An Inspiring Week of Serendipity at Haliburton School of the Arts

Any time you see photos of deer on my blog, you can pretty much assume I've been teaching at the Haliburton School of the Arts. Last week's class was Serendipity Strips and Curves. The class is about cutting and piecing free-hand without rulers or measurements. It is intended to get students comfortable with free-form and liberated methods of construction, and introduce them to a variety of ways of constructing and designing free-hand.

We started by cutting curves free-hand. This one is Lynne's finished work.

We moved on to cutting curved blocks free-hand, and then designing with them. Once you get a stack of these blocks made you won't get any sleep because the design possibilities are endless. I encouraged Korleen to cut her blocks rectangular instead of square. I like the result.

Libby delved into her hand-dyed fabrics (from last Fall's "Dyeing to Quilt" class), as well as batiks and hand-painted fabrics to turn out this diagonal design.

Bill decided to work with his Tanzanian batiks, and add a few surprise turns into the design.

Tuesday night was the faculty reception at Rail's End Gallery. Each Tuesday night during the Summer School, there is a reception at the Gallery so students can meet instructors. All instructors are encouraged to submit a work for the show. This year I sent "Invitation".

 

 The class really got creative learning how to build free-form curves on a muslin foundation. 

Lynne: 

Liz: 

Korleen:

Susan:

This was a piece I started demo'ing on, and then finished to submit for the art auction on August 7. Proceeds from the auction go to student scholarships. This would be "Femmes FATales 4"

Students learned a method of free-form strip piecing, and how to design and construct with it. Bill started the wonderful trend of hanging these works on the classroom window. They glowed like stained glass!

Bill's window on left, Lynne's on right.

Libby's finished piece

I want to call Susan's piece "Shards"

Holly:

Liz's piece is reminiscent of chocolate, butterscotch and sherbet!

Each day I provided a demo, and then the class sewed and designed all day. Some chose to sew in the evening as well!

Here's the group shot. Back row, L to R, Libby, Lynne, Holly, Bill, Sherri, Susan, and Korleen. Front row, L to R, me, Liz, and Sheila. About half of the students were return students.

The last assignment was to form a radial design with free-hand cutting and sewing.

This lovely spring palette was created by Liz.

Lynne managed to finish hers.

 Sheila successfully combined the two halves of her radial design with the strip-pieced design from the previous day.

I realize now that I missed taking photos of some works that were not prominently displayed.

It is always wonderful to spend a week with such an inspiring and adventurous group of students! I am back home now with some catching up to do in the next two weeks before I head off to teach in the Okanagan Valley.