Montreal! Part 1

Thanks, Lucie, for encouraging me to post my trip to Montreal in parts. Here is the first part:

Montreal was wonderful! I taught a 3-day workshop at the Montreal Center for Contemporary Textiles March 17-19, 2006. The textile center was so inspiring--I wished I was taking classes. Here's a photo of Hannah and I on our way to class in the morning--we were bundled up because it was cold!
Kelly and Hannah came with me so that I could nurse Hannah. It wasn't quite the vacation we envisioned for Kelly (here is Kelly trying to nap in the dye room adjacent to the classroom while Hannah sleeps)--but we still got to get out and see a bit of the city after class in the evenings.
Louise Lemieux Berube invited me to teach at the Center after she saw my work at Convergence. She started the Center 15 years ago--and if you have a chance to study there--I say take it! It is an impressive facility.
They have an exhibit space right when you walk in the door--it also served as a lecture hall for the talk I gave on Thursday night about my work. The garments are part of an exhibit of the students of the center that will travel around Canada--Rosie Godbout (one of the students in my class) made the purple dress in the fore ground.
There is a computer room with a number of I-macs, a room filled with knitting machines, another one with sewing machines and heavy-duty irons, a huge room filled with looms (with a number of jacquard looms not to mention spinning wheels!), a dye room, another small room for two jacquard looms, and a lunch room. Almost all the rooms have huge windows for natural light and a lot of space. Our classroom space was in the room with the looms--we had two large tables for 19 students to sit around.
Most of the students spoke English really well, but there were a handful who didn't--but other students were great about translating as we needed since I don't speak French (yet--I'm going to learn!).
I really enjoyed teaching this class because the students were really ready to learn bead embroidery to apply to their own artwork--they had really great questions and we were able to get a lot done in three days because they worked diligently and creatively. Here they are choosing paint for one of the brainstorming exercises.