A Story of Artistic Courage. And Plaid.

Meet Shay.  She’s a lovely quilter with a quick smile and lots of enthusiasm.

Shay likes to make art quilts.  The ones with the patterns provided or with patterns she makes herself.

Yet, she found herself in my Design Your Own Nature Quilt class which teaches, among other things, how to create WITHOUT a pattern.  However, the supply list included artistic courage and, thankfully, she packed hers.

This is her inspiration photo.

Very viable.  Especially since she brought a wide range of green fabrics.  Some of them printed to look like actual trees!  Hmm.  I was somewhat skeptical about that one.

And Shay set to work cutting those trees out exactly as printed on the fabric.

Hmm.  I waited to see if she’d be able to work loosely with such fabrics.

And she did a good job!

But then, she was a little stumped.  The foreground of her inspiration photo is filled with rhododendron with lots of busy stems, twigs, and leaves showing.  She asked me about cutting skinny strips to represent the stems.  I said, “Don’t do that!  Find a busy fabric that will do the work for you.”

Since I had shown several examples about the value of using plaids in just such occasions, her table-mate chirped up and said, “Like plaid!” and tossed a plaid fabric onto the composition.

Did I detect a little flinch from Shay when that plaid fabric hit her quilt?  Maybe it was just my imagination.

Regardless, her classmates were fearless and they quickly started throwing more plaid onto her quilt!  Well, that was just the invitation I was looking for, so I HAD to help her arrange them so she could audition those plaids.

She was quite a good sport about it, as I took a picture for a “distance” view.

Meanwhile, several of the other classmates were egging her on.  They really wanted her to use plaid.

And, finally, she agreed.  She even seemed to like the idea.  (I sure hope so.  I certainly wouldn’t want to coerce the poor woman!)

This is the audition photo, above.  Those plaids will work well, don’t you think?

I was so proud of Shay for embracing something SO outside her comfort zone.  And I got quite a kick from her classmates who were so “pro-plaid” by the end of the day!  It was fun and exhilarating for all of us.

I’ll have more photos from this class soon.  In the meantime, I’m off to Cleveland to tape 3 segments for Quilting Arts TV.  Woohoo!

Ellen Lindner