THE FINISH LINE

After using this demo for the teaching of the Liberated Quiltmaking unit

to my 2nd year Intermediate 3-D girls,

I actually finished it.

YES!!

A rare occurrence for me as you probably know by now.

This year's class wanted to learn a Ricky Tim's liberated heart.

I had seen Ricky's heart in a national quilt magazine in the late 1990's,

and played with the design several times in the past.

In the early 2000's I actually took 2 courses with him,

both at the Road to California Quilt Show,

and found him to be a self-taught quilting genius

and so much fun to learn from.

In the second class he was selling his colorful tye-dyed fabrics,

so I bought several pieces and taught his heart pattern to my quilting group.

I showed these to my youngsters and they wanted to try it as well.

This year I have 2 groups of Intermediate 3-D kids,

and the 2nd group wanted to learn Gwen Marston's Liberated Houses and Trees.

In the process I also taught both groups Strip Pieced Borders, 

Hand Turned Applique,

Machine & Hand Quilting,

and Hand Tyed Quilting Knots.

I can't wait to show you their results.

They are all so very different.

As always I dedicate these quilts to my current group of seniors who I adore!

It's crazy,

I have at least 10 or more of these demos,

(each year a completely different design),

that I haven't finished.

My to-do list when I retire is getting bigger and bigger.

Ha!

FEEL FREE

LIBERATED QUILTMAKING

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

scrap fabric, sewing machine 

This is a unit for my 2nd year 3-D class where they are learning to use the sewing machine

in order to create an Art Quilt.

First we spend a week learning to use the machine

and piece fabric together.

Then several more weeks are used to teach Fiber Artist Gwen Marston's Liberated technique

to build an Art Quilt.

( took a class from her years ago that was fabulous

 and it opened up my quilts to being so much more creative/freeform)

about 2000-2001

In the Liberated technique,

no patterns or templates are used.

You design as you go.

Here is lone 3-D 2nd year student,

senior Rachel Kannampuzha,

 at her sewing machine.

I provide the machines. 

I thrift, rescue and restore them so I have a full class set.

I even have 5 Featherweights if the kids want to sew on one of them.

I love to share those sweet machines with the kids.

They fall in love.

Or maybe it's love at first sight.

Hee hee

Here is Rachel's finished quilt.

She chose to do 3 very different landscapes and pulled them together with the floral fabric.

Most all the fabric is donated or thrifted,

and is washed and sorted into bags that flow visually together.

When I have more then one student we lottery the bags so all is fair,

I even get to pick one to use as my demo bag.

Last year with Rachel,

 I picked the handdyed bag 

but I got so busy I wasn't able to finish my demo.

Rachel was also taught to machine quilt her pieced top to batting and backside

as well as how to make a professional binding.

I want you to check out all the quilting she did in every section.

Wow!!!

She really enjoyed this learning experience 

as well as being able to design her own patterns and to work so freely.

I just enjoyed working with Rachel because she is such a great designer and craftswoman,

and she takes direction so beautifully.

You are missed very much this year Rachel.

Hoping you are enjoying your first year of college.

A close-up of the hand ties Rachel used in her border areas.

PUTTING DOWN ROOTS

2013 Alumni,

Julia Faith Chanco,

newly graduated with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Hospitality Management,

from the University of Nevada Las Vegas,

is ready to find a job and put down real roots in Vegas.

The Food & Beverage sector is her passion,

and with her bubbly personality she should have no problem finding the perfect position.

In the meantime she quilts.

She recently touched base with me and shared that since she's got some free time now,

she's pulled out her sewing machine and has pieced a quilt top for her mother.

Something she promised her mom 4 years ago.

Ha ha!

Directly above is the quilt she made in my Intermediate 3-D class in 2013,

and below is the new one she has begun for her mother.

It looks terrific Julia,

can't wait to post the finished work.

I'm so proud of you for so many reasons.

Congrats on your degree,

and congrats for keeping art in your life.

Julia also sent me this pix that I've never seen before.

The two of us noodling around on the last day of her senior year during her final with me.

Good Times at Whitney High!

I love you Julia Faith!

Come see me soon.

I need a hug

xoxoxxo

WISH FOR LOVE

STRAYS & BEASTS

MY DEMO PIECE

Always so very inspired by Jude Hill's work, 

by the many classes I've taken with her,

and by several pieces I've bought from her over the years,

all Strays & Beasts.

I just knew there was a stray inside of me.

So like I mentioned in yesterday's post,

I changed up the subject in my Liberated Quiltmaking assignment 

so that the kids focused on at least one Beast.

I had absolutely no idea how my stray would look,

if it was going to be a male or female, 

what colors I would use?

So how I started the kids and myself was to choose a donated bag of fabrics

(I have over 40 to choose from).

They are already partially organized by color schemes,

but there are always a few fabrics that don't belong visually,

so we get rid of those first.

I have no idea why I choose this bag,

it just appealed to me.

Kind of Xmas in Springtime I guess.

(Several of the fabrics backsides were used as well)

I had the kids start their beast by making a nine patch with no patterns,

just cut and sew.

They could fussy cut if they wanted to like I did for the birds in my stray.

Then I had them play around with shaping,

and needleturn under their beast shape down upon their foundation.

(I had no pieces large enough for my foundation so I randomly sewed several smaller pieces together,

you can see the seams below)

I saved the face for last cuz I was chicken,

always having a hard time committing.

But not my students, 

they jumped right in.

But I was inspired by Jude & the old necklace piece I found,

so I embroidered several wings,

and a few words,

thus Wish for Love.

Another Jude Hill trick to help the words pop 

was to whip black floss under the original gold stitches.

I braided some really nice barber poled cottons for the tail,

and also used them to make a few pompoms.

I like to save any frayed threads that hang from fabrics,

 especially when they come out of the dryer.

I used many of them in this piece,

coming out of the ears,

under the trees for ground,

and over the moon for atmosphere/cloud cover.

I also thrifted bits of lace, leaf edging & ribbon flowers for balance and interest.

I handquilted the piece in an off white thread which I felt tied it all together.

And for the backing I used a garage sale find,

and old linen calendar kitchen towel from 1985.

That was the year I was looking and wishing for love myself.

I was ready to settle down and have a family.

That was when I also decided to do the face,

 and it was going to be me.  :)

I dedicated this piece to Virginia Pooler,

our beloved Life Science teacher at Whitney and my dear friend.

If it wasn't for her talking me into going with her to get our Master's Degrees

(to raise us up on our teacher's pay scale)

I would have never met my ex husband,

Inars Agrums,

(the love I was wishing for)

and had my two incredible children.

Funny how it's all meant to be.

Gin Pooler is gone now,

but there isn't a day that goes by that I don't think of her,

and thank her for her persistence in getting me to tag along with her.

I also want to take this opportunity to thank both of Gin's children,

(who I had the pleasure of teaching the arts to back in the day at Whitney)

Brock Pooler and Erin Pooler Carpenter,

for their continued & dedicated service to our United States Military.

Both are high ranking officers,

 and their mother would have been so very proud of them.

I know I am.

On July 15th, 

this Friday,

I will be giving this quilt to my daughter for her 22nd Birthday.

And I'll probably make her read this post too,

I think both my children hate how I feature them on my blog,

too bad!!

 LOL

STRAYS & BEASTS

LIBERATED QUILTMAKING

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

scrap fabric, sewing machine & sewing notions

Every year I teach my 2nd year crafts kids to sew on the sewing machine.

They love this unit,

look forward to it,

and end up with a fabulous original art quilt.

And every couple of years I change up the subject matter on these quilts.

I also make a demo. quilt to show the kids all kinds of techniques on ,

so this year I selfishly changed it to Beasts/Strays ala my mentor Jude Hill

of  Spirit Cloth blog fame,

cuz I knew I wanted to make a beast too.

The Liberated Quilting technique comes from Gwen Marston,

whose work and classes I've also been following and taking for over 25 years now.

That means no patterns, 

no rulers,

just cut and sew.  

And in this way everyone makes no mistakes,

it's all good.

I'm so pleased to show off the hard work these kids put into there Strays!

Junior Jaqueline Yu's stray is made from a nine patch she sewed on the machine.

But in this assignment the kids were also required to learn how to needle turn applique,

so Jac appliqued her nine patch onto a base fabric in the shape of her beast.

All the fabrics used in these quilts have been donated to the students 

and it's up to each child to make sure the fabrics flow visually.

Jacqueline based her color scheme primarily on a complimentary yellow/purple scheme

 with some neutrals thrown in.

I like her off center design and how she balanced it with laces,

beads, cording and other goodies,

as well as those stacked fabrics in the upper right corner.

The kids also had to bring in some hand embroidery to the face,

and could hand or machine quilt to pull all 3 layers together.

I believe Jac did machine quilting.

Also required were at least 2 borders and a professional binding,

as well as an appliqued label on the back side.

These adorable strays belong to senior Kristine Luong.

She also chose an off center design and balanced it with the tree and moon.

She did some wonderfully expressive embroidery in the faces,

and I like the frayed fabric at the bottom of her strays. 

The buttons and laces she added are the perfect touch.

Kristine also machine quilted & did a bit of fussy cutting.

And this really fun last one belongs to junior Shreya Sheth.

She titled it Fight and Flight,

and it's oh so clever.

I wish I had a clearer pix of her quilt and the little guy below,

sorry Shreya!

I love that she turned her stray into a Super Hero,

and I also enjoy her complimentary color choices of Red & Greens with the neutrals

and the touch of yellow/golds.

Here is her label on the backside, and you can also see evidence of some handquilting.

And if that wasn't enough,

she wrote some words for the backside as well.

Bravo Shreya,

you really outdid yourself!

TAH DAH!!!

I finished something.

YES!

A demo. piece that I made alongside my Intermediate 3-D students.

When I teach this Liberated method I like to be one day ahead of my students, which forces me to actually finish something.

Sorry this second pix is so drained of color.

I demonstrated piecing, 

hand quilting, 

machine quilting and hand tying so the kids had choices in the finishing of their piece.

I also showed them a Log Cabin,

Star,

Strip Piecing, 

Bordering and Binding.

Again, 

many choices.

The backside,

complete with label.

I

I posted the students finished quilts last week.

Scroll down or click here to see their finished pieces.

FREE FALLING

LIBERATED QUILTMAKING

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

cotton fabrics, sewing machines, matt & cutters, sewing supplies

Making a Liberated Quilt involves the use of a sewing machine, 

so we send a week learning how to use one.

Then we lottery off recycled bags of donated fabrics and get started.

However this year,

senior Kaili Hamada choose to rust dye all her fabrics which has totally inspired me for next years group of kids.

What that means is that she has gotten white cotton fabric from me, 

cut it into pieces,

wrapped rusty objects inside and bound it together, 

then dyed it with Rit Dyes.

Here is beautiful, athletic and graceful Kaili 

 pin basting her front, back and batting together.

And below is her finished quilt.

She has based her design on a Log Cabin pattern and used the Liberated Method I learned from Gwen Marston years ago for a more improvisational look.

Liberated constitutes not necessarily cutting straight lines or sewing perfect seams. 

So that no two quilts done with the same pattern will look the same.

Which is what I strive for with my students.

Below is Kaili's label on the back side of her piece.

Clever title  :)

Next we have the sweetest of all hearts,

 senior Daphne Chiang.

Daphne has chosen the most adorable bag of fabrics with kitties and yarn balls, bubbles, flowers,

and all the things she loves.

If you look super close you will see that Daphne has embroidered the letters D-R-E-A-M in the centers of each of her Log Cabin blocks.

Love it!

And below her label.

And our last beauty belongs to the charming, witty, and entertaining senior Bianca Tolentino.

Notice that each of these young women have interpreted the Log Cabin pattern in a completely unique way.

Also notice the beautiful machine quilted lines running thru their designs 

locking all three layers together.

Also check out the the thin binding edges.

These took hours of invisible stitching by hand to get them in place.

Remarkable quilts ladies,

I'm so proud to show off your work!

The Laarnie and Reis Show

INTERMEDIATE 3-D ART

LIBERATED QUILTMAKING

featuring juniors Laarnie Barcelon and Reis Misaka

In the Intermediate class the students learn how to use a sewing machine, then go onto making an Art Quilt.  We use Professional Quiltmaker Gwen Marston's book "Liberated Quiltmaking" to work from which basically means using no templates, just free form cutting our edges.  This year we also worked out of Professional Quiltmaker Ricky Tims book "Convergence Quiltmaking".  

As always the quilts turned out delightful, creative and so unique.

First I'd like to show off Reis' extraordinary piece with his design based on Japanese calendar cards that he brought in to reference. 

He handstitched one for each month of the year, and then appliqued them to his liberated foundation.  

Talk about focused and time consuming. 

Here is a close-up below so you can see his attention to detail.

Truly amazing!

Laarnie was really inspired by Ricky Tim's work which is also based on free form cutting, but also on optical illusions.   If you look closely you will see a lot of tricky woven strips running thru the center area. 

Both kids worked from donated fabrics that they had to color co-ordinate for visual flow.

They also learned to machine quilt thru all 3 layers, and to applique a signed and dated label to the backside.

The final step being learning how to make and put on a binding edge, just like the pros.

Fantastic job you two! 

What To Do?

With these lovely striped fabrics that were donated.  I've sewn them together in a pleasing arrangement, but they are so similar that I think I will make two separate quilts rather then combine them.  

I've got Ricky Tims' book on Convergence Quiltmaking where he keeps slicing and reassembling.

Perhaps.  A fun exercise I'm looking forward to.

Any other ideas??

Liberated Quiltmaking - Student Work

This first quilt was made by senior Amy Hsu, and was one of my favs.  Really well balanced with great contrast, and strong bordering.

I posted the other night about my Liberated Quilt that I made for our retiring secretary Kay.  Well these are the pieces that my Intermediate 3-D  kids made with me.

First we started with a lottery of about 50 bags of donated fabrics that I had pre-washed and organized into color schemes.  I only had 7 students in this class so they really had a lot of bags to choose from.  After they selected their bags I asked them to pull out any fabrics that they didn't like or didn't feel flowed visually with the others.  Then they were allowed to find additional fabrics from other donated bins, again, that they felt worked with the existing bag.  The last step was to sort all the fabrics from lights to darks to make sure they had a good value range to choose from for contrast.

Keep in mind that this is the first time these kids have used a sewing machine, so we spent 5 days learning how to use them, and in the process they produced one star, one piece of striped piecing of about 10 different fabrics from their bags, and two flying geese that they sewed together.  No patterns were used, we just eye-balled the sizes and free-form cut, thus a highly liberated technique.  This takes the pressure off the kids so that they can go way faster, and not feel that everything needs to line up perfectly.       

This next quilt was done by senior Ashley Chowdhury, and if you knew Ashley you'd say that these fabrics are sooo Ashley  :)  This colorway (bag) is also the one my own daughter would have picked out.  These are the colors we decorated her dorm room in last school year.

I loved Ashley's label that I made each of the kids put on the backside of their quilts.  They also had to show me that they could do a bit of needle-turn applique.  Ashley did it with her sweet little heart.

These next two pieces came from very similar bags, but the designs couldn't have been more different which is something I stress in all my classes, originality!

The top one was done by junior Josh Berger, the young man who redesigned my blog.  I think it was brilliant of him to put in the black and white flying geese to border his star.  Really wonderful piece Josh! 

This next one by senior Tiffany Lee really draws the eye with all the fun bugs crawling around.  And then I love how she fringed the edge of her label fabric to add texture to the backside.

Now we have a very soft, feminine quilt by senior Angela Wan.  And if you know Angela, again this bag she picked is so her.  But then notice those 4 bits of the brighter yellow that bring strength to the piece, making a bolder statement.  That's Angela, quiet, reserved but with a strong, smart inner core.  Love ya kiddo.  

Senior Lauren DeBalen gives us this very rich feeling work, with great contrast to really show off her design.

And then we have senior Julia Faith Chanco who pleaded with me and talked me into letting her do a full twin size bed quilt (the kids had a minimum and maximum size to work to, but young Julia is very persuasive  LOL)

It was so big in fact, that it took 3 of us 2 hours after school on the floor to pin baste the thing together.  Julia talked her boyfriend, senior Andre' Martin into helping out  :)  We had so much fun crawling on the floor together, taking pix, and gossiping about all the other seniors.

These are two closer views of the interior front of Julia's quilt.  I also taught the kids about fussy-cutting.

The back of her quilt, and her sweet label.

A big Tah-Dah!

And finally getting to cuddle in her finished piece!

What a cutie!