Last month I got to spend two and half days with members of the North Suburban Needle Arts Guild when I conducted my class, Design Your Own Nature Quilt. Because this group includes many non-quilters there was quite a mix of skill levels in the class. About half had never made an art quilt and several had never made a quilt of any sort! But, they all bravely dove in and they achieved EXCELLENT results.
In this class, each student brings their own inspiration photo, which means we’ve got 15 DIFFERENT projects going all the time. It keeps me on my toes, but I love it. They learn so much in this class!
I wish I had thought to photograph their inspiration photos, rather than just their resulting quilts. (These photos were showing on my computer when photographed. The quality is sometimes low, but you’ll get the idea.)
Gretchen was inspired by a photo of water lilies. She changed the nearly black water to a dark plum, which worked beautifully. She’ll use fusible web to add the skinny little grasses, and she’ll stiffen some of the leaves to make them 3D. It will be great!
Ronna also worked with water lilies, and also switched to purple water. This complementary color really adds drama and contrast. And check out how effective those black shadows are. Nice!
Val’s lily pads are coming along nicely. She’ll add some shadows to add dimension. Check out her water grasses and their reflection near the top. She spent a lot of time on them and I think they’re very effective.
This photo doesn’t do Barbara’s work justice. Her photo had three delicate flowers against a complex shadow. She had to work at providing contrast with value. Her later progress showed that she was moving in the right direction.
Nancy cut loose in a really wonderful way. She started working with solids, but needed some dappled light. As we searched her print fabrics she realized that she had quite a big selection of them, so she switched gears. This brought a lot of energy to her scene. She’ll add some thread-painted grasses in the foreground.
I’ve been a little tomato crazy lately. I’m working on a new piece which needs three tomatoes. I’m making them as stand-alone units, to be later added to a background. Number one is complete. Here’s number two underway. Once again, I’m constructing the tomato on a muslin base, lightly gluing fabrics into place as I go….
Check out these final projects from my “Design Your Own Nature Quilt” class in Stuart, FL. Keep in mind: they only had about 2 1/2 hours to work with fabric. Look what they accomplished in those few hours! Cathy started with a nice photo of cone flowers. She decided to add another one, which filled…
Rollins College, in Winter Park, FL has a beautiful campus on the edge of a lake, with huge oak trees. It also has Cornell Fine Arts Museum, which I visited for the first time recently. While looking for the museum, we ended up in an art building with a display of student work in the…
At the current “Stitched, Stamped, & Sculpted” exhibit, in Ormond Beach, FL, many of the pieces tell stories. Some of my favorites were made by Teddy Pruett, who works exclusively with vintage clothing and linens. Just look at this piece, called Whatever Happened to Baby? Each block features vintage baby clothing. Teddy has added a little…
Every so often my small art quilt group, Dirty Dozen Fiber Artists, likes to have a group challenge. Frequently, we use a photograph as our starting point. We select something with lots going on so different people can respond to different elements. This is the photo we selected for our recent challenge, “Welcome to Provence.”…
I had forgotten how much fun it is to cut colored paper and glue it down. But, the ladies in my Adventures in Color class, in Carlisle, PA helped me remember! Gee, did we have fun! In this class I encourage table mates to share their materials. This adds to the fun, since everyone is…
