Definitely Legible

 

Well, I was good and waited a day to try peeling my work from the class on Thursday with Ana Buzzalino. It came up pretty easily, except for a couple places along the edges. I just used the tip of a pair of sharp scissors to pry it off the freezer paper.

I was surprised at how much matte medium this used up. This was a new container when I started the class, and I used a bit more than a third of it. 

It peeled up quickly once the edges were all started successfully. There were some bits of the Sharpie writing left behind on the freezer paper.

This one turned out to be so yellow because I'd written with an almost highlighter yellow marker that hadn't fully dried before I applied the matte medium in class.

The freezer paper is re-usable for this process as long as it is still shiny (so it will release). But the marks left behind by the first round of writing may be transferred in the second attempt.

Here's how the four pieces look up on the white design wall. I'm glad I used different types of sheers to try out how they look, it really is startling in a way. Now to try and figure out how to use these somehow in a quilt!

To Be Legible Or Not

 

I am absolutely gutted over the election results, the above picture is copied from Facebook (art by Philipp Gumonov) is my sentiment as of the moment. I took yesterday off to be sad and then angry, and I am Carrying On and making myself be Creative today anyways. I hope you are doing okay too.

This morning I woke up very early (at least for me) to join in an Ana Buzzalino class through the Mancuso Brother's online Quiltfest Virtual Schoolhouse. It was totally worth getting up for and I had a lot of fun learning about Text on Sheers. I love learning about the reasons for choosing to be legible vs. illegible.

I had to choose something to write in several different ways, so I went for what Rebecca Solnit wrote in the first paragraph of her essay today. It was rather cathartic to write it out over and over again. This white polyester sheer I used above has a printed black and a grey 1/4 circle, definitely a FabMo acquisition.

My workroom still smells of Sharpie and Golden matte medium, so I have my little table fan blowing as everything is drying, it really helps with the fumes as you're working with this kind of stuff. 

This one above was written over and over again in different colors of pen in different directions as well as ruler drawn lines. This is just a standard grey polyester tulle net.

In class, Ana mentioned all sorts of tools for mark-making and writing one of which most of us in the class had never heard of, a Cola Pen. I found this great how-to video on how to make one for yourself out of aluminum cans and wooden coffee stirrers. I haven't tried it yet, but I certainly will and report back.

This one was a thin sheer cotton or possibly silk another FabMo special as you can still see a piece of the designer paper tag up on the top. I can't wait until everything is actually dry so I can peel them off from the freezer paper and see how the text looks after it was transferred. That'll be tomorrow.

Class With Uzoma Samuel

This was my view in the front row of Fabric Portrait class with Uzoma Samuel, who came all the way from Lagos, Nigeria to teach at PIQF.  The wonderful friend-Jaye-made bag and a bag of fabric "in great variety" as per his supply list. I thought it was interesting that we didn't need to bring a photo of someone we wanted to do, or a background piece of fabric, or anything to draw on fabric with.

And then we were all handed a piece of artist canvas with the same portrait sketched onto it by our teacher. Each one was done individually, so they were all slightly different. 

Here's Uzoma zooming in on the eye and talking about how if you don't get the eyes right, your portrait won't really represent the individual person you're trying to portray. He had a lot of great advice about how to go about this. I liked that he had this projector with the actual photo, it was so great to have it to refer to the whole time. And then being able to zoom in on the different features was very useful.

Here's how my eyes started out. We didn't measure or trace at all, we used what he called "eye-gauge", you look at the photo you're working from and cut the shape you're working on. Just like when you draw.

It really was time consuming, finding the right shades to represent the 3-d-ness of the forehead.

Here's where I ended up. My left side of the nose got a little lost, so  I may go back and switch out some of the fabrics.

We all put our work up on the wall and it was fascinating to see how different they all were.

Some of the students had a selection of fabrics that were pretty challenging to work with in this context, but everyone gave it a real try. The other students were all really helpful and fun to be in class with, I found it very enjoyable.

I'm so glad I got to take this class, Uzoma Samuel had recently taught some classes in the Bay Area through the SJSA as detailed in the Bay Area issue of Quiltfolk, but I wasn't free. I'm so happy that he came back to the area to teach at PIQF.

Using this detailed approach to making a portrait is so different than other types of faces I've made in fabric. It's trying for more realism than I usually attempt or want to do. Maybe I'll re-do the small piece I did twenty-three years ago of my grandma in this method.

Procreate Class

I'm taking an online class in Procreate offered through Carla Sonheim with artist Lewis Rossignol. I really like the platform that Carla has created, the classes are presented very professionally and clearly, it's all very easy to use. In this class, Lewis is showing us how he combines digital and paper work together. It's so interesting to see how this is done and get to know how to use this powerful program just a little  bit more. 

The above was my starting point drawing of a face. No laughing, please! I haven't drawn a whole lot lately, and haven't drawn a face in quite a long time.

After watching the first lesson I did the work on my iPad outside because it was so nice. We used a separate scan program to get the image into Procreate and then the fun really began. The power of layers (just like in Photoshop) was brought home to me once again. 

I like a lot of things about my picture so far. And some I really don't, which is easy to replace/erase or transform in Procreate. The possibilities are endless with this program, which is a big part of the reason I've never gotten too far into learning a digital drawing program, that endlessness is frankly rather paralyzing to me. But I'm diving in and trying to push myself to get a little further along this time. 

I found that the Apple Pencil was a little hard for me to hold for very long at a time because it's quite slim. I got myself a barrel grip thing and it really helps my hand. That's what that red thing is on the white pencil.

Ready for Coat Class

Today's the first day of the 2 day coat class I'm taking with Rachel D. Clark on zoom with one of the quilt guilds I belong to, South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild. Here's my stack of fabrics that I'll be working with. I've long wanted to get the chance to take a class with her, and I'm super excited.

Yes, making a long coat right at the beginning of summer is kind of bad timing for me. I'm already onto the tank tops and shorts routine at home every day. But getting the coat started in class and learning how to actually finish it. I suppose it will give me plenty of time to get into the details and finish it over the summer so that the coat is ready for me to wear when it cools off in the late fall. 

My thoughts today while I was pulling the fabrics listed on our class handout is that I want to do a coat mostly of one color, I'm calling it "Shades of Grey" in my mind. I love color color color in my quilts, but I don't necessarily want to wear that much color. Turns out all the shades of grey are pretty colorful ranging from true gray to blue gray, mauve-ish and green-ish too. 

I have this bag made out of recycled newspaper and I've always loved the look of it, the verticality, the thin strips, the variation in the greys. I'm going to keep this idea in mind as I work on the design.

Rachel suggests having a theme when working on a garment like this, so this one just came to me and I'm going with it.

My theme for the coat will be YES. As in: The Woman Who Said Yes Because She Wanted To Not Because She Thought She Had to. 

AKA:  The Woman Who Said YES For Her Own Reasons

I might piece the word yes into several main "blocks" that will be in prominent places in the coat, center back, one side of chest, etc. Or embroider or print or...

I might hand print the word Yes all over the lining fabric in black fabric ink in all the different font stamps that I have.

I also might go even further and use my leather die tools to stamp out YES on grey leather for closure at neckline and cuff accents.

Kawandi Siddi Cloth Workshop

 

This morning I took a great workshop (on zoom of course) through South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild with Sujata Shah on hand-stitching a Siddi Kawandi. She was a great instructor, very lively and engaging giving us the background of the Siddi people in India as well as how the Kawandi (which means quilt) are made in the Siddi tradition. Sujata had very clear video instructions along with a lot of great examples of different types of Kawandi. This first picture is of my first corner where I've inserted a folded over twice square to make what's called a fula. The Kawandi is considered naked without a fula in each of the four corners.

This type of quilt is made from the outside into the center, which is very different from the way I'm used to working. I liked how different this process was, You're quilting and piecing and designing as you go. Instead of using heavier-weight quilting cottons, I decided to use my box of random silks, and so far I'm enjoying all the various textures. The silk is very very nice to stitch through by hand. Some of the pieces are from my grandmother's stash or my own from various clothing items I've sewn, so there are good memories embedded in there too.

I always have so much trouble threading my needle for embroidery so I bought a new type of needle threader that is all one piece of metal (Lo-Ran by Dritz) and it worked really well for the big needle and Spagetti Wonderfil thread I was using.

I mostly  didn't have to use pins but I found that the silks were a little slippery on the corners.

A lot of these fabrics are in fact from FabMo. They're already small swatches, so they're working out well for this type of quilting.

This is going to be a fun on-going hand-stitching project for me to be working on for a while. The whole piece isn't too large and it feels do-able. I'm looking forward to getting to do just some rows of stitching instead of the sort of fiddly part of getting the edge sewn down and started. After I've gotten another round or so of fabric pieces added I'll update my progress.

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Block Printing Webinar

Last month, I was lucky enough to notice that there was a webinar through the Modern Quilt Guild about block printing, specifically Block Printing Repeat Patterns. I've done block printing, but haven't really tried to do repeat patterns. So, I signed up and I *gasp* actually remembered to watch it. The seminar was awesome, the presenter was very clear and thorough as well as entertaining. Pantera Saint-Montaigne has a retail textiles business in Brooklyn called Brooklyn Mojo. I loved the step by step videos she shared and all of the resources that she provided. 

Based on her recommendation, I bought a baren to help in getting good, even contact with the entire block. That's always been one of my bugaboos, so I'm hoping this tool will help with that issue.

I also bought a couple things from the Brooklyn Mojo store for holiday presents this year. They are very high quality and the printing on them is very well done.

Pantera mentioned she'd learned a lot of her printing techniques from Jen Hewett, who also teaches online, I've just signed up for her block printing class on Craftsy.  There's a big sale on Craftsy classes right now so go check it out if you're at all interested. 

Jen Hewett's blog has all kinds of cool info, including a weekly print series called 52 Weeks of Printness, very fun and inspiring to scroll through and get ideas. 

I really love carving blocks and I'm looking forward to carving some more. I'll share my progress as I go through the Craftsy class.

Word for Word Class

 I was lucky enough to get into Rosalie Dace's three-day "Word For Word" class at the Sisters Quilt Show. I've always enjoyed seeing her quilts at shows like PIQF and was excited to get to learn from her. She turned out to be a very excellent teacher, inspiring, informative and organized.
Our first exercise was to cut out a letter from very nice thick black paper that she brought with her all the way from South Africa. I chose a kind of curvy letter Z, with the cross like my family taught me to do. (boy did I ever get in trouble for that in school!)

Then we were instructed to deconstruct the letter and find an interesting design(s).

 And also to play with the background pieces that weren't part of the letter.

And then we were asked to do a final design incorporating all the pieces. This was up on my design wall. It reminded me quite a lot of the research we did for the Notan class. This was a great warm-up for me, and I was ready to make a quilt out of this design, but nope...there was a lot more to come...

Pies and Points

I was lucky to get into Victoria Findlay Wolfe's Pies and Points class at QuiltCon this year. I was on the wait list, so it was great to find out with just enough time to find some good fabrics to bring with me for the class. I bought American Made solids in several colors that would go with

a beautiful bright bundle of Amy Butler designs that I already had on hand.

The class was one where we were provided with machines which was nice because everyone didn't have to travel to QuiltCon with their own machines. But I admit I struggled with finding my groove with my class Juki, nothing at all wrong with the machine, but it takes a while to get used to sewing on something so different from your 'daily driver.' All the things I'm used to doing without a thought were a bit of a struggle, like finding a consistent 1/4" seam which impacted how much I was able to actually get done in class. 

Here is the sum total of what I got sewn together. I love the way the solids and the crazy prints play together in these blocks. The biggest thing I took away from the class was Victoria Findlay Wolfe's crystal clear directions on how to sew curves. She's so enthusiastic about it and very prepared to take the class along with her to get to competence on mastering thosecurves. It's a big stopper for a lot of sewers, myself included so that was particularly important. But after practicing a few times, I think I really got it. There are some great videos that she's made for Sizzix that pretty much cover what she said in class that are worth checking out.  If you ever get a chance to take a class from her, jump at it, she's a wonderful instructor.

Back home I played with arranging the bits I'd gotten sewn together, realizing that I'll have to pay attention to where the individual solids or prints will come into contact with themselves because it really changes the look of the block. This of course, can be used intentionally...hmmm....

The other big thing I learned in the class was how to use a die-cutting machine. Everyone in the class received their own Pies and Points die to use (and take home, what a great marketing tool!) There were several of the Big Shot Pro machines set up in the classroom and one of the Sizzix reps was there in the class to instruct us on their use. It was great fun and much easier than I'd thought it would be. Since I wasn't doing so great on consistently sewing a 1/4" seam I decided to spend more time on cutting pieces out since I didn't have a Sizzix to use at home.

 Here's what my "Parts Department" (as Victoria Findlay Wolfe calls it) looks like with all the pieces stacked up in the box my laptop came in. It's the perfect size with a foam insert that holds everything in one place. Also in the picture is the Sizzix die. Several of the elements of the block have to be oriented one way, so it's important not to get them reversed, so it's good to have them sorted out like this.
And yes, I do now have a Big Shot Pro because I liked using it in the class so much, so well done on that Sizzix marketing but more on that later.

Marvelous Midi

 Here's a really fun bag that I made recently. I took a class at Scruffy Quilts with friend Jaye to find out how to make it. It's the Midi Bag (affiliate link to Amazon) which is the smaller version of the Mondo Bag by QuiltSmart.

 I loved working on the QuiltSmart printed interfacing, what a great product idea. It gave nice body to the bag, but not stiffness, and was very easy to use and sew on.

 I will be honest though, I could not have figured out the pattern without the class. This was a 3-D kind of assembly that's very clever and that I needed to have demoed in front of me to get the hang of it.

I'm really happy with the fun fabric choice I went with, I chose a Neco jellyroll by Momo for Moda fabrics. I did some fussy cutting to make sure I had the parakeet's eye and the whole hedgehog or cat.