5 Day Quilt Challenge - Professional & Student Work

After seeing Leilani Pierson's February/March 2010 article in Quilting Arts Magazine titled "A 5-Day Quilt Challenge, Creating Art on A Whim", I knew I wanted to try out this project with my Advanced 3-d students.  I contacted Leilani and actually bought her piece (above & below) so that I could have an amazing example to share with my students.  I also purchased another gorgeous piece by fiber artist Melissa Cornish which I will be showcasing tomorrow. 

I also got in contact with a fiber artist who participated in the challenge and had her piece published alongside Leilani's, Wanda Stivison (above and below).  I adore both Wanda and Leilani's work, the attention to detail is truly amazing.

On more challenging projects such as this I always like to try them out first, either myself over the summer or one of my 4th year very advanced students.  So I gave this challenge to senior Ashley Morris 2 years ago to see what she could do with it and off she went.

Above and below are Day 1 and Day 2, first applying color to the fabric piece, then quilting the colored fabric to felt or batting.  Unfortunately this is as far as Ashley got because she accidentally lost her work.

So skip to this last year where I presented the assignment to my 3rd year Advanced 3-D girls.  The photo above represents day 3 where you cut your quilt piece into at least 6 separate pieces.  Above we have senior Angeline Tran's work and below is senior Olivia Hill.  You can see how Angeline made mostly diagonal cuts whereas Olivia cut curves and diagonals.  And then Olivia shows Day 4 where you sew the cut pieces back up again is a different configuration, and then begin adding lots of hand and machine embellishments.

This is Day 5 and Angeline's finished work.  On Day 5 you fold, bend, tuck, and mold the piece into a 3-d vessel.  The coolest part was that I never showed the girls the entire finished pieces, only little parts of them at a time, so they really didn't know where I was taking them till day 5.  What a fun adventure it was.  Definitely worth repeating this year.

Here is Olivia's finished piece, check out all her fine details.

And lastly we have senior Breeana Johng's vessel.  So delicate and beautiful, just like Breeana.

EXTRA CREDIT: on a multi colored piece of paper (yes you can make the paper multi colored by using crayons, markers, collage and such) cut out an asymmetrical geometric or organic shape.  Yes, it must be asymmetrical!  Then fold, tuck, wrap, bend and mold the piece of paper into a 3-d vessel like the girls did above.  When you have a pleasing form glue, or stitch (or however you can think of) to hold the vessel's  form.  The most creative, interesting solution will win 5 extra credit points.  For participating you will earn 2 extra credit points.  You have until Monday at the beginning of class to turn this in.  Have fun!

Metal/Canvas Journals - Student Work

Inspired by felt artist Gail Perrone of Catfish Studio, and her wonderful work, I bought one of her metal/felt/canvas journals and showed it to my Intermediate 3-D students, and they were excited to try out her techniques.  The fun began when I bought them metal re bar from Home Depot and they cut and twisted the ends into interesting shapes and used an anvil and hammered those shapes flat.

Here we have junior Nandi Best's front and back covers.  She really outdid herself on this project, spending so much extra time on so many incredible details.  Notice the left side to see how she bound the book with a a hand spun and hand knit spine.  Amazing child!

They then built their frame structures by lashing the pieces together for the front and back covers of the book.

Below is a peek at one of Nandi's many pages.  Look closely at the handwoven door that opens on the page on the left.

Then they did more decorative work on the inside of the frame with the re bar to stabilize it.  They went all out decorating the fronts and backs with handmade felt pieces, painted canvas, beads, buttons, yarns you name it!

They had all kinds of requirements for the front and back covers.

Here is senior Abby Ilagan's front cover and one of my favorite pages from her book.

And then more requirements for the pages inside.  They had to bring in text, hand stitching, machine stitching, watered down acrylic washes, pictures and eyelet findings.

As well as sewing down pieces of clear vinyl to slip photos in.

Junior Kelsea Lee also spent a lot of time sewing on lots of fabulous embellishments both on her covers as well as her pages.

The results were fantastic, and I believe the kids really enjoyed how expressive this assignment became.

These are two pages from Kelsea's journal.  Very clever girl with terrific designs.

One more page from Kelsea's book below.  Love your work Kelsea!

Senior Florence Buendia worked to the theme Bucket List, and had many incredible pages.  Here is one below.  As you can see these kids put so much thought into their work.

Senior Jessica Jay went all out on her cover doing so many cool layering techniques.  A close up below.

And her back cover below.  Lovely Jessica!

I want to end with one of my favorite seniors, (yeah, I know I'm not supposed to have favorites LOL) she knows she has a special place in my heart, Brittaney Lee.  This young woman had so many illness this last year connected with her allergies, and was probably absent more then she was at school, and when she was able to come to school she was so sick, but she never complained or made excuses, she still managed to turn in every one of her assignments and keep up with the rest of the class.  And on top of that, what a terrific designer she was.  Hope this summer found you in better health kiddo. 

A close up below. 

Audrey Pulido - Fused Applique - Student Art

So let's see what 3rd year 3-d art student Audrey Pulido is up to lately. She just finished her latest assignment, a fused applique quilt done with all her own hand dyed and hand printed fabrics.

She tried two hand dying techniques. In this first one she loaded a tub with an inch of shaving creme and dribbled some transparent fabric dyes on top. Then she took a comb and racked in several directions.

A close up when she was satisfied.

Another technique that she tried was to lay a piece of white cotton fabric on a large piece of plastic covered foam core board, spray the fabric with water then brush and splatter on transparent dyes. While still wet she sprinkled some areas with coarse salt, laid down buttons and charms as well as leaves. Basically anything that would lay flat on the fabric. Then she put it in the sun for several hours to set. At the end of the day she was to remove all the objects and salt and wherever something sat it resisted the dye and turned back to white. However, I'm sorry I don't have a photo to show you, our custodian accidentally thought her project sitting all day on the grass was trash and he threw it away, and before we could retrieve it the garbage truck had hauled it away. That was a hard pill for the both of us to shallow. Oh well! That's the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. A lesson learned, the next time we put a big sign on it. So you guessed it, the next day she did it all over again. But before I could get a picture of it she had already cut it up and printed images over it. She's fast!

The shot above shows the piece after she fused everything down but before she did her quilting, and below is a close up of her quilted piece. She used several techniques: some free motion, some embroidery (see chain stitch around the couple) and some zigzagging. My favorite parts in the piece were the images she found of Paris that she printed onto her dyed fabrics.

Fantastic Job Audrey, and way to hang in there and overcome and conquer life's little disappointments.

Metal/Canvas Journals - Student Work

Inspired by felt artist Gail Perrone (http://www.catfishstudiofelt.com/) I tried this new project with my Intermediate 3-D students. Earlier in the blog I posted Gail's work along with my students work as they were getting going on this. These are a group shot of a few of the finished pieces. The kids told me this was one of their favorite assignments all year. Wish I would have had the time to make one with them. From top to bottom, left to right: junior Audrey Pulido, 8th graders Joanna Coronell and Emmerline Kim, and senior Rikaya Obilo. Really amazing work ladies.

One of my favorites was senior Rikaya Obilo's journal. She even attached a book marker and a built-in closure. Love her color scheme and her use of embellishments and text.

A close-up of sophomore Breeana Johng's journal that she has turned into a scrapbook of her year in cheerleading with her friends. Such beautiful work!

Both back and front side of junior Audrey Pulido's journal. She put in so much extra time into her piece, and it really shows!

Senior Caroline Ma's amazing journal. She is such a talented designer and craftswoman.

The first page of Caroline's book

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!

Fiesta Ornament Duo

This summer I was inspired by an article on paper quilts in Quilting Arts or Cloth Paper Scissors Magazine (can't remember which one) which featured the work of Chicago artist, Judy Coates Perez. When I visited her site http://www.judyperez.blogspot.com/ I saw these delightful fiesta ornaments. They were actually featured in the 2008 gift issue of Quilting Arts. So anyways I tried making a couple of these handpainted ornaments this summer thinking they'd be a great new assignmnet for my 3rd year 3-D students. But instead of doing them as individual ornaments I wanted to mount them side by side with copper mesh under them before I hand appliqued them to the quilted batting as I had seen Judy do in her site. I love teaching units that incoprpoate at least 2 to 3 different media. In these we would be using metal, textile paints, pearle cotton threads and fabric. Well, I never finished my sample, but hopefully I will soon cuz I'm really enjoying how it's working out. The saddest part of all is that I didn't get any 3rd year kids back this year because the ones who wanted the class couldn't fit it into their schedules. Oh well, there is always next year!