Fun news! And a cool tip...

    Well... I'm finally back from my trip, and ready to get back into things! I hope you enjoyed my little mini series on really simple ways to start art quilting, and of course I hope you tried something in there. I'm all about finding ways for you to be successful in your art quilting journey. I have found that in the classes I have been taking recently, I do better with more of a schedule, so I'm still working on a more guided version of my Simple Secrets for Starting Art Quilting class. Details to come, as I came back to a bunch of quilt shop orders, a quick trip to Anchorage, and my news, A NEW STUDIO!! 
    Yep, after almost exactly three long years, I have space again! It's a cute cabin just down the road from our house, so I will get forced exercise out of the deal too, ha! I will share photos soon, might end up on Instagram first, so look there too! We haven't even started moving in yet, but we'll get started this weekend!
    On our trip, I was able to go to the venue where I will be doing my solo art show next summer, in my home town of Grand Marais, MN. It's a beautiful log building on the shore of Lake Superior, so fun! And now I'm very motivated to start making the bazillion art quilts I need to have for that, so I'll probably show some of them here, and maybe even try to make enough to sell a few before then, which I rarely do! But I have so many ideas now 😃

​    And now for the tip: I always bring some art supplies when I travel. (that's not the tip🤪) I started doing more watercolor painting a few years ago, and it's so portable, so that and a sketchbook are usually what I choose. There are so many portable watercolor sets, but I think I found one of the most, as it's made of paper 😀 But, I'm not that good at painting, so like art quilting, I have found some ways to 'cheat' (it's not cheating!). This time it was using repetition, which, incidentally, is one of the reasons quilters love fabric. Most fabric has a repeating design, and our brains happen to love that! So, if you can only paint a little kindergarten-y flower, just make a whole bunch of them and it's great!

    Then I filled in the background with some more repeated simple shapes, and at the end it looks like something 😂 Here is a photo of the outside of the paint I found, and also how much of the water I used from my water brush for this whole painting. Water brushes are the best way to make painting portable! 
    Bonus tip: I was watching Winnie the Pooh with my granddaughter, and I noticed the background artwork was loose watercolors with minimal details added with black pen. The bushes and branches had a few actual leaf shapes, but mostly just little marks, a few leaves gave the impression of all leaves. I love finding these little tips (still looking for that perfect word/phrase, that implies discovery or surprise as well as a concept, hmm...) I couldn't have painted this before I saw that, and I have gobs of those for art quilting too. Tips to suddenly make something seem more doable!
    If you made it this far, stay tuned for more class info, and also photos of my new space! Happy sewing! Beret