June 7, 2013

At the SDA Conference (vacation in San Antonio!!)

Today marks one week since I arrived in San Antonio, TX for the International Surface Design Association Conference. It's great here. Seriously. San Antonio is beautiful. There are so many amazing things blooming and the river walk is one of the nicest parks I've ever seen. I've also had way too much good food and good beer. I could probably live here. Except I would be sweaty all the time. It is definitely hot and humid.

If anyone knows what this plant is, please tell me. It's gorgeous and it's everywhere here.
Anyway. I came here to teach a 4 day per-conference workshop on Percentage Dyeing - the method I use that involves weighing your fabric and then using that weight to figure out the dye quantities. My students this week went through an exercise to choose a color palette, mixed a 36 hue, 2 value color wheel as a sample (that's 72 different dye samples), learned how to match the colors in their chosen palette, used the recipes they found through color matching to dye gradations, and learned how to ombre dye. It was a pretty intense 4 days with a lot of math, but my students were so great! I truly enjoyed every minute of the workshop and I'm excited to teach it again someday soon.

This was just outside of our classroom at the Southwest School of Art. Check out all that dappled sun. The school is along the river walk and is so nice. Our classroom was in an old wine cellar. Tons of charm.
My awesome students hard at work.
Some of their color matching tests and a gradation at the lower right.
There was a gallery tour yesterday and I will be posting some photos from that later. Stay tuned! And check me out on instagram - http://instagram.com/kimemquilts