Two more days at the festival of quilts

Saturday evening. What???? Already?
Yes, it is. Yesterday I spent all day in class with Sophie Furbeyre, an art quilter of a certain fame here in Europe. She actually managed to overcome my prejudices on the genre and I happily worked on my first art quilt in her class titled "Paint and draw with fabric". And that's what we did. First we painted on Tyvek, then we applied the heat gun to quite a number of different artificial fibers and then we combined all this on top of a piece of white fabric. Along the way I made my first experiences on free-motion quilting, since that was how we were to sew the quilt together. One more WIP...

 It still needs some serious quilting and addition of further pieces of red. And, of course, batting and backing.

On our third day on the festival, we "only" had the plans to attend two lectures. The first one in the morning was with Marti Michell, "Quilting in Sections". We learned quite a lot and after this lecture I think that we'll be doing 99% of our quilting ourselves since she told us about so many tricks that make elaborate quilting possible on a domestic machine.

We went for a quick lunch and were moving through the exhibition, when we recognized another face sitting behind a table. Tula Pink was presenting her quilting and autographing her books. A chance we couldn't let pass by, don't you think? We bought some of her SaltWater collection fabrics in the turquoise colourway and Ellen got herself a book.

Wandering around, we passed by the booth of Margaret Beal (for the n'th time...) and I finally fell completely in love with her fusing and cutting processes. End of the game? Even though I hadn't planned on it, I'll fly back to Germany with her book, a soldering iron and a handfull of rulers. Not to forget the fabrics.
Enough for one day? Hmmm... yeah, that's what I would have thought, too. We went to the lecture of Kaffe Fassett, "Glorious Colour" - and enjoyed it hugely. I expanded my view on colour quite a bit and gave me the good feeling that simply following one's gut feeling isn't the worst idea when designing quilts.

Of course you can't just leave after such a lecture without a handfull of fabrics, above all when they're so attractively priced. I started out with one fabric, as I do most of the time and started combining suitable ones. When I had a bunch of five chosen fabrics, a male voice asked from the side "Can I help you?" Not thinking of anything since there were so many shop assistants running around the Cotton Patch booth that I simply voiced my thoughts "I'd like something violet-ish to go with these." Only then I turned to see that the question had come from Brandon Mably. I gulped. But he simply nodded and took a closer look at my selection. For a short explanation - the three on the left were my choice. I had a green and a blue shot cotton to go with them. His first suggestion was to let go of the shot cottons and replace them by the rightmost fabric. I liked that much better too. Then, for the violet, he suggested the second fabric from the right which has quite some violet, even though you don't really see it on this picture.

Here you are with today's "Designer Approved" selection of Kaffe Fassett Collective fabrics that will make a gorgeous Japanese Folding Technique handbag.

You know what's the best? There's one more day to come! And... I wouldn't bet what adventures this one might bring.