My first Retreat! - A workshop with Marlene King

A couple of weeks ago I was privileged to attend a workshop with the multi-talented, multi award-winning textile artist and quilter Marlene King.  You can see some of Marlene's extraordinary work on her website here - http://www.thefabricpalette.com/.

Marlene came out of retirement to teach this workshop, and even better, there were only 2 students - myself and my friend Diana Eaton.  The retreat was held over 3 days at Bengeo Retreat in beautiful Deloraine in northern Tasmania.

The subject of the workshop was to be landscapes.  Usually Marlene sets the project from which to learn the techniques, but this time we were asked to bring a photo of our own to work from.  I chose a picture of myself and hubby riding a camel along Broom's Cable Beach at sunset.  How gorgeous are those colours?

That's me and John on the middle camel

Diana and I were delighted when Marlene decided to hang up a different quilt each day - to inspire us and to point out different techniques she had used.  A very generous teacher, Marlene also said she would be happy to teach us any of the techniques we wanted to learn.

Marlene and Travels

The quilt Marlene is standing next to (and was hanging right next to me all day - that's my sewing machine right there) is a multi-award winning quilt named Travels, which has won the Tasmanian Best of Show, the Australian Quilt Convention Melbourne National, and most recently, second place Innovative at the World Quilt Show XV.  Phew!

My favourite of the 3 was this one -

How beautiful are these quilts?

Day 1 - bobbin work, background piecing and making fern leaves

Day 2 - design

Diana gets expert advice

Fabric selection - I brought heaps cause you never know............

By the end of Day 2 I was finally getting somewhere

Day 3 - Piecing....

Quilting

Thread painting

Applique

Ok, this is as far as I've got.  There is still thread painting to finish and I need to decide on a border, or extending the piecing or maybe something entirely different........

Using a technique by Caroline Sharkey, I made 'fabric' from scraps and bits and pieces to add to the edges of this piece. 

but haven't decided whether to use them or not.  I do rather like the effect though......

Then I have to learn how to make a faced edging.

Anyway, that's what I've been up to.  Tomorrow I'm off again, this time to do 3 workshops over 4 days at the Australian Quilt Convention where I'm booked to learn Curved piecing with Vikki Pignatelli, Applique Techniques with Deborah Louie and William Morris applique with Michele Hill.  Whoopee!