ARTISUN

At least 20 years ago I took the funnest quilting class with national quilt artist Gwen Marston who wrote "Liberated Quiltmaking", and I have used her techniques ever after with my 2nd year 3-d art students. First I teach them how to sew on a sewing machine, and then using Gwen's method of allowing no templates to make the pattern with, off we go to create extremely original works of art with cotton fabrics that have been donated to my program. Before the students undertake this assignment, these donated fabric are color coordinated by either me or one of my trusted T.A.'s, and folded neatly and stacked in see-thru bags. These bags are then lotteried off to the kids. It's so much fun to watch the kids fight over some of these bags. At the end of choosing, I pick a bag for myself from the remaining ones. Every year I try to pick a different bag to change things up for myself. The reason I need a bag is because I demo with it as we proceed thru the whole quiltmaking process. So I have to stay one day ahead of the kids. Mighty challenging with my busy teaching schedule, but I somehow just manage it every year. This first quilt was one of my personal favorites in the bunch this year. It was made by one of my top crafts students, senior Brittaney Lee. I love the bag she chose along with her design. And what I was especially impressed with was her quilting design that she top stitched over the pieced top, it was so well thought out. Fabulous work kiddo :)

This next piece was created by junior Nandi Best. She went all out with her design of shooting stars. Hers was the largest made and took the most amount of effort. Phenomenal color choices for a spectacular piece!

A few close ups.

Not to be outdone was this piece made by senior Florence Buendia. The kids learned several patterns; log cabin, flying geese, strip piecing, sewing curves the Ricky Tims' way, and an 8 point star. The other patterns you see like Florence's pinwheel, the kids taught themselves after looking thru many of my quilting books. Can you believe this is their first quilt with the sewing machine?? The kids amaze me every year.

The beauty above was done by senior Albert Choi, one of two boys in this class. Albert has been impressing me all year with his work ethic, craftsmanship and his innate sense of design. Below we have senior Kelsea Lee's sweet landscape. She taught herself the house and the tree patterns from Gwen's book. Way to go Kelsea, your effort on this piece was truly something.

Above we have the work of senior Hilary Chan with her very subtle color choices and sensitive design. Watch out Hilary, I think Suzanne from the office staff wants to buy this from you at Open House, she was drooling over it. LOL And below, senior Vivian Vo log cabined her stars for an eye catching piece.

Junior Carolina Navor, who I've been waiting to come back to me since I had her in 7th grade went all out over her Xmas break to put together this very complex star pattern. Senior Jessica Jay put some subtle curves in and threw in a couple of flying geese for her pretty piece below.

And my other male, a brilliant 9th grade designer, Aman Patel, created this striking design above. And this last, very lovely piece was made by senior Abby Ilagan. Thank you all for your hard work and dedication to this assignment, it really paid off for all you.

For EXTRA CREDIT on a piece of blue paper, cut into the shape of an 8 pointed star (see Abby's stars above) put the name of the person who created your favorite quilt from above. On the other side of the star put your name and period.