Student Spotlight: schooling with the Pamlico River Quilters

5 Ways to Applique 

with the Pamlico River Quilter's Guild

in Washington, NC

fun was had by all....

I even had time to take a little walk along the estuary river before driving home... beautiful!

Student Spotlight: 5 Ways to Applique with Capital Quilter's Guild

Another fabulous day playing with my friends at the Capital Quilter's Guild in Raleigh, NC!

Student Spotlight: Apli-Punto with the Capital Quilt Guild

Spent a lovely day with friends at the Capital Quilter's Guild.

Apli-Punto to Go is a technique that looks crazy complicated.

 But it's easy enough that this is what we got done in one class.

With GREAT BIG smiles on our faces!

Student Spotlight: QU Screenprinting

Just two more days to register!

 QuiltUniversity.com

Freeform Screenprinting

four lessons, one opening each week beginning August 27th

Charlotte Robinson

Sue Price

Maggie Birchenough

Student Spotlight: QU Screenprinting

On-Line Class opening August 27th

Blended Stencil Print by Julie Anne McDonald

Freeform Screen Printing

Flour Paste Print by Sue Price

at QuiltUniversity.com

Thermofax Print by Sally Wescott

Hope to see you there.

Student Spotlight: Sally in Tasmania

Don't you just love saying "Tasmania"? I do.

 

Sally has been having fun, fun, fun in my current on-line class. 

I'd love for you to pop over and see some of her work.

Student Spotlight: My 6 Year Old (and the final tutorial wave)

several days of begging and one day to send the shoes through the wash

(twice - this is the third child to wear this pair)

a couple of hours alone with my sharpie collection

(in the room but unsupervised)

Hold the phone folks - here's another artist in the house!!!

(but then, I already know that)


Today is the final wave of Art Spark's Tutorial Tsunami
visit Judy Coates Perez to learn how to print on tea bags

hop over to Gloria Hansen's blog for painted shibori

and finally to Alma Stoller for to recycle magazine pages into mixed media art

Student Spotlight: Stephanie from Paducah

I always get so excited to see students happy with what they have learned in class! One of my Paducah students, Stephanie from Maryland, finished her painted/printed/beaded journal and blogged it. Pop on over and tell her how wonderful it looks!

Stephanies Journal cover from the class

Surface Design Sampler Platter
stamp carving, stenciling, screen printing, foiling, photo-transfer, beading
all in one crazy fun class!

Art + Quilt: Quilter Beth - Color as Emotion

I had the great pleasure of meeting Beth in Paducah several weeks ago and now it is even more of a pleasure to follow her progress as she works through the exercises in my book, "Art + Quilt: design principles and creativity exercises."

In her own words, "In the Color as Emotion exercise, the instructions said to “Create a simple composition that evokes a feeling, using color as the dominant element. Choose any emotion as your inspiration.” This was a hard exercise for me. Trying to think of an original composition pushes my limits. The requirement to use color as the dominant element also added to the difficulty. This is what I came up with. My first picture represents sadness."

"We were asked if we could repeat the composition in a different color combination and change the mood. I thought I’d give it a try. My second picture represents excitement. The compositions are the same; the only change is color."

Pop on over to her blog and tell her that she's done an amazingly great job for being uncomfortable with original design. 

I hope this inspires you to take a few chances, to try a few things that you might not have tried before. Start out with a few small pieces of batting or muslin and simply layer other fabrics on them. Don't worry about perfection. Don't worry about wasting material. The point is to LEARN something - and that is always of great value.

Thanks Beth!!!

Student Spotlight: Paducah

I truly am THE luckiest person in the world to be able to do what I do. I shlep and huff for a week, fly for a day, then play and play and play! And I get to play with the funnest people. These lovely ladies came in singing out loud and I joined right in.

Just Foiling Around

foil, glitter, painted Wonder-Under

Surface Design Sampler Platter

Imagine my surprise and joy - that's Quilter Beth in the cupcake apron.

She's been spotlighted here as she works her way through Art + Quilt!

Here we are getting up and around, doing photo transfer, painting and stamping, 

and yes, cutting out snowflakes. It's more fun than kindergarden!

Apli-Punto to Go

What troopers! It was a night class and they stayed awake and made such beautiful things!

Couldn't quite get them all in the picture so here we have the other half.

They are laughing at me perched up high on a chair with the camera in the air.

I LOVE THIS JOB!!!

Art + Quilt: Quilter Beth - Unity

Quilter Beth is making fantastic progress - methodically working her way through the exercises in Art + Quilt. Pop on over to her blog and take a look!

Art + Quilt: Quilt Indy Group

One of the things I love about textiles as a medium is that for some reason (perhaps our quilting heritage) textile artists are social beings. The Quilt Indy Group gets together on a regular basis and works through design exercises. I was honored that they chose Art + Quilt as their textbook of choice for this year and simply thrilled that they invited me to be a fly on the wall of their cyber-meeting space.

In this exercise patterned fabrics are photocopied and used to create compositions that focus entirely on the visual texture of the surface. Remember that actual texture is the way something feels. Visual texture is the pattern on the surface.

Here are two exercises by Carol. I love how she uses similar shapes but plays with the scale of the texture. I'm thinking she might have used the copier to reduce or enlarge the scale of the pattern and perhaps to even reverse it. Can you see how the scale of the visual patterns are set each other off?

The next two pieces by Lorie show how adding texture and pattern to the background can help to ground the piece.

Mezzie shows an even more dramatic example of how adding texture to the background can make the composition much more interesting. She's used the exact same composition for each piece but one is much more dramatic than the other.

Notice here how Von has not only changed the scale of the background in his two pieces but has overlapped the shapes. What happens to the textures and the composition in general when the elements touch each other? I think it gives the eye a path to follow.

Thanks to the Quilt Indy Group for sharing their work! Leave a comment and tell us what you have learned from seeing their exercises. If you are doing the exercises and wish to be featured by all means let me know!

Art + Quilt: Claude Larson

I am continually impressed with the beautiful work of the emerging artists who are working their way through "Art + Quilt" and am always thrilled to be able to share their work with you. Here is another series of exercises studying actual texture - removing color as an element and concentrating on the way different textures interact with each other.

Claude has mounted this piece on cloth covered stretcher bars. I think it's a very professional presentation don't you? Small scale textile pieces need a little oomph when it comes to presentation and lifting them off of the wall with some sort of frame gives them just that. Nobody is going to mistake this beauty for a potholder!

Claude says,

"I just loved the neutral color texture exercise so I got into a small series of three pieces.  I figured the fabrics and embellishments were already picked out so - why not run with it.  Now I understand why artists work in a series.  It's so much easier if all the goodies are right there in front of you and you get into a groove.  I haven't put the off white stuff back into it's respective places because I don't feel completely done with it yet.  It's snowing and as a teacher I am hoping for a snow day so I can start my "Winter White"  #4"

Congratulations Claude for having created some lovely pieces and thank you for sharing them with us.

One of the things I love so much about textiles as a medium is the layering of the elements. Cloth has both an actual texture and a visual pattern/texture. Our cloth becomes shape and the lines of our stitches add even more texture.

Art+Quilt: Quilter Beth - actual texture

Is it acceptable to call someone that is working through my book a "student" even if I haven't had the privilege of meeting her in the classroom? I sincerely hope so because Quilter Beth is doing some absolutely beautiful work and I'm so glad she's sharing her it with the world.

These are her ACTUAL TEXTURE exercises from chapter two in Art + Quilt in which one creates a composition with neutral colored fabrics with as many different textures as possible. It is an exploration in moving outside of the box - getting away from our comfortable quilter's cottons. Seeing new possibilities in our materials as well as in our own artistic sensibilities. 

Beth says, "Since I come from a traditional quilting background, I have seldom used fabrics other than smooth cottons in my pieces. I found myself really enjoying the feel of these various textures. I also liked "pushing" myself to come up with ways to add texture through embellishments. I think the multiple textures (and the play of light off these textures) make the pieces much more interesting."

Please click on these pictures to take a closer look at the fascinating materials she's used. There are rubber drawer liners and straw hat brims. Her compositions are well balanced and thoughtfully done. She's given each of her materials thought and care. What beautiful pieces.

Student Spotlight and Inner Critics

I love my students. They are why I teach. They inspire me and invigorate me and remind me why I spend so much time ordering supplies and schlepping them around. I've said it before and I'll say it again - you can't pay me enough for all the packing and schlepping. But once the students show up I have to pinch myself because I can't believe I'm getting paid to have this much fun!

LauraLea has taken both of my on-line classes through Quiltuniversity.com and always blows my mind with both her productivity and the beauty of her work. The piece above is a heliographic print. Sun, fabric, ferns, paint - recipe for fun!

LauraLea has used both a torn freezer paper stencil and a meticulously cut plastic stencil for this beauty. She painted it over a spray bottle piece that didn't turn out to her satisfaction. That's one of the things I like so much about surface design. If you don't like what happens the first time you play with the cloth, just do something else to it.

Here is another look at her stencil - a goddess tree. I think the repeated swirls are a stamp she carved.

And finally, some Shiva paint stick rubbings. Aren't they exquisite? Such beautiful textures she found around her home. Way to go LauraLea!

Why don't you all leave a comment and tell her what amazing work she does? Especially because she always seemed to have just a little bit of fear holding her back. She would worry, worry, worry - and then show up with these beauties. I know she's not the only one who has a little inner critic that needs to be shut away in a closet somewhere. She struggled and managed to lock that nasty critter away for a while. Good for her!!!

All of these examples are from Playing With Paint, which begins again next Friday the 19th.

How do you silence your inner critic? How does fear hold you back and how can you overcome it? I'll ramble a bit more about overcoming our fears in the next post. Until then, enjoy these beauties.