iPad for Quilters class

 

On my first day back after another trip to Spokane and back (successful injections so far, yay!) I took an online class through Mancuso Brothers Virtual Schoolhouse. Thankfully it started at 9am instead of lots earlier. The teacher,Cristina Arcenegui Bono, was located in Italy and she was mindful of wanting to include West Coast students. The class was called iPad for Quilters, and it was six hours full of all kinds of  new information for me. There are so many little tips and tricks for using the iPad, and they're hard to remember without using them all the time. Or to have them taught to you in context so you know why they're important to try and remember. So some was a review, and some was absolutely new. All of it useful and now I feel much more fluent with using both Procreate and my iPad.

Now I know how to use layers much better and see why they're so useful. Cristina was a great teacher, really funny and well-prepared to help the people in the class who were at very different stages of adeptness with the iPad.

And I am now planning to try out using my Cricut to cut out appliqué pieces from my sketches.

 

 I had a clementine as a snack during class and we were learning how to make our own color palettes from photos or files. So I snapped a picture with the iPad and made a palette out of all those great shades of orange.

This picture made for a really lovely palette. Palettes are useful for color choosing when you're sketching on the iPad, it narrows down the limitless colors to the ones you want to concentrate on using.

Poetic Supplies

I'm taking a class, called Poetic Cloth from Jane Dunnewold which is really fun so far, but it required me to source some new fabric from a new supplier that she suggested. Online Fabric Store (yes, that's actually the name of it). For the class I bought two fabrics to try printing with, two yards of 60" white cotton broadcloth, and 2 yards of 45" bleached cotton muslin. What an interesting picture this is for white on white, right? I tried my best and held the two fabrics up to the window. I need to wash and dry them before I actually get started on pulling prints.

These fabrics will be used along with the new and much bigger Gelli Plate that was suggested that I just invested in. The one I had was only 8x10", so buying this much larger one will make it easier to print something as big as FQ which will be more usable in quilt making. Think of this as the before picture, taken while it's pristine and untouched.

I had most of the paints, and inks on the supply list already, but I didn't have these four. I've never used a paint retarder before so I'm interested in learning how that works.

Also at The Online Fabric Store, I found two kinds of felt. In the class notes, it was suggested to try out the display of smaller works we'll be making on this sort of sturdy dark grey felt, it seemed like it would be a good thing to learn. 

And after looking all over to source it locally, I finally found a grey wool felt that I can use in the Circle Sampler. Wool is really hard to find, especially in the size that I needed. I should have just bought it fro Sue Spargo back when I bought the pattern. I had even tried buying a wool coat at GoodWill and deconstructing it, but the largest rectangle wasn't even close to big enough. Now that I have the background, I can actually start this project.

So, after adding in those 7 yards, it brings my fabric tracker up to a net inflow of 11.8 yards.

Class Flowers

 

I'm taking a class with Jane Sassaman this month working on Abstracting From Nature. I've always really enjoyed her quilts and have been lucky to see some in person. They're all exquisitely created and so well designed. It's been very fun being in class learning from her.

For the class we had to chose a flower or plant to work with, I chose Sour Grass (aka Oxalis). Sure they're weeds, and invasive ones at that where I live, but I love them. These pictures were taken in my parent's backyard last week.

Not really clover, but the leaves look very clover-ish. Always three heart shaped leaves.

After a whole lot of sketches and studies using Jane's great class structure, I came up with this design. The rectangle will be the edge of the quilt. I think the title will be "Sour Grass Grace".

Using some colored paper I played with the shapes on the design wall.

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.