An Artful Journey

A few weeks ago, I went to An Artful Journey, a retreat in CA. Each participant selected a 3 day class with the same instructor. I chose a bookmaking class with DJ Pettitt. There was lots of fun not just in class but in the evenings as well.  The shopping night was a big success for me, and the things the artists had to sell were amazing. We were all given a journal, handmade and sewn by Cindy Woods, the organizer of the event and DJ Pettitt. One night there was journal playtime with lots more goodies to take and add to our books. The surroundings were amazing with tall trees, peace and quiet unlike the big cities I run between in daily life, and lots of nature. We actually saw a small deer in the woods the first day.  The thing about being around DJ Pettitt is how inspiring her work is. Most of the 20ish of us in class went back at night after hours and just kept working. Some stayed an hour or two, and some stayed way into the wee hours. Going back allowed me the extra time I wanted to hand embroider many of my pages. It was fun to see how even though we all got the same direction, how different each book was. Most of the students used the painting techniques she demonstrated for the covers, but another book she had for eye candy caught my attention, and I took that route as my inspiration. The book is so thick, I decided to just take a few photos, and here they are. Hard to believe they were all taken with the same camera within minutes of each other in the same light. Maybe there is a button on there I am accidentally pushing to make them look so different, but it is what it is.

Hi, My name is Jane, and I

am a fabriholic! Or something like that. In the world of inanimate objects, what I love best of all is fabric, thread, paper, and writing utensil. Just sayin. I can go a long time without buying any fabric, especially when my life seems to thrive on making things out of scraps, but when the bug bites, well you will see. It started when we had a few hours to kill on the way back from the Artful Journey retreat in California. More about that next, but we went to Danville, CA to visit the studio of Traci Bautista first. We had a great time visiting, seeing her work space, got to see her work and got a sneak peek of some of her new digital print collection while doing some serious shopping there, and then set out on foot for a shopping adventure around one of the cutest downtowns. One of those shop 'til you drop days. One of the places Traci pointed out for us to see was a quilt shop. Danger, danger. I got out of there without too much trouble, but I picked up a magazine that has a new line of fabric called Type by Julia Rothman. As soon as I could catch my breath, I was online determined to find it. Well, find it I did, and one thing led to another because I couldn't find all the pieces in the collection I wanted, in stock, at the same place. Seems like this collection is selling like hotcakes pretty much everywhere. The Type collection pieces are in the first photo. After all that, this is the result, well most of it. I am not gonna apologize. This sort of thing keeps me out of other sorts of trouble. For real.