Rhonda Bracey: At Random

Another all-day class for me today — Painting with Tsukineko Inks, with Judy Coates Perez teaching. She’s a lovely lady, a good teacher, and we got good value for money for our Materials Fee (a set of 12 inks and applicators, fabric, and other goodies). I learned quite a bit, including the use of aloe gel as a medium for painting with these inks using brushes. I wonder who figured out that aloe gel would work so well?

Would I use these techniques again? Very likely, but not often. They are very time consuming.

Below are some photos of the work Judy and daughter have done using the techniques she taught us.

And here are my efforts — The first photo is from the morning where we learned to use the applicator and lend colours; the second is from the afternoon when we applied the inks and aloe gel with paint brushes. I was quite pleased with the passion flower from the afternoon; the leaves? not so much…

Tonight I leave the hotel for the first time to have dinner at a local restaurant with an Australian guy I used to work with in Perth, and his wife.

Our first full day in Houston! First up for me was an all-day class. The least said about it the better, but suffice to say I lodged a formal complaint with the Festival’s Education Office the next morning.

At lunchtime, I caught up with Kim, the owner of Quilting Adventures in Texas, and we shared stories for two very short hours (all-day classes get a two-hour lunch). No margaritas were consumed!

At 5pm the preview night opened for class attendees — this allowed us two hours of unfettered access to the quilt exhibition and the vendor mall. Both are HUGE. After two hours, the public could gain access.

It took me four hours of quick walking to cover the entire area (the total area of the three exhibit halls is some 82,000 square metres), take some 250 photos of just a few of the amazing quilts, and buy most of the things on my list (it was a short list!). My feet and back were done by then, so I crashed in my room — too tired to write this blog post and to process the photos. Later…