Ruth McDowell class - Asilomar 03-08-10

This was the first day of my five days with Ruth McDowell. Yesterday's two hours don't really count in my book! As she always does on the first day of her Designing from Nature class she had everyone bring their design inspiration up to pile on her table. Then everyone gathers 'round and she starts demonstrating how to change the picture/drawing into a design that can be pieced using the traditional front-side to front-side of the fabric, sew the seam and open the pieces flat and continue sewing pieces together. She is absolutely amazing as she whips through one after the other 'inspiration' showing us how she would work out the piecing. She makes it seem effortless, but by the end of the day when she has done eighteen completely different designs she is drained. I would be collapsed on the floor!! She has four "remedial" students (as we call those of us who have taken her class before), the rest are all newbies! She has her work cut out for her.

Our classroom is in Merrill Hall where the evening programs are held. Our individual tables are arrayed along the outside edges of the hall, so we sit in the auditorium style seating for the demonstrations. It is a nice large area to spread out in, but we cannot work in the evening between 7 and 8:30p while the programs are in progress.
On the stage you can see some of David Taylor's quilts - he is the artist-in-residence this week and is working in the back of Merrill Hall, demonstrating to all who come how he makes his quilts.

Ruth tapes a piece of tracing paper over the design inspiration and draws the piecing lines with different colored felt tip pens. The first decision is if straight or curved piecing would work best. This geranium would be very complex for a beginning project and she suggested the student just do part of it. The student can, of course, choose to do the entire design.

This student had drawn her own design of a girl sitting cross legged in a field of dandelions weaving dandelion chains. She also brought a portrait of herself as a girl so the image would resemble herself. Ruth suggested she focus on the girl and just hint at the field of dandelions and put the peach tree branches and peaches in as a border.

One student had taken a picture of this pheasant while on vacation on the Oregon Coast. Quite a lovely bird, but there was a large branch behind him and lots of extraneous foliage. Ruth suggested a simpler background and sketched in the seam lines for the bird. The blue hatch marks on the right and bottom indicate an integrated border that would balance the long tail with the compact body on the left.

You can see she still has a pile of design papers on her table! This is a broken wheel in the desert which will require both curved and straight seam piecing.

Here she has covered the image with tracing paper and started to indicate the seam lines.

And then I had to leave the room and didn't go back before the end of the class. Tomorrow we will all work to finalize our designs and prepare the freezer paper templates with their tick marks and sewing order numbers.

We have had some very heavy rain today and strong gusty winds. But mostly it has just been cloudy and cool.