The Polka Dot Debutante

I took a class all day yesterday and today called "Line Dancing" with Jeanette DeNicholas Meyer. Saturday we spent the day doing several exercises using line including drawing, making a image using wire, free motion stitching and cutting lines into paper. All the lines/drawings were made using just black and white. It was very stimulating and I was utterly exhausted at the end of the day. Absolutely useless. Here are some pictures of my/our exercises from the first day. By the end of the day, when we had a design that we liked in paper, we reproduced it in fabric. We did it twice, switching the position of the black and white so it was like a positive and negative of the same design. Here is mine. There was a lot of interesting information about what feelings a simple line can evoke depending of whether it is thick or thin, vertical or horizontal, jagged or curving. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, especially since I use lines all the time in machine quilting. I mean, I think about lines a lot, just not in that terminology. Anyway, I'll post all about the second day tomorrow. I'm really tired and off to bed.

Okay. So on Sunday we took the copies we had made of our positive and negative designs and then cut those up and made a new design using the cut pieces. I had a really hard time with this process, and when we were supposed to be done for the critique, I didn't like any of the three designs that I had made. You can see why. They are all too busy. So after seeing everyone else's designs and hearing Jeanette's comments, I went back to my table to work some more with paper until I could create a design that felt good enough to actually construct in fabric. Jeanette suggested that I look at the designs I already did and find the sections that I liked within those designs. That really helped and this is what I eventually came up with. The last step of the process was to use tracing paper and create a quilting design that would enhance the piece. This part of the process was much more comfortable for me. I don't know if you can see it very well but the quilting design I liked was topographical lines. I think they will look great and I'll do them in a colored thread. Maybe red or lime green. I didn't do this in class because I wanted to come home and do it on the long arm. The class was really wonderful and Jeanette is a great teacher. She really has a way about her and has lots of great information to share.

I spent Thursday and Friday taking a workshop with Jean Cacicedo called "Building a Design Journal". We started with these very nice journals Jean brought and put in a table of contents. Then she had specific design exercises for each of those pages. Some were extremely challenging for me. Jean talked about the basic design elements like line, repetition, symmetry, etc. She also talked about the concept of Notan. This first picture is of the shape exercise and was done by Susan Bucharest. The second picture is of my Notan exercise. The next two pictures are from the self portrait exercise. The first picture is by Susan Bucharest and the second picture is mine. It was a wonderful two days and I think it will take me a while to digest all the information and learn to incorporate it into my work.

Last weekend I went out to LaGrande, OR to teach the Round Division class to the Quilt Questers guild. Vivienne and I drove out Friday afternoon and spent the night with Mike and Earlene Lamb. They live in this wonderful house that is shaped like an octagon and has a gorgeous view of the valley.

We had a wonderful dinner with Mike, Earlene, Regina and Jeri. Good food, conversation and laughter.
The next day was the class. There were 19 students and everyone brought very different fabrics. We spent lots of time in the morning going through everyone's pile and refining their two complementary fabric groups. By the end of the day, some great blocks were up on the wall. Here are a few samples.

And finally, many thanks to Earlene for hosting Vivienne and I. We both had a wonderful time with you and the guild and hope to come back next year. Happy Sewing!

I'm having a blast in Sisters teaching at Quilters Affair. Today was day two of the Sushi Rolls class and I am just so proud of my students that I want to share some pictures. This is a difficult, two day class filled with lots of cutting and designing on the first day. And then on the second day we have to tackle those dreaded "Y" seams. Everyone was very inventive with their fabrics and got lots up on the wall, and today they all managed to get a few rows sewn. Fabulous. These women were the first to ever take the Sushi Rolls class and I was concerned about how much they would get done, but everyone did great! Here are a few of the pictures.

by Deborah Cagle

by Peggy Kelly

by Anne Matlak

by Ilsa Birmingham

Last Thursday and Friday I took a workshop with Wendy Huhn. If you don't know her work, check it out. She uses all kinds of interesting images and transfers them onto her pieces. There are themes to her work and you really have to look and think about what it all means. I have been interested in learning how to get images on fabric for a while now and so was very excited to take her workshop. We learned several different methods that all give different results. Which method you use depends on what kind of look you are going for. Here some examples.

These images are prepped for a xylene transfer. It will transfer only a black and white image.

These images were transfered using Citra-Solv and it is used to transfer color images.

These images were screened onto the fabric with fabric paint and the screens were made using a thermafax machine. Boy was this awesome. I've never screen printed before and I really loved this.

This last picture is mostly screen printed images as well as one that has metallic foil and one on the top left that is mono printed.

Wendy was a great teacher and I really learned a lot in this workshop. Well
worth taking if you should ever get the chance.