Stitching for Spain: Mi Casa

I’m back in the saddle again! One of the classes I’m teaching for Asociación Española de Patchwork in March is called Mi Casa es Su Casa. We are creating tiny homes using colorful felt fabrics with lots of hand embroidery.

Which means I have to make up lots of thread kits for my students. The kit of thread contains my hand-dyed size 8 pearl cotton threads like these as well as an array of felt fabric colors.

I’m placing a sampler of each thread colorway onto thread rings for my students’ kits. This counting of threads and attaching them on the rings is best done in front of a television screen while watching an engrossing movie.

True, I’ve been watching a lot of TV lately but I am looking forward to what the students create with the threads. It will be worth it!

Stitching for Spain: Teaching Again

In the last few years I’ve switched from teaching in person to teaching online with Creative Spark. (Being a peripatetic teacher was exhausting!) But when the invitation arrived from Spain to teach at the Asociación Española de Patchwork I couldn’t resist.

The Spanish patchwork festival takes place in Sitges, Spain on the Mediterranean coast March 14 through 17 of this year. The Spanish quilters are wonderful welcoming people. And I can’t wait to teach there and exhibit my artwork too.

I’ll Fly Away #1 (detail) by Laura Wasilowski

For the past few months I’ve been creating new artwork for my solo exhibit in Sitges. These are all made with silk fabrics and intensely hand embroidered. Quilts like the one above are part of the I’ll Fly Away series that will be on view.

The silk embroidered quilts will be on exhibit as well as larger art quilts in a quaint gallery near the festivities.

This is the same gallery where I exhibited my work in 2009 when I was young and perky. It will be great to be back there again!

Year of the Stitch: A Fast Finish?

When we last saw our Whimsy Lane quilt the tree bark was barely on the tree. The next step? Dress up the tree top with lots of leaves. I thought this would be a quick task and decided to time myself. And can you guess how long it took me to stitch the tree top leaves? It took 3.5 hours of stitching time.

In timing the next steps, the sidewalk and land stitching, it took another 3 to 4 hours. Lucky I enjoy stitching! Whimsy Lane #11 is finished and it’s time to move on to the next Year of the Stitch project.

And I think you’ll like my next Year of the Stitch project. This time I’m stitching for Spain!