On the Road: Madison, WI Fiber Arts Group

One of the highlights of my 12-days in Wisconsin was the time I got to spend with Nancy Blake—my student, fellow art quilter, chauffeur, organizer, hostess, and now friend. Nancy, pictured with me and her latest project above, was my ride to and from the Madison airport and to and from Woodland Ridge Retreat for my first week in WI. She also instigated and arranged the following 2-day class in Madison, WI.

I first met Nancy in a September 2015 Woodland Ridge Retreat—you can see her finished quilt, “Dinner Date With Chunk,” her grand-dog, in this Finish Line post. She’s been at each Woodland Ridge class I’ve taught at since then, either as a student, or working independently while helping retreat owner Chris Daly prepare their excellent retreat meals. This year, Nancy was in my first week-long retreat (see last week’s post about that class), as well as the Madison class which she organized and offered to members of her small art quilt group, the Madison Contemporary Fiber Arts Group.

The evening before the class began, I gave a lecture for the fiber arts group and Blue Bar Quilts, the quilt shop hosting the class. Blue Bar is owned by Gayle Boyd, who coincidently I met back in the mid- to late-1980s through Portsmouth Fabric Company in Portsmouth, NH. Gayle also owns one of the framed fish quilts that I made and sold at art fairs back then. How fun it was to see her again.

Blue Bar has a nice sized classroom, but limited seating for a lecture. They got in as many as possible and it was a great audience that evening, with a lot of good questions for me. They were very attentive and then a few returned the next day for class.

This class was a 2-day fish, bug, and butterfly class. When giving a two day class, I limit subject matter to lessen the stress involved with choosing a subject, and to free up creativity with subjects that are quite open to interpretation. Through the years, I’ve found that you just can’t go wrong with a fish, bug, or butterfly—and you can have a whole lot of fun with them.

The class ran Tuesday and Wednesday. I start each morning, and in this case every afternoon, with a demonstration or presentation of ideas and techniques. Nancy took some photos of me doing my schtick in the collection of photos below.

This certainly is a fun class for me. With only two days, it has to move at a good clip, which eliminates too much debate over the “perfect” piece of fabric. You really just have to pick something, try it out, and move on. You can always edit later, and in the meantime, happy accidents can occur. In this particular group, there was variety of each type of subject. Fish, bugs, butterflies—each was represented. A few students worked from my patterns and others had their own fishy or fluttery designs to work from.

As I’ve noted in other blogs, it’s always fun teaching at a fabric store. Whenever you need a break you can browse the stacks for more material. I was able to add a little bit more to my stash this time as well.

The walkthrough video below shows the students’ progress—and the progress over the two days of the colorful and creative messiness. It runs about 12 minutes, so go get that second cuppa, sit back, and enjoy.

Karen Silvers and Nancy, both Woodland Ridge Retreat alumni, helped prepare their fiber art group with pre-meetings to help choose their patterns and fabrics for my way of teaching. Thus the students were well-prepared—with drawings enlarged and already transferred to the foundation fabric. They were ready to jump in and learn some new techniques. Great job to everyone, and a special thanks to Nancy and Karen.

In photo below, Karen shows me the ready to quilt collage she started in her first retreat with me. I love it!

The class went by so fast, it was the first time in a long while I’ve failed at getting a class photo of all my students. But here are some from the very end, as people were heading out: with Parul Trivedi above left, Sue Buckingham (and “Ruby” the redfish) above right, with LaVay Elg-Scott below left, and Cindy Anderson below right.

And in the slideshow below you can see progress shots of everyone’s work.

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As always, I try to get out for morning walks prior to class. As the week before, it was darned cold outside in Wisconsin, but I made myself get up and out. I have never been to Madison before, so I had the extra incentive of checking out this new place. A couple mornings were breakfast with Nancy and her sweetie Joe—pictured outside of Monty’s Blue Plate Diner below.

Mostly I wandered through Madison’s Willy Street neighborhood, with little shops in old brick buildings and cute homes—many of them bungalow styled—where Nancy lives and I was housed nearby. I noticed that many neighborhood decorations were an amusing transitional mix of wilting Halloween pumpkins and newly hung holiday wreaths and lights.

Thursday I was all prepared for a nice and easy noontime flight out of Madison. I was about to zip up my suitcases when I received a text message from United Airlines saying that my flight had been cancelled and rescheduled for the next day. Excuse me? Why? Sometimes I get so focused on my class that I don’t pay attention to the wider world—or weather reports. Apparently, a major snowstorm was bearing down on the Northeast. Huh.

So, I got an unexpected extra day in Madison. Turned out to be sunny one, the best weather of the entire Wisconsin trip. Nancy was able to spend an enjoyable day with me and we browsed around downtown. She then housed me overnight in her own cute little historic bungalow.

Photos in the slideshow below are from my morning walks plus from my extra day exploring Madison’s downtown, including the State Capital building.

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The next day the snow was a little slow moving out of Portland, Maine. So when the connecting flight from Chicago began, the pilot told us we may or may not be landing in Portland. He’ll let us know as we begin the descent—Boston was the back-up. Lovely. But what can you do? The snow took the hint and we landed on time, on the one newly opened runway at the Portland Jetport. We had to wait a while on the tarmac for one of the two open gates to be available, and then there was luggage delay due to frozen luggage carts. But all was well, and as a bonus, Tom managed the drive to pick me up in the dying storm. I have to say Maine looked quite pretty with all that freshly fallen snow. And then I was home.

As a final addition to this blog post, one evening Nancy drove me through a holiday light display set up across the river from downtown Madison. That’s the WI State Capital building above, both lit up in the background and lit in display lights in the foreground. And in the clip below, my husband Tom, strung together a few of the short videos I took as we rolled through the show of lights.