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!
Fabulous in all ways — the fun, the inspiration, the techniques, the people, and your work!