JUNK JOURNALING

 I watched a free workshop put on by Creative Bug with Jennifer Perkins and how she makes Junk Journals.  She made it fun and easy.

Today I made the cover from a cardboard cracker box.  I glued some fabric onto the front, reinforced the spine and put it under some weight to dry.  Then I started gathering paper for the signatures.  I had gelli prints, papers from the recycle bins, card stock, old watercolor papers, some with paintings, paper bags and stuff.  

I cut them to size and made four signatures and quit for the night.

COGS WORKSHOP

 I got out to the studio early, 7am, to attend a Jenny Haynes Cogs Workshop through the Sew Squad.  

Jenny is so good about sharing all her tips and tricks.  This workshop was about Freezer Paper Piecing.  

Here's what I had made by the end of the day:

WORKSHOP WITH MARIA

 I attended the zoom workshop called "Half Circles with Lines" with Maria Shell this morning.  It was a fast and furious workshop with lots of information and advice. I used her method and cut my pieces without using a ruler.

I will be watching the replay in order to absorb all it.  Fascinating!

FRAMPTON-COOPER WORKSHOP

 Today I attended a zoom workshop with Sheila Frampton Cooper from 9am to 3:30pm.  It was about Appli-Piecing.  

What the back looks like

My finished project

DAY TWO OF 4-PATCHES

 Day Two of the 4-Patch Workshop with Tara Faughnan.  We talked about how to put the whole thing together, among other things.  It was fun seeing everyone else's projects.  They were all very good.  It always make me feel like mine's not.  I started having second thoughts.  Mine is the only one with a dark background.

Anyway, I started fussing with it.  But, it got late, and I ended with it like this.  I don't think I like it any better than it was before I fussed with it.

Unfortunately I think I'm going to have to take it down and put it away.  I need to work on this month's UFO project because I'm very busy and I need to get onto it as soon as possible or I'll not be able to finish it.

Before the workshop started, I did manage to get week #17 of Playcation 2022 made.  

FOUR-PATCH WORKSHOP

 I attended a Four-Patch zoom workshop with Tara Faughnan this afternoon.  I hadn't done any of the prep work.  I haven't been feeling well and I was uninspired to make a Four-Patch.

But, Tara is so passionate and inspiring.  I went ahead at the end of workshop and picked some colors and cut some strips.  I was excited when she said she loved my picks - until I realized she had said that to everyone!

I'll start making 4-patches tomorrow.  She suggested that if I want to make a dark background, I should put up some black fabric on my design wall.  Great idea!

WEDGE CURVES DAY TWO

Here's how it looked at the end of day two.  Still lots to do.

I'm not to sure about some of that stuff on the bottom right.  And I'm conflicted about how much more blue/teal I should add.  

I'll sleep on it.

I can't believe that the more fabric I use on the project, the bigger the pile I take them from gets.  How does that happen?

 

WEDGE CURVES DAY ONE

 Took a workshop with Sherri Lynn Wood today on Improv Wedge Curves.  Here's what I made:

The plan is to add them to the half done project from my last workshop.  So, I put up the the pieces of that up on the wall and added these new pieces.  I need more.

PIECED RIBBONS

 Yesterday and today I attended the Pieced Ribbons zoom workshop with Sarah Bond @slbphilly.  I'm using the strip sets I've been making all week and making more with smaller strips.

POSTCARD CLASS

 I took a zoom workshop with Sarah Ruiz today on how to make quilted postcards.

It was a great three hours spent.

I made two today.  I can make more now.

Made from leftovers on my table from the strip sets.

Made from more leftovers and a few pieces from scrap bucket.

FIRST DAY OF RHYTHM WORKSHOP

 The workshop, Building Rhythmic Structures with Sherri Lynn Wood, started with an introduction to Eliza Hardy Jones, a musician and quilter.  She talked about her quilts, showed us pictures and explained how she made them based on music and song and rhythm.

Afterwards, Sherri led us through some exercises and we worked on making different rhythmic structures.

We listened to some Philip Glass songs while we worked.

DAY TWO OF WORKSHOP

 We met back together for the second day of Sherri Lynn Wood's zoom workshop, Field of Jeans.

Today we continued to work on our projects.  Sherri Lynn was there to answer questions and show some of her techniques for solving problems.

I woke up with a solution to why I was not happy with mine from yesterday.  I don't like the light blue 'sashing'.  I tried out some red over the light blue.

But, I decide that red was too bright, so swapped it for a darker red:  

I love it!

Then, I added some blue sashing.  I was worried I might be getting too many different colors, but so far, so good:

FIELD OF JEANS WORKSHOP

 I took Sherri Lynn Wood's two-day workshop, Field of Jeans over the weekend.  I hesitated at first, because I didn't want to make a denim quilt, but I finally signed up because I could do the workshop without denim, using just regular quilting cottons.  

She had a guest speaker, Robin Green.  She had some great ideas and showed us her wonderful quilts.

One of the things she said I had to write down.  She said, "Think of your inner voice as a guide instead of a critic".  

I wanted to use some of my hand-dyed fabrics I've collected in this project.  I started with a big piece made by Laura Wasilowski and added in a few made by Judy Robertson.

Here's where I ended up at the end of the first day of the workshop and the After Sew.  Figuring out how to sew it together is challenging.  

I'm not happy with it.  Something needs to change.

MAY DAY FLOWER

 I took a Paper Flowering Making Workshop through Frye Art Museum on Zoom this morning.  It was put on by Quynh Nyugen, the owner of  Pink and Posey, who teaches and has made paper flowers for businesses and other clients.  She sent the participants a package containing instructions and supplies for making a Peony flower during class.  There is enough to make another flower, too.

It was a wonderful class - something different!  Quynh is a great teacher and she really knows her stuff and is very passionate about it.  The class moved very fast and we barely got it looking like a flower before the class came to an end.  She is sending us videos of the class along with some videos on making some of the pre-made parts she had sent us.  I can't wait to get a little bit more into this.

DANCING

 I finally got into an Irene Roderick "Dancing With the Wall"  Workshop this weekend.  She's a great teacher.  This workshop was about learning her different components that make up her famous style.

The weekend was spent making components and adding them. 

It's a 'start in the middle' , observe, then make the next piece.

Here's where I was at at the end of Sunday.

FREESTYLE STRINGS WORKSHOP

 I attended a two-day zoom workshop by Sherri Lynn Woods this weekend.  We started out at 8am on Saturday with a talk by Tara Faughnan about color and value, mostly value.  It was a great lecture with pictures of her quilts.  What struck me was when she said, she needed to 'unlearn' balance.  I need to unlearn balance too!  I have a tendency to want to place the colors evenly around the quilt.  I need to stop that, and be content with the tension that 'unbalanced' causes.

She talked about value and it's importance.  She makes areas of light values and dark values in her quilts.  She said, black and white are the extreme ends of value and with every color in between it's value depends on what color it's next to.

Here are a few of the quilts she made using strip sets.

After Tara's talk, Sherri started the workshop where we cut strips and sewed them together.  She suggested several ways to do it - planned, where you lay the strips out and decide what order you sew them together.  Spontaneous, where you pick a strip and then another and sew it to the first and then choose another from the pile and sew it on, choosing which would be next as you go.  Then there is randomly, where you put the strips into a bag and pull them out without looking and sew them together without editing.

I prefer planning as I go.  I don't think I could do the random way.  I like to have some say in it.

We sewed strip sets on Saturday until about noon, then there was an open sew afterward.

Sunday, Sherri talked about cutting the strip sets and sewing them back together.  I didn't get to that, I was just having fun sewing strips together.  Someday I'll get around to making a quilt from them.

I started by picking five colors that spoke to me that morning and jumped into it from there.  I cut some strips and then pulled some strips from the scrap bucket that worked with them.  I was surprised at how many strips were useable.  I was able to make use of some of the long, long strips that were excess backing cut-offs from after a quilted quilt is trimmed.  I mixed prints and solids.

Here is what I had at the end of the weekend.  I don't know where it will go from here.

ANOTHER FLOATING SQUARES

 I took another Floating Squares Workshop with Sherri Lynn Wood today.  One of the deciding factors to re-take this class was the fact that she had Mary Margaret Pettway from Gee's Bend as a speaker.  It was very interesting to see and hear her talk about her quilts.  That was worth the price of admission.

So, after she spoke, Sherri Lynn had us start on our projects.  

Here is mine, so far.  It needs a lot more work.  

I wasn't happy with how it looked.  The dark squares are too much the same size. And the fabrics were all too similar in value.  So after talking with Sherri Lynn about it, I moved them around, sort of ganging them together.  And I added a much lighter in value fourth fabric.  Here is one of the iterations.  I will probably be adding more colors eventually.  In the meantime, I'm going back to working on the Big Flower.

WOW, IT'S GETTING THERE

 So, I did get up and go out to the studio by 5am.  I wanted to get the spikey parts of each petal done before our meet up with Irene Roderick to show our progress on our projects.

I just barely made it.  But I did and I even had time for breakfast before our 8am meeting.

I stuck the fabrics I dyed up around it, although I didn't have any idea about how to use them.  I was so pleased with the feedback I received.  They were some really good ideas, and I think I've got a direction I want to go.

CHOREOGRAPHY WORKSHOP

 I'm attending a 4-week workshop with Irene Roderick every Tuesday this month.  I was distracted by the 'Trinity' project the first week, but I've started on a new project that comes straight from one of my daily doodles (homework she has us doing). I'm calling it Amity Prime.

It's a stylized flower.  My doodle has five petals, so I drew out one petal onto freezer paper so I would have a 'pattern' to get the sizes correct.  Hopefully, it will all fit together.

I'm not sure about the colors yet.  I'm going to play it by ear, picking colors as I go.

I'm not even sure how I'm going to piece this...or how the background will look.  It's a project in motion.

MAKING DO-ODLE WORKSHOP

 I attended a workshop with Sherri Lynn Wood today from 8am until 1pm - long day.

We worked on making an improv project.  Sherri Lynn likes to 'make do' using recycled garments and fabrics from your stash.  I made do with a few things from my stash and pieces from my scrap bin.

Sherri talked about changing up the way you think about making a quilt.

For instance:

Change the value placement, instead of balancing the values all through the quilt, try putting all of one value together.

Change the shapes, using different kinds of shapes in different areas.

Change the sizes, use small pieces in one section and large ones in another.

Change the color, introduce an unexpected color in a section.

After the workshop, there was an Open Sew.  Several of us attended and had a great time talking and working on our projects.