Quilt Fest.

What a great event! I enjoyed all of it. Paula Nadelstern and Cynthia England were the other instructors. To get to hang out with these ladies was truly a treat. Here our quilts in the Teacher’s Exhibition at the show.

I taught Kitchen Sink Quilting & Riffing on Tradition. I failed to take photos, so you will just have to trust me when I say we had a lot of fun.

I managed to get a few moments to enjoy the show and watch the finale of the Round Robin Challenge.

Three teams went head to head with each team member adding to the other team member’s quilts. It was super fun to watch.

 

I also spent a wee bit of time trying to finish my Cloth in Common quilt. This quilt was sandwiched in between so much other nonsense I hardly remember making it. But I did.

I learned that a tall headboard and a bath towel make a not-so-bad design wall.

I met back up with sons #2 & #3 in the Chicago airport, and we headed to Kansas City for a family visit. The boys and I stayed in a lovely Airbnb in Midtown. I had plenty of room to set up another sewing studio and finish my Cloth in Common quilt for the Mask prompt.

Who knew this was in me? I really think it takes my patterning skills to a new level.

The quilt looks a little bit like these two. The Alaskan boys who were incapable of comprehending the principles of air conditioning. Listen sons—You cannot just have a window unit blasting air out of all the open windows in the apartment—it doesn’t work that way. (Dear airbnb people—they only did that for a minute. I set them straight as fast as I could.)

We visited Valley Falls, Kansas where most of my father’s family lives. Here is my grandmother’s farmhouse which is sadly no longer in the family. It was super windy and the boys look like a modern version of American Gothic. Son #3 insists upon looking weird in photos. I do believe he is going to regret that. I love dirt roads especially in Kansas.

We went to the World War I Memorial where my husband’s father was an avid volunteer until the end of his active life. This Memorial is way cooler then you can imagine. It is totally worth visiting, as in the rest of Kansas City.

Lots more crazy KC activities went down, but I will not bore you with the details.

I got the boys on a plane back to Anchorage and began to think about teaching again. I had almost all new work to share with the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild. 

The KCMQG did some serious circling around in the workshop Circle & Curve Sampler. These quilters worked super hard all day long to come up with their samples.

Next up was Houston and Beaumont, Texas. While in Houston, I taught for the Quilt Guild of Greater Houston.  We Riffed on Traditon.

In Beaumont, I taught for the Golden Triangle Quilt Guild .  The first workshop we did together was a bit of mash up with the emphasis being on Making Prints out of Solids. Circle & Curve Sampler was the second workshop. 

Memphis was the grand finale of this trip. Here, I was going to get to work with some new and old friends building a community quilt for Memphis. Over the course of three days, we hosted a quilt block making party and began the process of building a community quilt. I had never done a community quilt in this format, and I was super excited to see what would happen.

I prepped loads of fabric. In fact, I kind of, sort of, took over the laundry room at the Crosstown Arts Residency Program. 

Here is the signage from the big day. And that is where I am going to leave you dear readers as Stitched, Crosstown Arts, and the Memphis Community Quilt deserve thier own blog entries.

I will say that this was the most exciting thing I have done in a long, long time. I learned so much about building community quilts, my ability to collaborate while also being a leader, and working LIVE. The experience is something that is going to feed my intellectual, emotional, and creative being for a very long time. How was your June 2019? I hope it has been a good one.

30 Jun This entry was published on June 30, 2019 at 5:59 PM. It’s filed under About Teaching, Cloth in Common, Community Quilts, Monthly Update, News And Events, On the Road, TEACHING and tagged Circle and Curve Sampler, Community Quilts, June 2019, Riffing on Tradition, TEACHING, Work. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.