Student Work

Perhaps this is the photo I should have wished you a Happy New Year with!!  Doesn't it look like fireworks, an explosion, a celebration?  It was made by Maria, who took my "Serendipity Strips and Curves" class at Haliburton School of the Arts last summer.  Just before I left for Christmas holidays to visit family I received a lovely email from Maria, thanking me for the class and telling me how much she enjoyed the class and the Haliburton experience.  Along with the email came photos of all the works she had completed since. I think it was just about the nicest Christmas present I received

This is a pretty fast-paced class as we learn a new method of free-hand cutting and piecing each of the 5 days and then have the rest of the day to cut and sew.  Students seemed to love it and the teaching evaluations certainly reflect that. 

Here are more of Maria's wonderful works.  These are my kinda colours!

Yesterday I received an email from Kathleen, who also took the same class last summer.  She just finished one of her pieces, called "One November Day".  She arranged her free-hand cut blocks in a sort of barn-raising setting, with an irregular edge.  It absolutely screams of rocks and wood and blowing leaves, and of course November!

Pat took my Liberated Strip Piecing class in St. John's, Newfoundland, last winter, and produced this fun quilt, which somehow warms me with its tropical colours on a very cold Ottawa day. An interesting bit of information is that it now hangs in her daughter's home back here in Ottawa!  I still have very fond memories of how well I was treated by the ladies (and often their husbands) in St. John's.  I'm so glad I decided to go, I was in awful shape before I left, and returned in a wheelchair due to the painful inflammation in my knee from arthritis. I've come a long way!

Linda Mariani of Toronto sends this dramatic version of my autumn tree pattern.  Bare branches and the striated grey background remind me of winter trees on barren fields covered in snow and ice.

Last, but certainly not least, come some photos from my Uncommon and Unforgettable Threads class at Dragonfly Fabrics here in Ottawa.  A repeat of this five day class starts again Friday, February 8.  We had a waiting list after registration for the first series, and now that we are repeating it, we have a couple of vacant spots left.  

Here are Rosemary's stunning thread-sketched patio chairs!  I love that she varied the colours from what they were in the original photo.

Rosemary has also added her thread painted bottlefly to a sunflower quilt.

Mary Lynn finished this thread-sketched leaf.  This could be used as is, or cut out and appliqued to another background.

Love this little bee that Rosemary did, very much like a pencil sketch.

Anne was working on thread-painting some butterflies to be added to a patchwork quilt.

Alice's thread-painted orange is so convincing I can almost taste it!

Rosemary's stash of hand-dyed threads (dyed in this class) kept capturing my attention!

In the last class we learned some hand-stitches so that students can use the luscious threads they dyed.  When I first started dyeing thread ten years ago, my intention was to use it for machine quilting, couching and bobbin work.  Ten years later, I really want to use it for handwork and try to combine some of that with my machine quilting.

Check out Josée's work.  She didn't want to use up her precious hand-dyed threads on a practice sampler, so she brought this variegated thread.  You just never can tell the effect until you try it, and this one was gorgeous.  Check out that spiderweb motif, which looks a bit like a mariner's compass!

I love how organized some of my students are.  Alice created a sampler with all the stitches and wrote the names on so she wouldn't forget.  How I wish I had done this so many times in my life!  But alas I am the "seat of my pants" type.

She tried a variety of threads, including this commercial one which so captivated me because it reminded me of peppermints or candy canes because of the way the red/green stripes run along the stitch. This simple little stitch, called the scattered seed stitch, is still one of my favorites!

I'm sure there were more wonderful samples.  Mary's Italian door comes to mind but I can't seem to find a photo.  Sometimes there is so much going on in a class that I can't focus on all of it.

Today I'm prepping for tomorrow's class, and getting into the dungeon, er I mean dye studio!  HA!

Have a great weekend.  I'll announce the winner of the blog give-away later on Saturday.