As part of my travels and teaching for the Arizona Quilt Guild, I got to present a lecture at their semi-annual meeting.  They hold one meeting in the southern part of the state, and one in the north.  This one was in Flagstaff, in northern Arizona, and MY how beautiful and friendly a town!  I TOTALLY fell in love with the place, mostly because of the people!  We were booked at the Radisson, which had totally cool artwork and “stuff” to decorate.  Here are two neat pieces:

That second one, especially, gives me some cool ideas for an art quilt…hmm…..

And then there were these carved doors….WOW:

Talk about inspiration for quilting and applique designs!!!!

I gave my lecture at this meeting, and boy was that a challenge!  My laptop DIED two days before, and I was scheduled to do  a presentation using the laptop.  SHRIEK!   AND, even though I had the presentation on a thumb drive as insurance, we couldn’t find anyone on such short notice (that hadn’t already left home) that had a MacBook with Keynote installed, and no Mac stores anywhere nearby to rent one!   Fortunately, I had almost ALL my journal quilts with me (the topic of the talk), as well as my digital projector and video camera (which I use for live demos in class).  My intrepid host Tari Hammons came to the rescue.  I figured out that we could just hold the journals under the camera and project them “live” to the wall!   So I did the talk, flagged pages from my working sketchbook that I happened to have with me to share for that part, and Tari just swapped things out in order.  PHEW!  The group was MOST understanding, and it worked in the end.  But I hope never to repeat THAT experience.  THANK YOU, Tari! for your help…you helped save the day! Here’s me, doing the talk, looking more together than I actually felt:

(The long delay in blogging all this is due, in part, to having to reconstruct my life on the new laptop, which took two weeks to get built and sent from Apple in China….. thankfully, I had backed up fully the day before I left on the trip and had been saving for and planning on a new laptop later this year….so all is well in the end, but sheesh!)

The meeting was the usual guild thing, and this time outgoing President Lynn Kough was presented with this spectacular quilt made by board members…WOW:

Wish I had a better picture… the quilting (by the woman on the right, and I’m SO SORRY I didn’t write down her name…she’s the new Pres. of the guild I think) was GORGEOUS!

There were vendors, too (yippee!), and one had this lovely way to use up bolt-boards and display batik selections effectively:

Finally, here are two pictures from downtown Flagstaff…  The cathedral:

and this cool tree-sculpture on the Northern Arizona University Campus (between my hotel and downtown)…when the wind blew, the leaves clink and tinkle and dance…way cool:

What a wonderful, friendly, art-friendly town!   I don’t think I could ever live that far from salt-water, but if I could, Flagstaff would be very high on my list of great towns!

We were treated to a spectacular Arizona sunset while staying at Monument Valley, and an almost as wonderful sunrise.  These photos were taken from The View Hotel, third floor–and note, reservations are ESSENTIAL…book EARLY.  These photos are taken (duh) looking West, over the parking lot…in the first photo you can barely spot the glimmer of a car up and to the left of the (c) symbol:

And sunrise, looking (duh) to the  East over Monument Valley:

(Notice the photographers set up on the stairs, on the left, by the restaurant…the best spot to get the classic shot of both “mittens” which you can see in this photo, above.)

OH do these photos make me want to play with cloth and dyes!

Hubby does most of our vacation planning;  he loves to research things on the internet and plan things out, make reservations, and have everything scheduled.   When he mentioned Monument Valley, I will confess, I had to say “what’s that?”   He replied that when I saw it, I would recognize the distinctive rock formations.   Well, alas, I did not, but it was a totally cool place to visit.  here’s the quintessential view–this is the “left mitten”…notice the fingers on the left, the thumb sticking up on the right:

To backtrack, Monument Valley is on the border of Utah and Arizona, about 2 1/2 hours drive up a nice highway from Flagstaff, so we stayed the night at The View Hotel, a new facility.   The entire area is within the Navajo Nation.

On the way, I snapped some pictures from the moving car of the striated bluffs; it was spring, so there was a flush of green on them:

and:

I loved the gnarled and twisty trees, and wish I had been able to get more and better photos as they whizzed by:

The View Hotel is incredibly well designed to meld into the scenery.   I’ve highlighted it below.

There has been a store and restaurant there for some time, but the hotel–the left side in the photo above– is apparently fairly new, and quite nice.  I love when architecture blends into the environment…the tiers of the hotel on the left look like more levels in the rock cliff!

Since the climate is so arid, and since so many families on the Navajo reservation do not even have running water, they made a deliberate decision NOT to have a pool.  I also noticed that there is no alcohol for sale in the restaurant…no wine or beer.  There are big problems with alcoholism in some Native American communities, and I applaud their decision to forego the income from tourists and choose not to offer alcohol for sale.    Our room was on the third floor…here is Paul at the balcony.

We had hoped to see a zillion stars this far from any large cities, but alas it clouded over (this was the storm that pulled in to the Grand Canyon in my earlier post).

There is a 17 mile loop drive that you can see in the photo above.  I took TONS of photos… I particularly was entranced by the colors of green (remember these were taken back in early spring):

And Eli sitting half-out of the (stopped) car to take a picture:

Then those ROCKS and bluffs:

That boulder in the one above is bigger than a car!  And more…even I, who pretty much always makes representative art, am thinking abstract work inspired by these rocks:

And to prove that inspiration is EVERYWHERE…this is dust on the bumper of the rental car…. won’t that make an awesome screen for printing on fabric?

I actually managed to play with my watercolors, sitting on the balcony to our room, and painted JUST the wall/face of this bluff:

STUNNING!

Well…I’m only 2+ months behind on some blogging!  I’ve been busy on the road teaching in Arizona, Massahusetts and Ohio (at the NQA show!), and then Knoxville (AQS), TN, in July!   But I am trying to get caught up and share some of the lovely things I saw while on our family vacation after teaching in Arizona for the statewide quilt guild. Here is what the Grand Canyon looked like when we arrived at the South Rim in late April:

Notice that dark cloud on the horizon, especially to the left…well, it moved fast!  The following sequence of photos was taken as we walked along the rim…took all of 40 minutes.  We went from overcast:

Notice the cheerful (sigh…) family…woefully underdressed for the weather we were about to encounter:

All I can say is THANK HEAVENS the boys got this glimpse…even the jaded teenager went “WHOA!!!!!!” on first looking over the railing/wall!

To mist moving into the canyon about (literally) two minutes later:

Then looking down into the canyon:

And watching the veils of mist and snow and rain and shafts of sunlight–it was actually pretty cool to see this, as opposed to screaming blue skies and sunshine typical of summer:

To rain:

To clouds down in the canyon:

And the markers explaining the stone layers that you see:

And drifting cloud wisps–you can see the snow gathering on the north rim:

Then the north rim disappeared:

To SNOW…a late spring snowstorm.

To WhiteOut:

On the drive back to Flagstaff, cars on the Interstate highway had slowed to 25 miles an hour the road conditions were so slippery!  So before we got on the road, we went into the big old inn for some hot food.  I loved the table setting:

At long, LONG last, I am able to share the fun time I had teaching for the Arizona Quilt Guild in mid-April.   As a matter of fact, the day I took these photos was the day my old laptop gave its last blink and died!   I have to tell you it was SO MUCH FUN!

To back up a couple days, I flew in to Phoenix, and taught in the greater Phoenix area the first day, my Fine Finishes class.  Alas, I was SO busy, that I utterly forgot to take photos.  My host was also the program Chair, Tari H., who signed up for all three of my classes, which were scattered about the state. So, she ended up also being my driver!  We loaded up the back of her car with her machine, suitcase, and stuff (for all the classes) and then all of MY suitcases and stuff!   The second day of teaching was sponsored by the guild(s) (both with Copper in their names) in San Manuel, a former small copper-mining-town which is roughly in a line between Phoenix and Tucson to the southeast.

I have to tell you walking into the church hall felt like going home….. the folding tables, the happy ladies, the hum of sewing machines, potluck (YUM) for lunch….   it was such a wonderful day!    One of the best things about quilters is that they are friendly and welcoming, and it really did feel  like going home.

The class in San Manuel was my Applique three (and a half) ways class:  Turned edge (over freezer paper or water soluble paper), Turned edge over interfacing (left in), fusible, and (the half part) reverse applique for those three techniques.   I use a Gingko leaf because it has every shape you will encounter:   inside and outside curves, inside and outside points, and a straight line.  I’ll admit that skinny stem is challenging as are the skinny inside points, but I figure if students to something hard in class, they’ll be more likely to tackle it at home.  If we only do easy stuff, they might not!   Anyway, we had a GREAT assortment of fabrics and looks.

As you browse through the photos (sorry about the odd placement…there is only so much I can manage in the format!), notice the thread choices, how the stitch and thread selection change the appearance of the threads.  In the black Indonesian batik, the gold thread just sings!  In the last photo, notice how different the leaf looks on the stitched side compared to the not-yet-sewn side!  In the photo at the top of this blogpost, compare the look of the different appliques.   Trying out different techniques an threads and stitches will help you decide which combination gives you the look YOU want!   And also notice in a few shots how the students have tested out stitches on scraps.  Don’t imagine what the thread and stitch would look like–try it out!

That evening we had a looooonnnnggggg drive (poor Tari!   drive 90 minutes to San Manuel in the morning, all day class, then about 5 hours back past Phoenix and up to Flagstaff for Friday’s class and Saturday’s lecture at the semi-annual guild meeting).  However, we did drive through quintessential southern Arizona territory and what was effectively a sajuaro cactus forest.  Because it was late, we were both tired, and had a long trip, I didn’t ask Tari to stop so I could snap pics, so this will have to do:

MANY thanks to the ladies of San Manuel for such a great day, and especially to Tari for being such a trooper and shuttling me across the state from south to north!  Coming soon:  Fussy threads and Flagstaff!