Getting back to fabric

Faced with "the void" after the art foundation course ends - very soon - I have signed up for a two-day workshop at the Festival of Quilts in August.

The workshop is Mixed Media Collage, with Judy Hooworth - here's a detail from one of her recent works, Creek Drawing - see the whole quilt here - it's gorgeous! I chose this workshop solely because I greatly admire her earlier work, and only on writing this post have I seen the recent work. (Coincidentally, in the past 24 hours I've been seriously considering working only in black and white for a year or two ... quite an ambitious objective!)

I'm interested to see whether my approach to (a) going to workshops and (b) using fabric has been changed by the course. Apparently the supplies to bring are fabric scraps and threads - already I am wondering whether to take lots or few; a range of colours or just certain ones ...

There's been discussion on the CQGB yahoogroup about the value of taking workshops, prompted by posts on Kathleen Loomis's blog on "finding your voice". She suggests setting yourself an objective before going to the workshop, and afterwards, reviewing what you've learned and figuring out how it fits with your current body of work.

At the moment my objective is to approach this workshop in an "art" way (start with a concept) rather than in the spirit of "let's add a little of this and then a little of that", which is my usual approach.

As always, I love the possibility of surprises, and the inevitability of the unexpected.

Here's an earlier quilt by Judy Hooworth, from Quilt National 2001 -There's a yellow one that sticks in my mind, but I can't find an image of it....