News of the Day

I was very pleasantly surprised to find myself here today!

Pat's Jacket

Last week I taught the afternoon "Funky Fashion Redesign" teen classes at Sawtooth and Pat Mauck taught the morning session. Pat is an excellent weaver and seamstress (she teaches weaving there BTW!). She took my Surface Design class back in January and on the last day of classes last week she brought in this GORGEOUS jacket that she made using fabrics that she discharged. I had to show it off...(covet, covet, covet...)

Jacket by Pat Mauck - front

Jacket by Pat Mauck - back

Thanks Pat for sharing your work!! (Did I mention how GORGEOUS this jacket is?!?! My photos don't begin to do it justice)

Summer Art Honors - Part 2

In the previous post I shared the work of my first set of students in the Summer Arts Honors program at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art. I also taught the second session and this group was just as much fun.

Once again we

Rust dyed...   Stamped...   Discharged...   and Gelatin plate  printed... 

                                                                                                                                    

and then the students used their fabrics to create art quilts. At the end of the session they exhibited their work in the student show. I think you'll agree...they did a great job!

This piece is by Xavier, a combination of 2 rust dyed fabrics with the roses cut and fused.

 He had never sewn anything before but looking at these stitches you would never know...

He also did some really cool discharged pieces that he wanted to keep whole

(the view is looking down into the vignette we had...the darker piece is laying on the counter and the red one is on the wall)

Next is Phoebe's piece, which she did as a two sided piece. I really like the discharged image

This is Emma's piece. I love her black and white cat stamp!

This piece is by Grace. She wanted to create the feel of water. I thought it was a timely piece, in that it speaks to me about the oil spill in the Gulf with the rust dyed bubbles, the paw print, and the discharged streaks. Not sure if that was her intention, but that's the beauty of art...each viewer finds meaning.

This is Alex's piece. I love her composition and the edge treatment she used.

It was so much fun to watch everyone's creativity at work. At the show one mom said her student started out hesitant about my class as it wasn't her first pick, but that she came home every day and talked about nothing else...it turned out to be her favorite one! Seeing people get excited about the possibilities of fiber art is what it's all about.

2010 Summer Art Honors at Sawtooth School - Part I

From June 21 to July 2 I had the pleasure of teaching 'Surface Design - Fabric + Art Quilt' as part of the Summer Art Honors program at the Sawtooth School for Visual Art. This program, coordinated with the Forsyth County school system, is for artistically gifted middle and high school students who have been nominated by their art teachers for participation. Classes in every conceivable media are included in the curriculum and I was thrilled to be able to share my love of surface design and art quilting.

During week one students learned:

Rust Dyeing...

Several methods of Stamp Making and stamping on fabric...

Discharging...

(and this first one I found particularly interesting...it started as a solid pink fabric but when discharged it became this blue line banded by white that I thought was just the coolest thing ever!)

They learned how much fun it is to do Gelatin Plate Printing...

And they learned the tips and tricks of using fusible web.

During week two each student evaluated all of the fabrics they created in the first week, and selected what pieces they wanted to use in their art quilt. We used fusible web and fusible batting so minimize the amount of sewing required. Some of them had experience in sewing and some did not, but everyone learned some basic hand sewing skills. Since we met in the fibers studio, there was a wall full of every colored thread and weaving yarns to choose from for stitching materials. My only criteria for them was size limitation (based on the piece of batting they received, about 18 x 22), that it be constructed of three layers held together with stitching, and that a recognizable piece of fabric from each of the surface design techniques that they learned be incorporated. Beyond that, their vision and imagination was the limit! They all did a great job!!

This is Lynda's piece...love the hand bead work and the discharge pattern. She loves to do hand sewing and actually pieced her fabrics together.

This is Nicole's piece...love the coffee cups, indeed, music to me! She did a nice job of balancing the use of her fabrics and color placement.

This is Rachel's piece...love her use of color and depth of image layering on her stamped fabrics

This is Kati's piece...her rust dyeing turned out very cool as did her alien stamp, and she did a great job using hand stitching to create texture

This is Clarissa's piece...an experienced sewer, she used some machine stitching in her piece in addition to hand work. Love how she used her fabrics to create this landscape (And she plans to hang it in her dorm next year when she goes off to college)

At the end of the session all of the student's work was displayed and an open house reception was held in their honor. It was so inspiring to see what everyone in the program created!

It really was fun to work with these kids. I'm thinking there are some new additions to the art quilt world now, don't you?

Mercy

I have just been flat out snowed under!!! With lots of good stuff, mind you, but running at a breathless pace none the less. I'm wrapping up my first session of teaching Summer Art Honors at Sawtooth, have been juggling between 5 and 6 interior design jobs at the same time, preparing and installing my artwork at Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, juggling kids at home with one playing All Stars baseball and yes, even donating my body to science! Whew!!!!

The class for SAH has been lots of fun and the students did some great work. Tomorrow we will finish up and then they will have a student open house show of all of the art that has been created over the last 2 weeks. I can't wait!

I will be posting all about the class with photos of the amazing things they have done. But in the meantime, I am looking forward to tomorrow afternoon sewing with 2 of my "troll sisters" which is guaranteed to make my sides hurt from laughing. It will be a welcomed and much needed break (even if it's technically a productive one).

:)

PS- game 2 of the All Stars tournament is Friday night....GO SWFLL!!!

Road Trip Footnote

Check THIS out!

(woohoo!)

:)

Road Trip!

Last weekend I packed up my wares and headed to Blacksburg, Virginia to be a vendor at Fork and Cork. This was my first go at tent selling, and while sales weren't anywhere near what I had hoped, I had fun and learned a lot. This was also a trip home for me. I grew up in the next town over and my parents had a business in Blacksburg. I went to design school there at VA Tech. So naturally I was hoping to run into some people I knew from way back when, and I did. I got to see my childhood best friend/neighbor and her daughter and it was like stepping back in time...talk about a "little me", her daughter looks exactly like my friend did when we were that age. It was fun catching up!



At the close of the festival I packed it all back up (with generous help from my "tent neighbors"...THANKS Dr. and Mrs. G and daughter!!!) and headed to Roanoke to spend some time with my Aunt June. My Aunt June who is a fabulous QUILTER! :)

When I was growing up Aunt June and her family lived in Wilmington, NC and I usually only got to see them at Christmas. But I've long admired her sewing and handwork. She is the one who taught me how to do a proper blind hem when I was little and spent my sewing time making clothing. Among the many things she made I especially remember two beautiful quilted and trapuntoed pillows she made for my grandmother one year. Back in my young, single days living in Myrtle Beach and then after I moved to Winston-Salem, I would go spend a week with her when I had vacation time. Every morning when I would get up (after sleeping in of course, it was vacation after all) she would have already been up, done some gardening, and would be sitting at her quilting frame stitching away. Granted, at the time I had no real interest in quilting (gasp!) but I credit her with planting the seed that years later would sprout up in me and provide me with some of the most rewarding fun of my life!

She came to visit me one Christmas when I had just started my first attempt at making a quilt. It was a table runner and it was so bad I never finished it. The piecing was good, but the fabric choices were NOT and I had started trying to hand quilt it using high loft batting! LOL!!! I didn't know any better at the time. But she was so gracious and encouraging and I kept at it.

Anyway, I got to her house around 8:00 Saturday evening, and after catching her up with the latest and telling her about the festival I took a long hot shower and crawled under one of her wonderful quilts, drifting off to one of the best night's sleep I've had in a while.

This is hand appliqued and hand quilted. and it was her FIRST QUILT!! It is meticulously done and I laughed when I found that out. I told her I would not have wanted to be in a "My First Quilt" category with her in a show!

Sunday morning we had a trunk show of the quilts she still has. Like all of us, she has made many, many quilts that she has given as gifts over the years. But she still has a great collection and I was glad to get to see them. The really neat thing I found out is that my grandmother also quilted. All the time I knew her she crocheted, and the things she made were amazing. I never knew she quilted, so seeing those quilts was a special treat and threaded another tie between the three generations of us.


This one is so beautiful in person...a pale blush pink with cream appliqued flowers and vines. My photos do not do it justice!




"Matthew's Mountains"



This quilt is made of hand embroidered state names and flowers and is hand quilted.




These are some of my grandmother's quilts, either made by her or started by her and finished by my aunt:


















Typical of quilts of that era, these were made with clothing scraps. It makes me smile to think that some of my dad's shirts may be in there!



After lunch with Aunt June and my Aunt Hazel who also lives in the area I had a hand quilting lesson. It will take a lot of practice before I consistently get the tiny little stitches that she does, but I learned a couple of things that made immediate improvements to what I had been doing. After a trunk show of all my festival wares I packed up and sadly said goodbye. I wish I could have spent more time up there.



Guess I'll just have to schedule another road trip! :)