Home from Mexico, Point Bonita, and Berkeley!

Januaries are busy in my world...lots of great things are jammed together!

I had a 24 hour turnaround between Mexico and flying down to the Bay Area for the annual Point Bonita Getaway, a week-long retreat at the tip of the Marin Headlands with 60 other quilters who come every year. As always it was terrific.
Here are a few scattered shots....

Flossie Barnhardt was cranking on the Go! machine, really liking the Drunkard's Path die's possibilities.

She liked how easy it was to sew these up.

There is always such a variety of work happening at PB. My tablemate Laurie was using a calendar of classic guitars for inspiration.

That's a Fender made by the great Master Builder, Christopher Fleming.
Laurie got five guitars going. She plans to stretch them over thin plywood and hang them on the wall in their rec room. Cool!

Such an original idea!

The work of Rebecca Rohrkaste completely thrills me every year. She is a colorist like no other, and her use of the textural element in printed fabrics is peerless.
This year she was working large on a deceptively simple quilt that over the week utterly captured me.

She is a master of value control as well. (This picture is a little distorted, lighting wise. The quilt is actually not that dark in the lower right.)
Rebecca also has branched out in recent years into the new medium of Book Arts. Late at night she will pull out these little miracles to show me and send me reeling. Here is a link to a gallery site with a picture of one of them.
Due to copyright constraints, I can't lift the photo from the next link to show you, of one of Rebecca's quilts from 8 years ago. But you HAVE to see it here. Go now, and you will see what I am talking about with regards to this great quilt artist.

I was working on a pattern for my friend Tracey Brookshier's company, Brookshier Design Studio. We are going to debut it at Quilt Market in May, so I can't really show it to you yet. But I had a great time working on it.

I was just minding my own business, sewing along...
We all have our own styles of working, it is true. My friend Holly was making this...

...so naturally her work area looked very neat and precise. Exemplary!
On the other hand, I am a crazy quilter, just doing my thing. When I came back from a hike, I was rather shocked to find my area had been marked off with yellow tape!

Caution, it says Caution!
As Vito Corleone says, "What did I do to deserve such disrespect?" They couldn't have a point, could they?
In case they did, I picked up and straightened out my PigPen mess just a little....;-)

I never found out who did it, either.
How we love Point Bonita....I can't wait until next year.

Teaching at New Pieces in Berkeley was fun and went well. I am enjoying teaching more every time I do it because the students are always so great and teach ME so much!

And now it is good to be home......