This has been a busy and productive year in my master class. We had to do a self evaluation of skills that we improved this year or acquired for the first time as well as our main weakness as an art quilter.
New skills
· Learned to face a quilt.
· Made a series with 4 of the quilts.
· Got better at composition by not creating a photo exactly, rearranging the elements better, and editing out what is not needed. I saw this as the year progressed. Back in January and February EB hated all of my sketches. By the time I got to March things had improved and she no longer hated my sketches. Also I was looking at my 10 quilts and they look pretty good. Yes I made 10 quilts this year. That alone is an accomplishment!
Improving old skills
· Improved my problem solving skills. A good example of that would be when I created the bagpiper in the fog in May. I had to figure out how to accomplish that in fabric. Or how to create the fabrics for the tumbling blocks quilt in November.
· Got better at picking a color scheme and getting the values right. I saw this as the year went along and EB no longer had me changing anything after the quilt was blocked out.
Biggest Weakness
Lack of self confidence. This manifests itself in several areas.
· First, I am not sure I am doing anything unique or making great compositions. This really hits home when no one comments about your work. This happened back in June in this class and also on my blog. These are things that I should not let bother me, but sometimes they do.
· Second, I still struggle with fabric choices. I have gotten better during this class, but just when I thought I finally put this issue to rest I had a major meltdown with my birds on a wire quilt back in July.
· Third is the frustration I feel when I finish a quilt and I see the little things technically that I should have done better. This would be things like not seeing that one of the trees should have been a little straighter in the fog quilt. Just little things…. frustrated because I should have seen these things sooner and fixed them. Of course none of these issues will stop me from continuing to make quilts and there was improvement during this class.
So here are the quilts starting with the most recent.
“Nothing is Ever as it Seems” (November) showing the back with the label.
“Blown Opportunity” (October)
“It’s Rigged” (September)
“A New Dawn?” (August)
“Gossip Central” (July)
“Spiritual Sanctuary” (May)
“Misty Morning Piper” (April)
“Between the Shadows” (March)
“Gathering Storm” (February)
“Paris Rooftops” (January)
Thanks for reading and commenting. My next blog will be my evaluation of the master class itself.
Linking to Off the Wall Friday. http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/
Chris