INSPIRED

About 6 or so years ago I found textile artist Deborah Lacativa 

and fell in love with her and her work.

I wrote to her to introduce myself and told her about my young 3-D students.

She graciously sent me a box of her delightful hand dyed linen pieces

that I gave to my students to work with.

From each of those pieces I cut a small piece for myself to stitch with alongside my young ones.

Of course my students finished their pieces 

but it wasn't until this summer that I finally finished mine.

I was tremendously moved and inspired by her art pieces at the time,

so Deb,

this is what I came up with.

Thank you for sharing with us,

and letting me learn from you.

And I dedicate this to you and your generosity.

I don't know about all you stitchers out there,

but I carry my work with me wherever I go.

I have with me at all times at least 3-4 bags with different ongoing projects

that I toss onto the floorboard of my car.

They get accidently stepped on,

spilled on,

tossed into the backseat when I travel with a passenger,

generally abused to the max.

The bag that held this baby traveled in both my car & mountain jeep

for the past 5 years until I finally finished it this summer.

It went in with me every time my hubby and I went into Denny's for breakfast/dinner

(once a week).

So over the years I was working on it, 

water spilled on it or it picked up condensation from my water glass on the table,

and some of the fabrics bled a bit on the white linen backdrop

(see the turquoise piece above, and some of the pinks below).

But I felt it added to the look of the piece and kind of tied everything together.

It was this summer that I used the Kantha stitch to quilt 

(in the white areas only)

the finished piece to the light turquoise border.

I used a slightly off white #12 perle cotton thread.

Then I put it in the washing machine on my most gentle cycle and laundered it

(cuz it was pretty filthy after all those years of working on it)

It did a bit of shrinking and fraying which I really liked,

and I received the nicest compliment from my harshest critic,

 my daughter.

 She thought it was pretty cool.

Oh yeah!

I'll have to mount it now for wall hanging.

Hope I can get it done by Xmas for my girlie.

ALUMNI ART

BORAH LIM

I just adore when my ex art students stay in touch 

and let me know they are still using their art skills in their lives.

Especially when they aren't majoring in art,

just keeping it in their lives because it makes them feel good.

YES!!!

As is the case with Alumni Borah Lim,

Class of 2012.

Borah is in her senior year at Williams College in Williamstown , Mass.

It is a small, highly selective liberal arts college

where Borah is majoring in Biology.

Currently,
 Borah is taking a quiltmaking class for winter studies

(a special January term period between their fall and spring semester)

where she is working on different kinds of quilt patterns.

She recently sent me these two pictures of two of the patterns she is learning:

a pieced cube and an applique heart in yummy Batik fabric tones.

And then today she sent me pictures of two of her almost finished pieces.

This gorgeous sampler above,

and below an Irish Chain.

Bravo Borah!!!

So very proud and pleased that you are using your many gifts.

These quilts are beautiful!

To see more of Borah's work when she was here at Whitney, 

simply put her name in the blog search engine .

The Magic Feather Project

Professional Fiber Artist Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth fame is getting close to finishing her Magic Feather Cloth.

Her goal was to collect 1000 embroidered feathers from her blog viewers to make a quilt from.  

So 3 school years ago (2011-2012), I offered up Extra Credit to my 3-D students to see if anyone wanted to participate.  I believe we sent her at least 8-9 feathers including mine which if you look closely you might be able to find.  Click here to see the original feathers we sent and the student artists names.  

 

After 3 years it's really exciting to see this piece coming along as beautifully as it is with many of our feathers gathered together.

You inspire us Jude everyday here at Whitney High School's Textile Dept.

We love you! 

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! 

Shop Update - My Work

I'm finally feeling able to part with my very first quilt, so into my Shop it goes.  Not a machine stitch anywhere, completely hand stitched and quilted.  Hoping I can find a loving home for it  :)  This was made in 1983-84.

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!

Ragamuffin Scrap Animals - My Work

Currently I'm enrolled in at least half a dozen different online art classes.  This work is step one in Carla Sonheim's Ragamuffin Scrap Animal class and I'm really having fun with it.  This is a new way to use up lots of your smaller pieces of scrap fabric.  She had us lay them out in a pleasing way with lots of overlapping, then stitch them down onto a piece of muslin.    

 I used my one of my favorite sewing machines that has a lot of different stitches to choose from and went to town as you can see above and below.

Next I will use this piece to put together a whimsical creature  :)

A New Feature - ARTIST OF THE MONTH

As I continue to tweak my blog and update the look of it, I'm going to be slowly adding some new features.  I want to start with a teaching tool for my students called 'Featured Artist of the Month'.  As a teacher I'm always on the lookout for new inspiration whether it be from workshops I take, artists I meet, blogs I find, and I really enjoy sharing these new finds with my art students.  So I've decided to put in this new page for all to enjoy.

Currently I'm enrolled in the most wonderful online stitching class with Jude Hill that includes talented fiber artists from around the globe.  Many of the artists in the class have blogs, so I've been doing a lot of exploring within their sites.  As a result, I've found many artist's works that I want to share with my 3-D art classes.

I've taught my 3-D kids to work in most all the fiber arts; stitching, felting, dyeing, spinning, weaving, and quilting, and to really appreciate the time involved in their creation.  We just recently finished units in quiltmaking, both liberated and folk art, so I thought the perfect artist to start with is Kristin Shields from Oregon.

So click above on 'Featured Artist of the Month' and enjoy.

Metal/Canvas Journals - Gail Perrone

I recently purchased this fabulous journal from fiber artist Gail Perrone (http://www.catfishfeltstudio.com/), and with her permission I'm having my Intermediate 3-D students make one for their current assignment. The kids are loving the assignment, especially working with the rebar from home depot; heating it with a torch to soften the metal so that they can then pound and flatten out the ends on an anvil for a more decorative look. In the third photo below Gail's book are a few of the pieces in progress. The close up belongs to senior Caroline Ma, and then in the 4th shot from top to bottom, left to right are: senior Joanna Han, sophmore Breeana Johng, senior Rikaya Obilo, 8th grader Emmerline Kim, senior Julie Kim, senior Annie Kim, and senior Caroline Ma. Can't wait to post the finished journals!