My first step towards growth

Well, I am back, much later than I meant to be. The fall is such a great, but busy school time around here still and I have to be more careful with my time.

I HAVE been working in my studio, rather more diligently and regularly than I have in the past, but I haven't taken the time to post what's been going on. I will have a number of projects completed soon, and will show you lots of photos!

The reason I am writing now though, is because I have just started on a very exciting, somewhat scary art journey, and in addition to keeping an art journal about it, making my projects, and attending my classes, I thought it would be fun to share my experience with my online artist friends as well.

I finally took the leap and signed up for a class that is very... well, famous around here actually. I personally know many people who have taken this class and have heard them speak in hushed tones about how intense it can be, how challenging, how thought-provoking. These same people have also exclaimed loudly, in no uncertain terms, that this class was a life and art changing experience for them.

According to the teacher, my friend and a fiber artist who is well-known in the art quilting world, Heather Thomas, friendships have been made in this class that have lasted as long as she has taught this class to others: 13 years! That's a lot of pressure going into it!

What is the class? It's a 13 month long journey, called "The Language of Color and Design", and it's very title always sparks discussion around these parts! My first class was this past Monday morning.

I have taken a number of classes with Heather since moving here to Colorado and I love her teaching style. She is witty, funny, intelligent and down-to-earth. She encourages without being condescending and she guides her students honestly with her candid humour. I know that this class is a huge step for anyone wishing to take their work to the next level. I also know that Heather is the only teacher I could imagine taking the leap with!

I have wanted to take this class ever since I heard about it, at least a couple of years ago. That's saying something, since I have only been in Colorado a little over three years. I really had to be ready though. Thanks to Heather's blog where she has generously shared an incredible number of machine quilting tips and tutorials (http://heatherthomasblog.blogspot.com/), and her series of articles in Quilting Arts magazine this year, I feel like I am ready. As ready as I can be, that is!

I have been practicing my machine quilting and working on projects to hang on the still-mostly-bare walls of our home. I have dabbled in this and that, but the first thing I made and hung with intention is in the dining room. I used some design elements from things in the room and used colours that were similar to the paint colours. I used some of the leftover curtain silk. I used symbolism. And I made a LOT of mistakes. It's hanging and will stay there, at least for now. I like this piece for what it is.

But here's the thing. I feel COMPELLED to create. I have so much to say and I want to say it with my work. I want to fill the walls with my original creations. I know that I can do better if I can just manage to grasp some basic concepts of colour and design. At this point, I have no delusions of becoming famous or even being able to sell anything I make. I am not even sure I want to go in that direction.

This is about being able to create pieces that more accurately translate what I am thinking into the end product. I want to gain confidence in my work, I want to feel more capable. I want to display my work in our home with pride and without being nervous that someone will ask me about it.

We are required to produce a finished project for each lesson, and present it for Show and Tell the following month. This project is ideally supposed to be original and is designed to show our understanding of the lesson. I know everyone in the class probably feels the same way as I do: nervous! 

Making something original and then presenting it feels like nothing less than baring my soul!

I had a time in my life where I had to be brave and really live outside of my comfort zone. I had no choice. What it brought me was a world full of wonderful at the end of all the scary. It was SO worth the terrifying moments along the way.

Since moving here, I realized I have put myself into a comfort zone and have found myself reverting back to my bad old habits of not putting myself out there and making excuses for it. I let myself forget how much reward there can be in stretching yourself, being vulnerable, in taking chances.

So this is me: stretching myself. Being vulnerable. Taking chances. Wish me luck!

How time flies!

Hello friends!

I see that almost a month has gone by since I posted last... and I told myself to sift through my photos and get some posted, so you can see that I have done a FEW things this summer at least! lol

Pajama pants for Ben. He's my only boy (well, he's 20, not really a boy anymore :) and it can be hard to find things that I can make him. But when we were in the fabric store looking for makeup bag fabric for the girls, he found this Batman flannel and was lingering just long enough... I asked if he wanted pjs and he said GREAT! He's a big comic book guy, and am I glad I can still make things he likes once in a while! 

Make up bag for Holly. Day of the Dead is virtually unheard of back in Ontario, and Holly just loved this DOD fabric. Though I am not a skulls fan, I do like the vibrancy of this.

This next bunch of photos is of scarves I have been working on- dyeing- over the past couple of months. My sisters and I each chose a half dozen or so and I put in the order, since I am the one interested in playing in this arena!

We ordered a wide variety between us and it was a lot of fun to see how the different silk blends took the colours. I call them dyes, I actually used Dye-Na-Flo silk paint.

I also got to experiment a little with colour, making custom colours from what was available in the jars. I took a one day crash course on colour theory with Heather Thomas here in Denver a couple of years back and though I know I still have a LOT to learn, that class gave me a good foundation in starting to understand it all. I also used my Color Tool to help me get the colours I was looking for.

Heather is one of the co-authors of "Fabric Embellishing: The Basics and Beyond", has a new book of her own coming out about colour theory soon, and is also an extremely talented machine quilter. She has been writing a series of articles this year for Quilting Arts magazine, you should check it out! 

Here is Heather's web site: http://www.wildheatherdesigns.com/

I also developed my love for dyeing these scarves from a class I took with Heather :) 

She is a multi-talented lady and a fabulous teacher! If you ever get the chance to take a class with her- JUMP!!!

This first scarf is one I made for myself before our trip to Sweden and Denmark in June. The scarf came with the daisies on it- I just painted the centers yellow and tried to paint black in between, which was mostly successful... the flowers are velvet but the part of the scarf in between them is a very fine mesh and though the dye looks black here, when it was dry, it's more gray than black. But okay. I don't have the rest of mine done yet, but I will post them when I do.

This was a 90" long chiffon scarf that I sewed gathering stitches into to make a shorter, ruffly scarf. This one went to my daughter Holly, when she was here for her visit.

I wish I could tell you what each scarf was, fabric-wise. Most of them are silk or a silk blend, but they were all different weights and had different hands to them. This first bunch is for Becky, who likes neutrals and wanted a variety to match patterned shirts. I am still working on the photography part, some of the photos don't do the colours justice.

Chocolate brown

Champagne, on a pre-patterned scarf

A ruffled pewter

Mossy green on a pre-patterned scarf

Dark red- LOVE this colour

Silver stamping on a black scarf- there are a few kinds that are available in black blanks. Turns out that the stamp ink I used wasn't permanent and I ended up re-doing this one with silver acrylic paint mixed with textile medium. It looks nice, but makes the scarf a little stiffer than I like.

And for Sandy, who wears a lot of black top and bottom, and accessorizes with scarves and jewelry-

Champagne

Horizontal stripes- red on one side and black on the other, and they kind of bled towards the center, which turned out very cool!

Ruffled baby pink

Jewel-toned- and it looks a lot lighter here than it actually dried in front of me

The only 100% cotton one. This just soaked up the dyes and though it looks similar to the one above, it dried to look almost like worn denim. I had some really light pink in it, but because I dried it outside hanging, the darker colours ran over and into the light ones and that was that... lesson learned! 

I learned a lot doing these, and had a LOT of fun. I enjoyed it most when I could do it outside, they dry faster and I could add more dye if I needed to to get the results I was looking for. None of them turned out exactly the way I originally thought they would, but most of them are better! The best thing about this kind of project for me is the unpredictability of the end product- drying lines, the colours running into each other, the difference in the concentration of colour, I just love it all. I get permission to have fun and not worry about perfect results.

You should try this!

Oh boy...

I see I have a LOT of catching up to do! lol

I have been busy in my studio with a variety of things on my own, in addition to the 21 Secrets and the Sketchbook Challenge.

I just haven't had time- nor a dependable computer to do the catching up!

My computer finally had to go in and get a new hard drive- something that has been giving me issues for a few months now.

Our last (known) summer company is coming this weekend, and then we are hoping for some quiet summer time- hubby wants to sit in his swing and read, and I want to get my blogging up to date and work on the half-done projects in my studio.

So I will definitely be back... stay tuned! xo