Embroidered Collage

Is it bedtime yet?  Am I SURE I don't have enough energy to go back down to the classroom and do artwork instead of go to bed?

Class started out with Wendy Toogood introducing herself and a little of her work, which I'll get into on another day, and talking about pulling simple shapes from nature.  The pressed leaves that I didn't get around to making to bring?  They were supposed to be our inspiration for the day, actually for the next couple days.  Oops.  I could have borrowed some extras from Wendy, but what I kept thinking about while she was describing the exercises we would be doing was the book of snowflake micrographs that I wanted to work with further and had brought with me.  I got a go-ahead from her and went that direction.  Somehow I ended up with blobby figure-like shapes, an unexpected development, going from one lobe of a particular snowflake, but it was a useful and simple shape.

We spent the morning developing sketches and choosing color combinations.  That last is something she wants us to do four of every morning and afternoon - just pull two or three colors we find interesting and put them together in our sketchbook or use them for the exercises.  I pulled three for the afternoon's work, but only ended up using one.

The goal was to make nine ATC sized works.  I was the only one who ended up working that small.  The rest of the class tended toward making four or five pieces roughly 5x7.  The primary method of working was fusing.  Theoretically we could have used sewing machines, but no one bothered for these pieces, maybe later in the week.  I also pulled out my watercolor crayons and liquid acrylic and modified my fabrics and shapes.  This picture is of my work surface partway through the afternoon, right after I'd taken a break from designing to add the fabrics to my sketchbook.  After everyone had some basic designs we also discussed embellishment, and then by the end of the class we walked around and looked at the work on everyone's design wall - large foam boards.

I met Jane Dunnewald at dinner, which was pretty cool.  I tried to meet new people at lunch but accidently sat down at a table with primarily non-English speakers.  Oops.  I did talk with a couple new people at the ice cream social later in the evening as well.  That was after the presentation by the faculty.  That was a rich source of inspiration and it was interesting to see the different personalities advance behind the podium.  And I'll have to post on that later as well.  The goodies I picked up from visiting the Vendor's Mall during the course of the day also deserve their own post, but I can definitely say that it was a good use of scraps of time during lunch and after class.

Tomorrow - slightly larger works.  I'll be doing 6x6s...