Dena Crain: Artist & Teacher in Kenya

The most important difference in color relations is their interplay with each other. Nuances in tone-on-tone color groups are much tougher to do right than, say, complimentary colors where the contrast is high. But you can rely on the professionals . . .

I fell across a fantastic blog, The Domestic Diva. This gal is lots of fun, and there are some great tips for organizing your quilting workspace.

Robert Genn has written a great article about creativity and the human mind called “Accessing the Default Mode Network,” well worth reading, on The Painter’s Keys.

Amateur bloggers get their minds loaded with tips and tricks from other bloggers, and then they set to work on trying to build traffic to their sites. The only problem is that many of the tips they learn are based on falsehoods. The tips don’t work consistently because the underlying assumptions simply aren’t correct.

More and more quilters are setting up blogs on the internet these days. Are you? Are you doing it properly?

Owned and operated by Tucats’ Craftwise and Stitches magazines, this site is a South African grown site created by Owen Calverley as a Ning Network. That’s a new one on me, but it looks intriguing, I must say! An amazing assembly of groups of crafters in South Africa, nearly every available medium is represented. Blogs, tutorials, groups, photos, competitions and more – it’s all there!

I’m no pro, but I have learned a few things about photographing quilts that could be of interest to some of you. I would like to share a few tips with you here. To take nice photos, first pin your piece on your design wall, making sure none of the pins show on the face of the quilt. Make sure also that you pin it squarely.

Recent housekeeping on my blog revealed that I have written some 42 useful and informational tips and 6 tutorials on some aspect of quilting, blogging about quilting, quilt classes, quilt photography and graphic design and more! For your convenience, I list the posts containing tips below. You can find the tutorials listed in the sidebar at right under “Free Tutorials.” Click on any one you would like to see; they are all linked to the appropriate post or page.

Let’s face it: we’re all only human, right? Things happen, and sometimes they are not good things. Sometimes we unintentionally hurt others, or someone else unintentionally hurts us. We get angry, upset or disappointed. We feel these emotions intensely, and the only way to get over them is to talk about our feelings, get them out in the open, and deal with the issues underlying the original problem.

I noticed you posted on SAQA about Quilt University and wondered if you had taught for them? [!] . . . I enjoy a lot of personal contact with people in teaching and fear that will be completely missing from an online connection. Also, how much time does it involve? Is it worth it financially in itself? or more for the publicity?