Heading to Boston

We are heading to Boston tomorrow to see our daughter and her boyfriend. Boy are we going to have a car full of stuff…food, gifts, quilts. I am giving her 4 quilts. Three to hang on her walls and one to put on her bed. Here are the wall quilts…”Gossip Central,” “Nothing is Ever as it Seems,” and “Time Zones.”

 

I am also giving her a queen sized double wedding ring quilt that I made years ago (long before art quilting) and never used. She was pretty young when I made it and she always loved it. It is hand quilted and took about 1000 hours from beginning to end. She said she wanted it when she got married. I decided to give it to her now. It is called “Wedding Rings and White Roses.” I wore white roses in my hair when I was married. I remember her saying that the back of the quilt looked like a white on white quilt. I won Viewer’s Choice at a quilt show with this quilt.

I am thrilled that she still loves the quilt.

Thanks for reading. Now I have to pack.

Chris

Evaluation of the master class

• THE GOOD
• Overall I thought the year long master class with EB was a great class and very worthwhile for me to take. I think my quilts are much better as a result of taking it.
• I thought the exercises were all worth doing. I thought rhythm was a good idea, but a little hokey to be doing it to a particular song. I was in the minority with this opinion.
• The format of the class was good. I liked sending sketches, getting feedback, sending blocked quilt, getting feedback, and then finished quilt and getting final feedback. Although a slightly longer time frame might have been nice. (Maybe 1 1/2 months for each lesson instead of a month.)  Apparently I was in the minority here as most students thought a month was just fine. I am thinking that they do not work outside the home. My teaching job does allow me more time than most jobs to do art, but not working at all would have been better.

 

THE NOT AS GOOD

Sometimes feedback was not clear and easy for me to understand. I did have to ask a friend to help me figure it out sometimes. There were times that EB said the sketch was good and then saw something wrong when the quilt was blocked out from the sketch. March is a good example of that. The sketch is on the left and the blocked quilt is on the right. She never said anything about the angle of the diagonal on the right hand side being off until it was blocked out. Not sure why. Maybe it could not be seen until then?  Although I think the angle is pretty obvious in the sketch.

 

At least this was an easy fix. Some problems not caught on the sketch would not be as easy to adjust. The finished and adjusted quilt has the angle of that diagonal fixed.

There were other students that I noticed that she praised the sketch and then criticized something that should have been noticed in the sketch when it was blocked out.

This was not something that was a frequent occurrence, but it did happen.

 

 

 

IMPROVEMENTS

Feedback on the actual quilting design would have been nice to have been discussed. I think the quilting is a big part of the design and should be thought about just as much as the balance, values, fabrics, etc. I know that quilting will not save a bad design, but I also feel that quilting could ruin a good one. At the blocked stage maybe the student should mention how they plan on quilting it.

E did make some comments about quilting after the quilt was done, but at that point it is a little late. She did like the quilting I did of the stones in my “Spiritual Sanctuary” quilt shown at the top of the blog. But if she did not like the quilting it would have been too late to adjust it.

The students in the class did not really participate other than submitting their own work. Rarely were comments made by the students. I don’t know how you change that.

I think it would have been fun for E to have posted the entire body of work by each student at the end of the year. That would have been nice to have seen. During the class we are anonymous. I wish we had used our names, but most students did not want that.

Sometimes students did not really follow the lesson. E did hint at times that this was happening. I don’t know how you control that aspect of human behavior.

WOULD I TAKE ANOTHER MASTER CLASS?

Yes I think I would like to take another class, but with a different teacher. Someone suggested Lisa Call’s classes. Anyone else have a suggestion? At this point I am going to take a break from online classes and do some mindless sewing after the holidays and make some bed quilts. Eventually I will work on my canal houses. My husband keeps asking about that one.

 

Thanks for reading.

Linking to Off the Wall Friday.

Chris

This year’s master class

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

Another ornament done

I have been making my daughter an ornament every year since she was born back in 1989. I have never missed a year and have always had it done and on the tree before Christmas. I thought it might be fun to put all of them in one blog.  You will have to wait till the end to see the one I made this year.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Unless you are a South Park TV show fan you are not going to like this year’s ornament. It is Mr, Hankey, the Christmas Poo. My daughter will crack up when she sees it, but I am sure most folks will wonder about our sense of humor.  I think next year I will have to make Cartman from the show.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What a collection of ornaments! I am really proud that I started and continued this tradition for her. She is one lucky girl. So I have made bears, dogs, cats, mice, Raggedy Ann and Andy, characters from Nightmare Before Christmas, fortune cookies, the Eiffel Tower, and poop!  Initially I used published patterns, but eventually I created my own patterns. 

Thanks for reading and hopefully I did not bum you out too much with the current ornament,

Chris