August, 2021
I love living in Chicago, but I do miss my Atlanta quilting community. Several years ago, a small neighborhood bee I was part of decided to try an experiment, combining a book club with our quilting challenge. To keep it manageable we picked a 12 x 12 format. This is a little piece I made after we read a book called The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell.
12 x 12 was a popular size for a number of challenge groups, and every year a local organization called the Southeastern Fiber Arts Association held a 12 x 12 pinup show for all fiber artists. The book club quilt challenge didn’t go on for very long, but SEFAA’s 12 x 12 pinup show has persisted, even going virtual during Covid.
June, 2021
One of the perks of being in Ali Manning’s Handmade Book Club are occasional workshops with teachers she brings in. One recent Sunday, Bel Mills of Scrap Paper Circus led a workshop using business reply envelopes to make this mail art wallet. Lots of ways you could take the collage design with this, and lots of possible uses to keep bits and pieces organized. It also gave me an excuse to buy and try a Crop-a-Dial for the little rivet closure. And then there was the new experience with clear gesso. So yes, it’s intended to be a project focused on up cycling, but no stash busting project feels complete without a new purchase or two! I love a workshop where you can actually complete the whole project by the time the session is over. Take a look at the video to see how this one works by clicking on the photo below.
June, 2021
I recently spent a delightful afternoon taking a class from Carolina Oneto (#carolina_oneto) learning this modern version of the English Paper Piecing technique applied to creating tranparent effects. I’ve worked with transparencies with paper and fiber, but this was my first time in fabric, and also my first time with EPP. I’d mostly seen it used with hexie projects, which impress me but don’t tempt me to try.
Carolina is from Chile, living now in Brazil, and the students were from around the world. Just one of the silver linings to the pandemic – putting teachers like her within reach of students around the world. I’m so grateful so many of them made the effort to amp up their on-line presence.
June, 2021
My first post-pandemic flight was back to Miraval Resort in Tucson, Arizona, I have and will write about the experience in other places, but for this time I wanted to share this magical photo. My friend Janet Miller had just taken a course there is optimizing iPhone photography, and that evening we had this amazing scene on our way back from dinner, so thanks to her for the image – I may have done a little art direction. I love my almost-vintage iPhone, but I have to say this set me up with a little new phone craving.
June, 2021
Yes, I’ve joined another group. The Winslow Art Center in Bainbridge Island Washington, like many other schools, offered online classes for the first time this year, and I joined a three month prototype with Lucie Duclos called Paper Pals Collage Club. I’d known of Lucie after seeing her featured in Uppercase Magazine (highly recommended) and then on Instagram. I’ve mentioned the Handmade Book Club before (Ali Manning’s creation), and now Lucie is trying out something similar for collage crazy people – weekly exercises/prompts, monthly live on-line sessions to learn new techniques and share, and a private community. This one isn’t on Facebook, which is my preference.
Lucie has been giving prompts every week, and so far they have focused on composition issues – kind of familiar to be from composition classes I took when I lived in Atlanta with Chery Baird at Spruill Arts Center – I’ll no doubt talk about Chery more, because her classes had a tremendous impact on me.
Anyway, The group was originally set to run for three weeks, but I think the plan is to continue, we’ll see. I do know that Winslow has announced that they will continue online offerings, and I hope that many other teachers and schools decide to do the same.
