My design wall

Someone is curious about how I use my flannel design wall. My design wall has two sections, at right angles to each other.  The area on the left is readily accessible and the one I use most frequently.  All of my photos are taken on this wall.  The section to the right is behind my sewing machine and far less accessible.  I store some treasures here, and some inactive but still in progress projects.

To the far right you can just see the edge of my cork board, where I put up any sort of image that I feel might spark a design idea.  Toward to top of the wall are my treasures.   From the right is first a fibre head an shoulder three dimensional piece that I received as a table favour at the banquet at Quilt Canada 2006 in Ottawa. Next are three very delicate stump work dragon flies,  worked on silk.  I have no idea how they might be used, but I know I will never reach that level of skill again, given the arthritis in my hands.  Beside that is a finished quilted piece, painted and embroidered by a close friend.  I received it as a gift.  I am no longer in close contact with this person, but think of her whenever I look up there--as I do often when using the machine.

To the left of that are four angel fish fibre sculptures I made in response to a challenge between a group of friends, long separated. Then there is finally a commercial block of an elephant that I have never been able to find a use for, for over 20 years.

In the lower area, on the left side is a work in progress called "Spring".  It is basically finished , but the quilting only half completed.  I try to work on it either between projects, or if I'm having trouble with an idea and need to let my brain percolate a bit.  I hope to finish it in time for a gallery show next May.

Finally, on the lower right, are the first few sections of my efforts on the Jen Kingwell design, "Long Time Gone".  This is meant as a kind of very scrappy, pieced, sampler quilt.  I had almost this much done, but got very uncomfortable every time I looked at it pinned up here.  Finally I realized that I was just not happy with how very scrappy it was working out, and needed to change things.  So I went back and started over, remaking each block, retaining the scrappy feel, but limiting the palette to primarily blue based prints.  I'm much happier, but only work on it when I have no other projects lined up.

A whole new world

I've started working my way through the  Marie Shell book that I mentioned in my last post.  This is turning into a somewhat scary task--and I do use the term "task", as it relates to the concept of "work".  This is my effort at making ruler free mat cut strips, as described in the second project in the book.

Here it is before I trimmed it and squared it off. I think I might have been too close to it for too long.  I thought the finished piece looked awful.

Then I squared it off, and looking through the view finder of my camera, thought  "Gosh this is not so bad."

Finally, I turned it 90 degrees, and immediately decided that this would be the way I would want to display it.

In the final analysis, there are still problems.  I think I need to go back to the lesson on selecting colours, as well as how she creates her squares.  I also notice that, in putting her example together, she accommodates different sizes of squares in her piecing.  I have been trimming mine to fit a little better. I also have to wonder if  my ruler free cut strips are too similar in width.  I really need to take a closer look at her examples, and figure out how she gets her piecing done.

I plan to link this with The Needle and Thread Network and Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday

Best Laid Plans--etc

I've mentioned that I've ordered a book, but the expected delivery date, via Canada post, is the third week of August.  So I planned out all of the work required for the craft sale I was silly enough to sign up for, and started it yesterday.  Wouldn't you know that the book would arrive today!  From England in less than a week.  Who'd have thought it?  So now I have to control myself and just read a bit, and familiarize myself with the book, until everything is done for the show.  Not sure it can be done!  At least not by this girl!

I did it!

I managed to stitch together all of the squares in a box that I made.  It took some manipulating, and cursing, but I got it done.  I had hoped that the squares would "float" on the red background, and I think they do, to a certain extent.  This is certainly some thing I will try again in future.  And Yes, this has ended up as a fairly large piece--18" by 40".

This is the last project I'm doing for my workshop.  It has been quite an experience.  While I was free to become as involved as I chose to be, I felt that I needed to do as much as I could, given the amount it cost me, in terms of fabric, dye, and fees.  So the last 6 weeks have involved a frenzy of stitching almost every day.

This raises the question of whether I would ever take an internet workshop again.  I'm not sure.  The supply list required many yards of fabric, most of which I could hand dye, as I had the supplies on hand, and others that I had to purchase, spending almost $100.  Most of the purchased fabric wasn't used.  The dyed fabric, purposely in clear bright colours, as requested, wasn't really in large enough pieces, but even so, I only used about half of it.  What I ended up doing was going into my stash of darker prints to create a palette with enough value for the suggested class projects.

The overall subject of the class is one I expect I will pursue further.  I have already ordered a book off the internet on the subject ( not written by the author of the workshop).  While I recognize that the entire process is usually done entirely with solid, bright colours, I rather liked the effect I got using some of my prints, and will probably include them again.

Internet workshop finished

I have worked my heart out at the sewing machine with each lesson, of my workshop with Elizabeth Barton through the Academy of Quilting.  I  believe I learned a lot with each, but  I didn't learn how to correct my life-long problem with value, although that certainly wasn't on the curriculum!  I learned that, no matter how much I work with paper and pencil, there turns out to be very little correlation between the diagrams and designs I make and what I actually stitch.  Probably the best thing I learned was to "loosen up".  I have been a perfectionist with my fibre work for almost the whole 60 years I've been at it.  That wasn't exactly an advantage in a workshop titled "Mod Meets Improv".  But, at the same time, the exacting machine skills I've learned over the years, made working in an improv way easier.  I never expected that.  I now feel somewhat comfortable with the whole concept, and anxious/willing to delve into it some more.  To that end, I've ordered a couple of books via Amazon, and plan a whole lot more experimentation.

Here's a couple of my experiments.

I plan to link this with Nina-Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday, and The Needle and Thread Network.

More class projects

There are several different types of suggested techniques to try with each lesson, but I'm tending to pick and choose the ones that I feel will either give me the most pleasure, or provide the best learning.  This is complicated a bit by my obsession with actually finishing a project.  I see no purpose in just working on a sample and then filing it away somewhere. and forgetting it.

I have a  more couple of  things to show you, as well as the piece in the last post.

The turquoise and black was an exercise in improvisational cutting and piecing of narrow strips.   I had wanted to get more curve in the strips, but I guess that will take more practice.  I have no idea how to turn that into a finished piece.

This second piece was an exercise in making grids.  I was surprised with how much I learned about the process, but, of course, I didn't stop and added the circles.  That meant machine buttonhole stitch with mono-poly.  Certainly not my favourite technique, but an essential one in many ways. 

There were a few other exercises, but they were paper and pencil tasks, so I see no point in showing those pictures here.