I spent this past week at Quilt Surface Design Symposium in Columbus, Ohio, taking a class with Betty Busby.  I have long admired her work and jumped on the opportunity to learn how she achieves her amazing designs.  Here is an example of her work:

Here is an artist who creates both abstract work and representational landscapes and seascapes.  Her work has a unified look of vivid glow from within and intricate texture.

This was the most productive class I have ever attended.  We painted, drew, learned to use cutting machines, and learned about non woven fibers.

Here is my own original design made into a cut out placed on top of a painted habotai silk:

Barbara Schneider was also taking this class and I often went over to stand in front of her design wall basking in the inspiration:

Here is Pat Isaman, with whom I spent many hours talking about life and art.   She’s a gem!

Here is my design wall:

We learned how to create crackled effects with wax:

and we learned to make Betty’s favored shape, dots!  We used Q-tips to drip thin paints onto silk and then added a drop of alcohol to make it spread.  Never knew something so simple could be so much fun.

Betty showed me how to take my designs and scan them so I could manipulate them in photoshop and upload them to Spoonflower to make my own fabrics.  I see many hours of obsessive behavior ahead!

Betty was so generous with information and links to sources.   She has a great sense of humor and I will be forever grateful for having had this opportunity to learn from her!