Quilt Nebraska 2011, part 1
The last week of July, I headed to Nebraska (with trepidation given the weather forecasts for 100+ days everywhere in the midwest). I left a cloudy Maine and snapped this photo on the way out of the midcoast:
To get anywhere, I either drive a long way and spend the night (more expensive for the guild) to catch a plane out of Portland or Boston, OR I leave from Rockland/Owl’s Head, which is about 30 minutes from home. Mo bettah! Still not inexpensive, but less costly than an overnight. The plane is small — here is a blogpost from last May — perhaps 9 passengers total, one of whom sits next to the pilot.
Once I got to Nebraska via Rockland to Boston to Detroit to Omaha to a car to 2-3 hours to Kearney (phew), I taught three classes: Art Uncensored, Fine Finishes, and Hawaiian applique. Since there are a ton of photos (and I’ve skipped a bunch), I’ll break it into two posts. I must say, I seem to have taken cooler weather with me. The 100+ temps abated and it was a quite tolerable (thanks to A/C) 90-ish during the days.
The first day I taught in a conference room in the Holiday Inn since the class was small. This is the first time they have offered classes on Thursday, and I think many were low on students. We still managed to fill up the room!

three students filled up the entire conference table (along with all the STUFF I schlep for them to try)
They did a great job and produced a lot of nice surface-designed fabrics, using both my carved blocks and the raw materials and ideas of their own:

And even more end-of-class samples by the students; techniques include lino-cut rubbings, rubbings with Shiva painstiks, stamping, printing, stenciling.... lotsa fun!
I particularly liked how the student used the sequin waste and shaded colors to create the berry clusters here:

The green-on-white is a "paper snowflake cutout" stencil, the other two are the berry/grape/hydrangea (take your pick) clusters... really like them!
And one lady actually made a postcard…
I’ll be back in a couple of days with the final two classes: Hawaiian Applique and Fine Finishes.