Happy New Year from the Bahamas!  My husband, Joe, and grandson, Ethan, and I have rejoined our sailboat, MAHI, starting Year 2 of our cruising adventure.  We are starting out from Great Harbour Cay in the Berry Islands as soon as the weather allows.

We have a blog at svmahi.com if you are interested in following along for our adventure.

Meanwhile, my good friends, the Pixeladies, have just released their online class schedule for the first half of 2017. 

They are teaching their popular Photoshop Elements: Essentials 1 & 2 classes again.  Photoshop Elements is the program I design in and make my digital quilts with, like this quilt:

The big news is they’ve finally put their design class on the schedule. I say finally because back in the day when I hosted their classes on Feathered Fibers, they taught a great design class. I can’t tell you how good they are at helping people develop their own creative voices.  I highly recommend their classes!

Whether you’re a beginner or more advanced, you’ll really appreciate the quick teacher feedback. You can find more information on their website: http://www.pixeladies.com/classes.

Okay, I’m off for more sailing, but I still plan on keeping my toes in the fiber waters!   Also have a bead stash on board, so I leave you with this 3-D starfish:

Many of my longtime quilting friends may be aware that I took a break from quilting and teaching to buy a cruising sailboat called MAHI, and go find a pretty, tropical beach to relax.  We did that over the last year, leaving our boat in the Bahamas for hurricane season.

Right now, we are waiting to learn the fate of our boat at Great Harbour Cay Marina in the Berry Islands, Bahamas.  This is a beautiful little island that captured our hearts.  My husband, Joe, is with the boat, hunkered down in a concrete structure in the marina area with a group of boating friends.  Please pray for his safety, the safety of our friends, and Bahamian people, plus anyone else affected by this horrible storm.  We hope we do not lose our boat to the hurricane, as well.

If you are curious, I am doing Hurricane Update Posts on my boat blog HERE, and on my Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/carla.s.barrett.  If you cannot see my posts on Facebook, just friend me.

Last, a shout out to other quilters affected by this horrible storm!  Hugs, Carla

Does your computer screen look like the one on the left?  Confession time: that is what my screen looks like now.   It is rather embarrassing to admit this.

I have decided it is time to organize all the images on my desktop and in my folders, so have signed up to take the Photoshop Elements (PSE) Organizer course by my friends, The Pixeladies.  Won’t you join me so we can hang out in the classroom together?

Here is one article on the topic that will show you how easy it will be to organize by facial recognition:  http://www.pixeladies.com/tech-tuesday-using-facial-recognition-in-photoshop-elements-organizer/  

I will also learn how to organize all my sailing shots, like this one of a sea biscuit.

Knowing Deb and Kris like I do, this will be but one tip among many.  I am looking forward to it!    I had the pleasure of visiting with The Pixeladies last week, and had a studio tour of what they are working on.  I was blown away with their works in progress, including some wearable fiber piece.  Click HERE to see their gallery page of past work.

Long time blog readers know I love PSE as a design tool to create many of my designs, including this whole cloth digital quilt, shown below.  Now I can finally learn more about the organizer part of this program.

copyright 2014 by Carla Barrett

Speaking of using PSE, I recently had a baby quilt to do for my friend, Barb.  Using PSE, I drew out a simple fish design for her quilt, then imported into Art & Stitch to digitze and save in an extension read by my Intelliquilter.   Here is the very simple fish panto:

To sign up for the class, just head over to The Pixeladies website.  Regards, Carla

Since my quilting machine is home in California and I am on the boat in Florida, I miss creating.  Luckily, I have my tablet PC with me, so I created a digital quilt.

This would make a lovely quilt!  Until I have time to create one, I will have to stick to digital quilts.  🙂   Regards, Carla

I often receive questions about some of my free tutorials.  I write back to people when internet connection allows, since I am off on new adventures these days (see www.svmahi.com).  Sometimes, my response back may be buried in the old post, or my email reply bounces back to me- both which happened in this case.

Helene wrote a question about using Inktense blocks on her vintage linen:

“Dear Carla, I have some white vintage linen placemats and napkins that are embroidered that I would like to to use the Inktense Fabric Paints on to bring them more to life.  What I have are the blocks not pencils.  Can I still paint using the block sticks and if so, would you recommend using a paintbrush and just wetting it and infusing it with the color from the sticks?”

Here was my reply:

Digitech has some new designs of mine available here.   I thought I would share some of the designs with you.  The first one is called Fiji:

This was inspired by my love of tropical locations.  Next up is a set I designed for my friend, Denise, for her baby quilt:

The next set was created by doodling.  Check out that cool border design:

Last one to share today is a modern design for a quilt, very whimsical:

Hope you have enjoyed this sneak peek into some of my newest designs.  I am still drawing away while I am off sailing.    Regards, Carla