Bad Photos; Great Event

To celebrate our show at Madison's Overture Center, the Madison Contemporary Fiber Artists held a workshop today, and it was a huge success. We invited the public to make leaves for our "tree," a branch that is part of the exhibit. We had five stations for leaf-making: embroidery, embellishment, felting, weaving, and coloring. 

We were told to expect 100 people. We got about 350, half children. People of all ages loved the projects and made beautiful leaves.

I am exhausted. We set up at 9 a.m. today and closed down at 1 p.m. Thank goodness we have a three-day break from school so I'll have time to recover. And excuse the photos; we were in an interior room with no natural light.

The opening reception was last night. We had a great turnout -- even though the temps were well below freezing. I want to share a few of the quilts with you. This first one is a huge landscape by Susan Jackan. Sue was one of my team teachers my first year of teaching. She retired a while ago, but it has been fun to meet up with her again. She has won all kinds of national awards for her work.

This one is by Laura Gottleib. I love her colors and the composition.

This next one is a small work of dense embroidery accented by beads done by Dvorah Kaufman.

And last is my entry:

I really wanted to have a third panel, but I ran out of time. It was fun to make, especially the fringe at the bottom. I titled it "Perishable." It's supposed to be a play on words: perishable in the sense of food going bad but also a reference to our fragile Earth.