LaVeta and Judith's studio

LaVeta is an absolute gem of a small town in southern Colorado filled with artists, galleries, interesting shops, inns, restaurants and a fabulous bakery.. This trip was special because I not only got to see Judith Montano's studio but to see her work up close.. and there is nothing like seeing it in person...

She uses lots of rich, dark dusky fabrics.. I came home inspired. Here a couple works in progress on her wonderful design wall.  Her style is so rich and opulent...

Luckily she was doing a bit of purging and had two baskets of supplies priced to sell....and I bought.
She had bags of good-sized pieces of her fabric but she had this one bag of small scraps from her recent projects which I'm keeping together to make my JBM memory block..definitely a winter project. In the basket were lots of trims of which I chose these two at $1 each because they went so well with the fabrics.  I also got many other tidbits from these baskets... most will go on my class project which I will post about when it everything is unpacked.

I absolutely fell in love with her system of storing threads on rings and can hardly wait to get mine sorted that way (not that I have that many)  I have tried so many ways and nothing ever worked..  This is the perfect solution for me... I don't have a lot of wood rings but I do have many 4" & 6" hoops that will work.

Holly is holding  back a corner of a cover on only one of many rolling racks of fancy fabrics... This one is all silks and you can  see a small portion of what is there. It is about 2' deep and 4' across and extends to the floor.  It was breathtaking with an endless variety of color, texture, and patterns.

The workspace was exquisite with excellent lighting.  Since Holly and I stayed in the guest house attached to the studio I was stitching from 6am until 10 or 11 pm.  I only begrudgingly stopped to eat and sleep.

I did have a problem with the 7000+' elevation and the return flight from Denver was 3 hours late leaving and I arrived home and to bed at 2am... Today I am exhausted and struggling to get my bearings.  There are just so many things that need to be done at once.  ... and what I really want to do is stitch... Morris (and DH and Molly ) were so happy to have me home.