Create abstract watercolor paintings using eight different painting techniques. Combine these techniques and multiply the fun. Play with bubbles, cups, rubber cement, masking fluid, air, gravity, stamps, and ink to produce a collection of colorful paintings. Then, choose one favorite and crop it to find the most dynamic part. Katie shows how to enlarge the area, make templates, and turn that watercolor creation into a fabulous art quilt. Learn how to choose and place the fabrics, building from the top down, until you have a quilt that looks like a watercolor painting! The best part? No painting experience is needed, so jump in and turn yourself into a painter and art quilter all in one exciting class!
 
Location: Glastonbury, Connecticut
Instructor: Katie Pasquini Masopust
Cost: $975+
Sponsor: Artists Rising Creativity Retreats
Website, email, 860-633-7374

Join local pine needle basket maker Karen McCarthy for this exciting half-day workshop designed for students who have taken a beginner pine needle basket class or who are already familiar with making pine needle baskets. Students can bring in new or unfinished work and will learn how to start a basket around different bases, how to do a variety of stitches, and how to add beads or other findings. If you'd like to start a basket around your own cabachon or a unique piece of jewelry or something else, the instructor will email instructions after you register for the class.
 
Location: Hilton Head Island, South Carolina
Instructor: Karen McCarthy
Cost: $50
Sponsor: Art League of Hilton Head
Website, email, (843) 842-5738

Our world moves very fast. This retreat-like workshop focuses on slowing down and relishing in process rather than product. Supplies needed are minimal and no machine is necessary. Small compositions will be created with an emphasis on how to use the hand stitch as a major design element. So grab a bag of fabric scraps and your favorite hand sewing tools, and jump on board. This is not a technique workshop where you learn how to hand stitch. The focus is on using the stitch line as mark making on cloth. The stitch marks are the brush strokes that make the composition complete. Each day opens with a design presentation. Students will explore personal mark making preferences, with the power of parallel play in groups.
 
Location: Glastonbury, Connecticut
Instructor: Deborah Fell
Cost: $975+
Sponsor: Artists Rising Creativity Retreats
Website, email, 860-633-7374

The act of hand-stitching is a meditative and relaxing process that produces beautiful and unique results without any machine required. Learn the techniques of slow-stitching by creating your own small (wall-hanging)-sized quilt. All techniques will be taught by hand, but students are welcome to bring personal sewing machines if they wish. The following methods will be taught: Patchwork, Applique (raw edge and turned edge), Traditional quilting & tied quilting, and Binding.
 
Location: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
Instructor: Sheryl Kessler
Cost: $195
Sponsor: Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts
Website, email, 215-972-7632

Making beautiful flowers, concentric patterns, block design, and experimenting with exotic fabrics are all included in this class. Learn Sue’s layered construction technique for cutting, assembling, and arranging flowers as she has done in her extensive Flower Series quilts. This class will give you the opportunity to use gorgeous fabrics and expansive color—plus, the construction method can be applied to other designs. Create a study quilt (about 16”x16”), then move on to a larger, more involved art quilt with surprising complexity and power. (Those who are taking this class a second time can expand on these concepts.)
 
Location: Glastonbury, Connecticut
Instructor: Sue Benner
Cost: $975+
Sponsor: Artists Rising Creativity Retreats
Website, email, 860-633-7374

During this workshop students learn about the history of dyeing and printing with plants; how to prepare fabric/fiber for dyeing and printing; ways to secure and alter dye color on cloth; and many ways to get patterns and images on fabric with a variety of mordants and plant materials. We begin by gathering as many of our printing and dyeing plants as possible from the surrounding area. Then we explore dyeing solid and mottled colors with botanical pigments both individually and in combination; printing plant materials onto fabrics; eco-printing and dyeing together; and using some simple shibori techniques in conjunction with eco-printing and dyeing.
 
Location: Glastonbury, Connecticut
Instructor: Lisa Binkley
Cost: $975+
Sponsor: Artists Rising Creativity Retreats
Website, email, 860-633-7374

Photorealism is a genre of art that encompasses painting and drawing in which an artist studies a photograph and attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium. In this workshop, you will be reproducing an image of your choosing using Melissa’s award-winning techniques for transforming a photograph into a masterpiece of Fiber Art. You will learn to see as an artist does, select appropriate fabrics, build a pictorial quilt from an image using a raw edge applique method. You will then learn to enhance your work by adding depth, dimension and detail with inks. This is a technique class where we will be working only on the quilt top. No sewing involved.
 
Location: Glastonbury, Connecticut
Instructor: Melissa Sobotka
Cost: $975+
Sponsor: Artists Rising Creativity Retreats
Website, email, 860-633-7374

Explore textile pattern design using DIY acrylic inks and textile paints that will leave your fabric with a soft hand and give you exactly the colors you want. Explore a multitude of ways to create richly textured “base” fabrics by applying acrylics inks with different types of brush-strokes, sponges, altering ink and water ratios, adding salt, mono-printing, and scrunching, as well as pleating, stitching, clamping and pole wrapping fabric with a variety of shibori techniques. Learn how to successfully print with foam, rubber and wood stamps. Master screen printing with thermofax screens, then apply pattern design principles using various types of repeats to print on your textured “base” fabrics. It’ll be a blast of inspiration, innovation, information and fun.
 
Location: Glastonbury, Connecticut
Instructor: Judy Coates Perez
Cost: $975+
Sponsor: Artists Rising Creativity Retreats
Website, email, 860-633-7374