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Category: Teaching

  • The Advantage Of Teaching Over Time

    We’ve been teaching for several years now (and we aren’t even counting when Deb taught adult ed and Kris taught German), but we have never had the chance to teach over a long period of time . . . until now. Starting in June, we had the opportunity to teach an 8-week course at the…

  • Take Our Class at the Crocker!

    Yes, we are scheduled to teach at one of our favorite museums, the Crocker Art Museum in Sacramento, California. We hope you can join us this summer for our 8-week course, Storytelling through Quilting. Class begins June 1, 2014 and runs Sundays from 1-4 pm until August 3 (no class on June 15 and July…

  • Teaching and Retreating

    Kris and Deb just finished teaching Photoshop at Focus on Fiber in New Smyrna Beach Florida. After the workshop, we were able to treat ourselves to a week of fiber, friends, and food–oh yeah, we did get a little bit of work done, too. Here are some of the highlights:

  • Update on Florida Photoshop Retreat

    There’s still time to register for the Florida retreat March 12-14, 2014. We’ve updated the class description to make it more individualized. Bring any project you want to work on or start from the very basics. We’ll be able to accommodate you! We have a new title for the class, too – Photoshop Elements for…

  • Tech Tuesday: Pixeladies To Teach Photoshop Classes Live!

    That’s right – we’ll be teaching LIVE and in PERSON at all three venues in 2014. We are so excited about these opportunities. We love teaching online, but we thought it would be fun to have some special face-to-face time with our students. We hope you can join us at Kona, Hawaii; New Smyrna Beach,…

  • Tech Tuesday: Photoshop Is Not Just For Designing Fabric!

    What do you think of when you hear a quilter is using Photoshop? Manipulated photos printed on a home printer? Kaleidescopic images? Tiled pattern repeats? Yes, Photoshop is good for this, but it’s so much more. Photoshop is also a tool to help you finish that UFO (unfinished object) that’s been sitting in your closet…

  • Not-At-All-Tech Tuesday

    We just wanted to share the good news–Intern Kelsi found a job! She’ll be working at Target. So did all the typing and spreadsheet lessons help her get the job? No. According to Kelsi it was folding and inventorying fabric. She only got around to part of the “red shelf” during her time with us.…

  • Last Day Of My Internship

    During this six week internship I have learned a lot. I learned how to use a spreadsheet, touch type, sort, use WordPress to write blogs, format my resume properly, and that’s not even including everything I learned about fabric. There were some things I did that I never thought I would be able to do…

  • Preparing For Batik Watercolor Quilting Class

    Preparing for the Batik Watercolor Quilting classes that the Pixeladies teach is not an easy task. There are many things that need to get done, and they are all very time consuming. The first thing I did was sort the fabric squares that had been mixed up from being used in the previous class. There were over…

  • We Have A New Intern!

    We are so excited! For the first time in Pixeladies history, the studio is hosting an intern! Meet Kelsi, who started on Monday and will continue with us fulltime until July 5, 2013. We had so much work to do in the studio, we didn’t know where to start, so we decided to clean a…

  • Batik Watercolor Class At Blue Line Arts

    We’ll be teaching a mini-version of our batik watercolor quilt class at Blue Line Arts in Roseville, CA on Saturday, June 22, 2013. You can sign up here: http://www.rosevillearts.org/events/adultworkshopseries.html. What’s different about this class, you might ask? To begin with, no sewing required! Painters, sculptors, politicians, and athletes alike can try their hand at this. Second,…

  • Tech Tuesday: Try The Radio!

    We just finished taping our segment for next Monday’s edition of American Patchwork and Quilting Radio. We hope you’ll “tune” in then. Okay, so it’s not your grandparents’ radio. You can listen to the show live via your computer, listen to previous broadcasts, or download different shows via iTunes (for free!). So, what was it…

  • “Teach” = “Help Create”

    We taught our first batik watercolor quilt class of the year this past Wednesday and can’t stop talking about it! We were so busy consulting with the students that we forgot all about playing our trivia games, and, boy, do we have some great trivia questions about batiks! And, yes, you read correctly–we served as…

  • Tech Tuesday: Creating A Pattern That Repeats Seamlessly

    People have been asking what we’ll learn in the Designing Fabric with Photoshop Elements that starts on Monday. Well, we always say lots of things, but that’s not really a good answer. Besides adjustment layers, blend modes, and defining patterns, we also show you some tricks to making your own seamless repeats. You do so…

  • Designing Fabric with Photoshop Elements Begins Jan 28!

    There’s no better way to start a new year than with a new class. If you’re looking into checking designing fabric off your bucket list, we’d love to see you in our online class: Designing Fabric with Photoshop Elements.Want to learn how to turn a photo into a border print, design fabric for that special…

  • Tech Tuesday: Top Ten Reasons to Take Our Online Photoshop Class

    Our online class, “Photoshop Elements for Fiber Artists and Sewing Enthusiasts,” starts on Monday, September 17. Some of you out there might be considering whether to take the class or not. We thought we should help you decide by giving you our top 10 reasons to take the class: 10. This class really is for…

  • Tech Tuesday: Why We Love Our Google Calendar

    We’ve been working as the Pixeladies since 2003 (wow!) and started off with our nifty online Yahoo calendar that we used for everything. It seemed to work just fine, thank you very much, and I (Kris) had no need to change. Deb, on the other hand, is always rooting around the technosphere looking for ways…

  • Tech Tuesday: Help! My Paintbrush Isn’t Working!

    We got that frantic Photoshop message in an email last week.  You know, the one that says, “Help! My brush has gone haywire!” You go to paint, and you can’t see your drawing line or it’s really faint. Has this ever happened to you?  Well, there are some common things to check before you tear…

  • Tech Tuesday: When Your Enlargements Fall Flat

    Here’s the creative idea: You’ve got a great photo you want to enlarge and print on fabric for some great wall art. (You don’t have to work in fabric, we just teach a lot of fiber artists so we like to keep them in mind.) Here’s the problem. You go to some Internet company to…

  • Pixeladies Piece Party

    We’re getting ready for the Northern California Quilt Council‘s “Meet the Teachers” event on July 18 in Castro Valley, CA. Each one of the 30 teachers has three – yep, three – minutes to tell the attendees what they teach and why any guild would want to hire her or him. It’s no easy feat…

  • Working with Mokuba

    We have been prepping for our upcoming class with the American Sewing Guild – Sacramento and wanted to share some of that with you. We are making scarves using Mokuba free lace. Mokuba free lace is a water soluble stabilizer that allows you to create beautiful lace projects. You get two sheets: one sheet is…

  • Our Online Photoshop Class starts March 5!

    Are you interested in learning Adobe Photoshop Elements but don’t know where to start? Why don’t you start here with us? Our online class, Introduction to Adobe Photoshop Elements (PSE) for Fiber Artists and Sewing Enthusiasts, begins this coming Monday, March 5. Cost for the 3-week class is $60. To register for the class, go…

  • Mapping the Family-Part I

    On January 18th, we are going to be teaching a workshop for the River City Quilters’ Guild based on the commission quilt we finished in October.  I just realized we had not posted a photo of the finished commission, so people who weren’t at the RCQG show or meeting wouldn’t know what we’re talking about. …

  • Procrastination, Organization, and Inspiration

    When I have a deadline I don’t want to deal with, my way of procrastinating is to do other things that I’ve been putting off. Like cleaning. So this week it was cleaning off my desk in the studio. Kris is gone, so I can spread everything out and go through each piece of paper.…

  • Class Registration Starts Today!

    Yes, you can now register for either of our two online courses that start in October. Click on this link to take you to the class page. We’ve been teaming up with Carla Barrett, long-arm quilter extraordinaire, to bring you innnovative online classes, and we now have a new teaching website – www.StepOnPins.com. We think…

  • Inspiration and Online Classes

    I guess it all started in 1985. While I was working in Zurich for a summer, I got to visit the Verzasca Valley in the Italian-speaking part of Switzerland.  It was breathtaking–the landscape, the color of the water, the fireflies, the lightning off in the distance.  In 2000, I returned with my friend Weslee, whose…

  • Organizing Patterns with Photoshop Elements

    At the American Sewing Guild’s national conference in Los Angeles, we gave a short presentation about organizing your patterns with Adobe® Photoshop® Elements.  The Organizer portion of Elements is a great way to catalog photos, videos, music, and yes, even sewing patterns.   If you want to use the tags we created for patterns, save the…

  • Join Us at the ASG National Conference!

    We’re packing our bags for the American Sewing Guild’s national conference in Los Angeles August 19-21.  (OK, that’s not really true. We’re actually running around getting all of our teaching materials ready, but that doesn’t sound like the organized Pixeladies we always claim to be.) Despite this small confession, we really hope you can join us there.…

  • Art and Community

    Deb and I recently returned from a meeting of the Northern California Quilt Council. They devote two meetings a year to “Meet the Teachers.” Any member interested in teaching at a guild can sign up to present her/his classes to other members. These meetings attract upwards of two hundred people. We always come away inspired…

  • Furoshiki Fun

    Last Monday, we had a wonderful time demonstrating how to have fun wrapping objects and making shopping bags at the Pájaro Valley Quilt Association meeting in Aptos, CA (near Santa Cruz). It was perfect timing–someone had donated lots of fabric to the guild, and the guild was selling it by the pound; it was a…