I have finally recovered! Our second edition of CRAFT NAPA went so well, and it was a welcomed bit of respite from the outside world for a few days.  Some fun facts: We had nearly 200 students (up from 113 last year), 12 teachers for 33 workshops, an Artists’ Market, Wine Blending Competition, and a three-hour tour on the Wine Train to close the four-day event.

A few of us after a day of workshops:

So grateful to BERNINA of America and Meissner’s Sewing for providing BERNINAs for 3 full classrooms and sewing stations in others. Below is Jennifer Gigas, tireless as always, on the opening night of the event, offering up a free BERNINA sewing machine.

There was a lot of opining at the Artists’ View Luncheon where our teachers fielded honest and candid questions from students about manufacturers, supplies, inspiration, best practices, and copyright issues. I took so many things away from this luncheon, but here is a fun fact, explained by Victoria Findlay Wolfe: If you have Accuquilt dies, they will work on your Sizzix machines. Sizzix dyes will not work on your Accuquilt machines, so if you have both, the take-away is Sizzix can handle both!

What some old UFO’s morphed into after Lynn Krawczyk’s UFO workshop…

THANK YOU BERNINA of America and Meissner’s…these machines for free-motion quilting and piecing worked like a dream.

During CRAFT NAPA, we discussed a lot about design and color, including how to repurpose vintage blocks:

Leslie Jenison explaining how to use vintage blocks to turn into a modern quilt.

We studied art history and challenged ourselves to make mini-collages with minimal tools like strips of paper from brown paper bags:

We blended wine led by a vintner who gave each team some measuring cups, beakers, bottles of Merlot, Malbec, Cab Franc, and Cab Sauvignon to create a winning blend (chosen by blind judging).

We took this wine blending pretty seriously; the winning team got to have their wine bottled and given to all participants. (It turns out my team, “The Crafting Winos” won…but I swear it was not rigged!)

We studied shapes and movement in art (and admired Carrie Bloomston’s arm muscles).

We sold LOTS of fabric and supplies at the Artists’ Market. A peek at Jennifer Sampou’s booth…

40 of us closed the event with a wine train excursion, a three-hour tour up Napa Valley and back on a vintage Pullman train.

This was an incredibly fun time together.

But for me, one of the shining moments was hosting Open Studios with Melanie Testa and Carol Soderlund, the two authors for PLAYFUL FABRIC PRINTING. On Saturday these two artists turned the central area at the Embassy Suites into a dye studio and signed books for the masses.

Totally normal to sign books while donning dust masks and mixing dyes, right?

I surprised them with a cake that included the cover of their book…

They loved it, and I made them cry (there is a video of that on Facebook). It was my goal to make them cry. 😉

What made me cry was the ENTIRE cake was eaten, and it hurt me immensely to cut up the cover. But the cake was dee-lish (yellow cake with vanilla icing and a lemon filling).

All in all, it was a such a fun time together. Craft Napa was about making art and embracing our community. Next year’s dates are January 10-14, 2018, and I have plans to change things up. Please save the dates. Until then, thank you, and CHEERS!

I have been thinking for a while now how I could promote my business, and one idea I had was to screen print cards with the rendering of my art barn. I have written a lot of blog posts over the years about Thermofax screen printing on fabric, but I have historically had minimal success on paper; I often end up with blurred imagery.  However, I was really glad I was able to watch Lynn Krawczyk’s brand new DVD,  Thermofax Screen Printing Essentials because she had some fantastic tips for screening on all types of substrates:

It’s easy to see why Lynn was asked to create a DVD on Thermofax screen printing. Just check out all of these luscious fabrics of hers (currently in my possession…I am hesitant to send any of them back because I can’t stop petting them)!

After watching her DVD, I thought about giving it a go to create greeting cards.  I first created a photocopy of the image in Photoshop that I then burned onto a screen.

And for the first time, per the DVD,  I used Jacquard’s Puff Additive, and mixed with Golden Fluid acrylics. The Puff Additive has just enough tooth to it to yield a very sharp image on paper, whether you later want to apply a heat gun to emboss it, or not.

I experimented with different colors, different amounts of pressure when pulling the paint down the screen to get a more organic result.

And now I have my first set of cards to send out to the greater world.

Lynn has a lot of wonderful tips in her DVD and she masterfully and easily explains the processes from start to finish. In celebration of her DVD launch, she is giving away two screens of choice to a randomly selected reader of this blog entry. A question I have is, if you could create a screen of an image, what subject matter or image would you choose?  Just leave a comment below and you’ll be in the running!

To check out other ideas for screen printing and surface design, have a look at these bloggers also participating in this blog hop:

Maddie Kertay

Lisa Chin

Briana Goetzen

Dawn DeVries Sokol

Pam Carriker (goes up tomorrow)

Lynn Krawczyk (Sunday)

Well, maybe that header is a tad misleading…but I got you to read this far, right?

I owe the final entry on the QA TV taping that took place last week, and a little known show on PBS called Downton Abbey made it’s way on set, thanks to Cheryl Sleboda…

Me with my friend Cheryl Sleboda who taped a whopping five segments for this next season.

A fellow die-hard Downton Abbey fan, Cheryl demonstrated how she made small portraits of Downton Abbey characters based on her cartooning and sketching techniques. In the picture below (if you squint), you can get a glimpse of the steps she took to make portraits of Sybil, Edith,  Cora, and even the Dowager Countess!

Closest to Cheryl, you can see the “step-outs” to create Lady Mary.

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I also taped a segment on International Quilt Festival’s Pet Project to raise funds for Friends for Life, Houston’s premiere no-kill animal shelter. I am hoping thousands of PBS viewers  take my request to heart, and send in pet postcards for this next fall’s show (or better yet, come in person)!

Above I’m holding a postcard I made featuring my beloved Lou Lou.

I was so happy to get Sue Bliewiess to tape with us finally. A fellow Boston girl, she is very, very talented and makes the most adorable pet postcards. She did a lengthy segment, explaining her techniques for creating them.

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My friend Judy Coates Perez came back this season to tape two segments on dying and fabric painting, and she looked fantastic with her new Farah Fawcett hairdo!

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Linda McLaughlin taped a couple of segments, one on a variation of deconstructed screen printing (which was so cool and I will be trying this weekend), and a segment on “365 Days of 65” where she hand-stitched small quilt squares every single day during the year of her 65th birthday.

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Her newly adopted discipline of daily hand stitching inspired other finished works, including this black and white quilt that I was rather tempted to steal off the set…

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The very colorful Dianne Springer was a newbie to QATV, but she was a total pro on camera as she demonstrated how she takes scraps of fabrics to create a vibrant mailbox that will definitely set one apart from the neighbors!

Fellow thermofax screen passionista, Lynn Krawczyk was back this season, too, to demonstrate how to turn one’s love of surface design techniques into wearable art and home dec. projects.

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Silk dyer Marlene Glickman was back, too, to demonstrate a unique way of creating fabric collage using elusive bits of dyed sheers.

Modern Quilter Debbie Grifka demonstrated five small modern quilt projects that were so clever and that all can be completed in an afternoon. (By the look of my bangs in the shot below, it seems Judy Perez wasn’t the only one channeling Farah Fawcett!)

And lastly, Heather Jones was back this season to demonstrate other modern quilting techniques…some of which she will be demonstrating at Open Studios at International Quilt Festival/ Cincinnati next week! The guy between us is Mike Murphy, our Director. (He loves to ham it up.)

And speaking of behind-the scenes folks…here are another couple of guys that I stare at all day:

Floor director Billy with camera man, Brandon (and Hulk Hogan in the middle).

Have a great weekend, everybody!