Last day of class and home in Placentia 10-18-14

I  completely ran out of steam last evening (Friday).  After going out to dinner with Elizabeth Busch and some of the students from class (at El Agave in Old Town San Diego), I returned to the hotel and fell into bed.  Is this enough warning for me to lose some pounds and get some exercise?  I have signed up for the Elizabeth Busch class at Empty Spools/Asilomar in March 2015 - I'll have to work hard to get in better shape.  It is only five months away!

 

 

This picture was soon after I started working on my first composition.  The largest piece, with the yellow bottom stripe, was cut from one of the much larger pieces of fabric that I painted.   The orange piece on the left is from Tricia Charity who sat at the table behind me.  The green and black stripes were in someone's trash can!  I'm still a "dumpster diver" at heart.

Pieces cut from Goodwill rayon shirt added at top right and between green stripe and the largest piece.  And a dyed black and white print across bottom.

It is all too busy - there is no room to "breath".

 



I tried a different patterned fabric on the right - too much.  And I covered some of the prints in the black rayon fabric down the middle.

 

 

Right side strip eliminated and a plain black strip added to left.  Also the orange and black pieces on the left are narrower.  One of the green stripes is extended across to the right edge.  This is the final iteration of this piece.  The paper bird will go on the label on the back.

 

I drove home from San Diego today after some time at VAM to put myself on the docent schedule for the Visions show.  A few stops to deliver some things to friends along I-5 and finally home.  I unloaded most of the car, but had to leave the two heavy boxes of fabric until tomorrow!  See what I mean about getting into shape? 

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Fourth Day of Elizabeth Busch class 10-16-14

This is more about the students in the class than the work they were doing.  This morning Elizabeth Busch had us clean off all the painted fabric that we had pinned up on our design boards and started us on composing our quilts using that painted fabric.  I wish that I had planned ahead a bit more and created fabric that would actually work together when cut up. In some of these pictures you can see a few pieces of the painted fabric.  

 

Sherry Kleinman and Tricia Charity

 Carolyn Villars, Sandra Lauterbach, and Carol Sebastian-Neely. 

Nadine Rutman (back to camera), Sandra Lauterbach, Carolyn Villars, Susan Root.

Deb Mackay starting her first composition.

Andrea Bacal starting her first composition. 

Gail Sims - some of her painted fabric on her design board.

To the left of that is my design board with painted fabric still pinned to it.

Laura Bisagna to the left and Andi Perejda cutting hand painted fabric on the right.

Carol Sebastian-Neely and Jeanne Surber.

 

Here is my design board at the end of the day.  I have four compositions in progress.  Something that Elizabeth said we should not do; hard to break old habits.

This is the composition I have done the most on.  In the trash I found a bookmark with a bird on it and, since all my quilts have a bird, I just pinned it up. 

 

Yesterday Elizabeth had us do a composition exercise.  She gave us each five white cards and a sheet of block construction paper.  We were to cut four different compositions and glue them to the white cards.  #1 Cut one piece.  #2 Cut two pieces.  #3 Cut three pieces  #4 Cut as many pieces as you wished.  For #5 we were to tear the paper.   She took them all to her hotel room and looked them over last evening, returning them today to pin up  on the board.

 

There is masking tape dividing the sections and yellow sticky notes with the number of pieces on the cards in each section (14 students, so 14 cards).   Top left is #1 (mine is the spiral).  Top right is #2 (mine is the flower looking thing with a spiral stem - not a composition, but a picture).  Bottom left is #3 (mine is the leaf with spiral tendril).   She pinned them up with the most successful in the top row of the sections, then going down to those that aren't so successful. 

Here are #4 and #5.  On the left are the cards we could use as many pieces as we wished (mine is the spiral in the top row and is three pieces).  On the right are the compositions made with torn paper (mine is the right end in the third row). 

It was a very interesting and educational exercise.  Some of the pieces are more effective turned another direction, some are ambiguous, some are too intricate and some are "pictures", some are just shapes.   As we start to compose our quilts we need to think about all these things. 

 

I have no idea why this last picture is so large.  Picasa shows all the pictures I have used as being the same size.  Computer gremlins? 

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Third Day of Elizabeth Busch class 10-15-14



We were still painting today and doing some composition exercises using black and white paper.  There are some gorgeous fabrics made by the students, I will try to include some tomorrow. 

This is the demo piece that Elizabeth has been working on.  After the paint was dry, she masked various parts using contact paper (the white on the top part) and plain old grey duct tape for the other areas she wanted to stay bright. . 

After applying more paint on top of the masks she tore off the tape and let the piece dry..  Then she put on another set of masking using masking tape and applied the black paint to make the black lines.

She encourages us to work spontaneously and suggests turning the fabric piece face down to cut it into pieces for the projects we will sew together.  Kind of a scary thing to do.

 

 

This is the cut piece she decided to use as her primary block; it is about 7" square..  On the left is a piece she is considering using which she pulled from her scrap stash.

She rotated the primary piece so the black lines  are vertical and added a piece from her scrap stash separated from the first piece by a very thin line of gold colored commercial cotton.  The green piece has been moved to form a horizontal "base"  and another piece from her scrap stash goes across the bottom.  As you can see, these are all pinned to the design board and can be moved around.

 

Elizabeth uses paper towels to mask off the excess, moving them around until she has the balance that pleases her.  The finish piece will be about 12" tall X 14" wide.

Not a very good image - I'll try for a better one tomorrow.  Check back.

 

Sewing starts tomorrow.

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Second Day of Elizabeth Busch class 10-14-14

T'was a busy day and we did a lot of painting.  Here are two pieces of Elizabeth's demo this morning.

 

On the left of the picture is a chalk pastel sketch done on damp canvas.

The piece on the right of the picture is a single color background prepared before class and allowed to dry completely. 

 

Another layer created using the edge of the Popsicle stick dipped in red and in green.

CORRECTION:  The red and green lines are NOT paint, but chalk pastel sprayed with water to set the color. 

This is a face on image after the demo was complete.  She may add more to create more layers.

Other layers might be added to this sketch to give it more depth and/or detail. 

 

More painting on Wednesday and perhaps some sewing.  Only three days left! 

 

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First day of Elizabeth Busch class 10-13-14

One of the things we are not supposed to do is post pictures of the work being done in the class without express permission to do so.  So, I am showing just a few of Elizabeth Busch's demo pieces today.  I'll see if I can get permission from some of the students to photograph and show their work.   The fabric paints we are using are Pro-Chem and I will give you more exact names and numbers later.

See Elizabeth's website at www.elizabethbusch.com

 

We are working with Pro-Chem transparent paints which come in the bottles at the far side of the table.  Elizabeth mixes them with the gel ? medium using Popsicle sticks in the little take-out salsa containers where her hands are.

 

 





 

She spreads the paint on with plastic or metal scrapers or with 2" and 3" brushes.

The big white pot in the foreground is the gel medium.  

 

After the paint is dry she puts on another layer of paint after masking parts of the background with Contac paper or duct tape.

 

Then she applies the next layer of paint using brushes or scrapers.

 

 

Here is Elizabeth with some of her class samples.  We all did a color sample sheet such as those at top left.

 

We are having a great time applying paint, masking off portions of our backgrounds and then adding more paint.  It is a layering process that gives Elizabeth's work its depth.

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Quilt Visions 2014 - Opening

Last night was the opening reception for Quilt Visions 2014, "The Sky's The Limit", at Visions Art Museum in San Diego.  This is always such an exciting event with many of the artists in attendance (24 out of 40 this year) along with the staff and most of the volunteers for the Museum.  It is always over too quickly and I want to gather all these people back again for more discussion and visiting.  These pictures were taken at events that happened today - a breakfast for the artists, a walk through with the artists talking about their quilts, a panel discussion about the process of jurying for Quilt Visions and Quilt National. 

 

 The Museum is not large and was very crowded, as you can see.  This is the reception area and gift shop with the Alcove Gallery on the left.  The artists with quilts hanging there are telling this squashed together crowd about their work.

These are the artists gathered for a picture.  I cannot identify each one, but will do so and run this picture again soon.  The quilt on the wall behind them is Emily Richardson's "Swiftly" which received the President's Award selected by the President of the Museum Board of Directors, Andrea Bacal.

 

A few of the artists didn't fit in one frame! On the wall to the left is "Points In Time" by Vicki Carlson of Fort Collins, CO.

 

Charlotte Bird is the chair of the exhibit and has managed, I believe, four of the previous Quilt Visions exhibits.  She is the person who puts all the pieces together and we all need to say "Thanks for a job well done."

Janet Steadman (Langley, WA) on the left is a long-time quilt maker whom I had not met previously,  yet one of her quilts has been in TCQC since 2000.   Friend, Visions volunteer and fellow artist Judy Warren-Tippets is on the right.  On the wall between them is Marianne Burr's (Coupeville, WA) "Eleven 3 Eleven" which won the Thomas Contemporary Quilt Recognition Award.  On the left above Janet's shoulder is Elizabeth Busch's (Glenburn, Maine) "Summer Walk". 

 

 

Mariam Machell is shown with the quilt that received the Mariam Machell Award for Beauty.  Mariam is one of the founding members of Quilt Visions.  The quilt selected by her friends at the Museum is "Ryu, Gwan-Sun by Shin-hee Chin of McPherson, Kansas.