Field Trip to Susan Carlson’s Class!

Last Thursday evening I attended a lecture by Susan Carlson, a quilt artist from Maine who was also teaching at the Grand Hotel Needle Art Seminar with me.

I was totally captivated by her processes and how she uses regular old commercial fabrics ((You know, the kind we ALL HOARD!)) in her quilts. 

And her work is stunning.  I shared photos from her lecture HERE.

And her students had been busy all weekend long working on their creations.

All the while MY students – bless them each and every one ---were in the repetitive process of making 600+ 1.5” finished half square triangles for the second day in a row, and we all know how tedious that can become.

We needed a FIELD TRIP!  And so we marched single file, right out of our classroom door, across the upstairs lobby/gallery area, through another room, up a couple flights of stairs and into Susan’s room we went.  And they took a break from their hard work long enough to share their progress with us…..in all of about 10 minutes before we left them to their scissors and their glue and back down to triangles we went.

One of Susan’s inspirational Suns.

You could choose your own design to work on, or if you needed somewhere to start, a Sun with a face is a great beginner project – and they were all so different!

Sun face in progress – do you recognize any of these fabrics?

Wow!  This is coming out neat!

Each one has its own personality!

This one reminds me of “Goodnight, Moon!”

How about a delicate dragonfly from a photo??

There’s Something Fishy Around Here!

How about a real still life – a chair and potted plants, inspired by a photo!

And isn't THIS fab?  Praying Mantis with Personality!

Funny, as I’m typing this up this morning, my ipod is playing on “random” and the song playing is “Dance, Dance, Dance”,  that good old 70’s disco tune   with “Yowza Yowza Yowza….” and I can see this mantis getting down and shaking his booty to the music! :cD

There are so many ways to be a quilter – and all of them are WONDERFUL!

Check out More of Susan’s work by visiting her website HERE!  She’s got a newsletter you can subscribe to, and she gives hands on retreats in her lovely home state of Maine – check that out too!

SO – here I am on Thursday morning with a mostly free day ahead of me until this evening’s lecture.

My friend Karen is picking me up to do some antique hunting and some lunch and whatever else comes our way!  It’s a much needed play day and I’m glad for it.

And yes, I’ve already been out for my power walk this morning. 

Temps should hit about 80 today in Detroit.  What a CHANGE from this past week on Mackinac!

Have a great Thursday, Everyone!

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