Claudia Law Class

After the retreat in Bandon, and the retreat at the Big K Ranch, my art quilting friend and I went back to the Big K for an art class with Claudia Law from Ashland, Oregon. We had signed up for it months ago, and it just so happened it was the next week after I had just been there. So I had 3 big events in one month, whew! This time Lorraine and I stayed in one of the cabins, and we could quilt as long as we wanted to in the evening. This made for some long days, 12 hours of sewing at the least. After dark, there wasn't much else to do, as we were miles from anywhere. We had each selected one of 5 art quilts that Claudia had made, I choose "After the Fall." It was of an autumn branch with leaves, hanging over water, with ripples. It had a glow to it, that I loved, and I hoped she could show me how to achieve that effect. But it was in RED, and that would not have gone with anything in my house, so I asked if I could do it in cool colors. I had some preconceived ideas of what I wanted to do before I went. I'm not sure this was a good idea, would I follow my plan or let her influence me enough to learn from her. My first objective was to use some blue/green shibori hand dyed fabric that I had just made, and only use my hand dyes for the rest of the quilt. In the photo you can see my fabrics, set up as a sky/water background. She taught us how to cut and sew gently curves. I auditioned many, many moon/sun fabrics, taking photos so I could really see what they looked like on my camera. This was inspired by Claudia teaching us how to machine sew circles into our work. Not part of the original plan. I already knew how, from directions LeAnne Paylor had posted on "Off the Wall Friday" last year. In a fit of boredom, waiting for others to catch up, I decided my background was too plain. Everyone else had complicated pieced backgrounds, taking most of the day to create, so I decided to add the pieced squares of my shibori fabrics on the left side.

Claudia taught us how to piece in branches, into our backgrounds, see quilt below, but I added raw edge applique as I wanted my branches gnarly. The problem was I had NO brown hand dyed. I had made gorgeous brown fabric, but it was still in my drier at home, great place for it to be. I finally settled on a maroon, but I am going to cover some of it up later, as I am not fond of it. I spent the evening making 3-d leaves for my branch, double layered with fusible, and machine stitched veins. Lots of rearranging to get a good flow, and a few more leaves too. After spending the next morning free motion quilting the background, I added the leaves, then I stitched them so they twisted and curled around on the background.

One of the things Claudia specializes in is hand painting her fabrics, to fit her ideas and add texture and highlights. After the quilting I added paint to the moon. The quilting texture on the moon created a wonderful texture to sponge gold metallic paint over. I'm going to add metallic paint to the edges of the twisting leaves to highlight them too. Claudia taught us how to paint on fabric to make 3-D butterflies (see quilt below) but I decided I wanted dragonflies on mine, so I'll make them later.

Many of her students were doing landscapes of one sort or another, and she showed them how to paint some rocks for a river scene. They looked wonderful, very realistic. So in a brainstorm I decided to add a pile of balanced rocks at the bottom of mine. I was looking forward to doing the circle of ripples in the water, where the leaves touched it, but this was a much better idea. I had already free motion quilted the ripples, but the rocks would cover that. I would have been very happy to just use my gray mottled hand dyes for the rocks, they looked good. But boy am I glad I added the paint!! What a difference it makes. Highlights and shadows, added shape and texture and depth! Whoopee! Just as we were finishing up, I got the rocks added, with an extra layer of batting for a trapunto 3-D look. I have more to do, a tulle shadow below the rocks, lots of dragonflies, highlighting the leaves and moon reflection with paint, and the binding. I am going to use this quilt for our art group challenge. We had been issued 5 playing cards with different techniques written on them, and we have to use 3 of those for our challenge piece. I needed to do hand dyeing, raw edge applique and add metal objects. So I am going to sew some Chinese round coins in some of the edge squares, and call this piece "Serenity Pond." It looks NOTHING like I had envisioned before I went. I would not have added the moon, rocks, painting, willow leaves, if not for Claudia's influence. The quilt took on a life of it's own, as it evolved into being. I don't think the curved piecing on the background made any difference, it is covered by leaves, and is now kind of distracting. But other than that I am really happy with it. I can't wait to finish it!

While waiting for everyone to piece their complicated backgrounds, I decided to cut and sew a pieced background of my own, to do a second art piece. I used all my own hand dyed fabrics, and I think they look great together, adding any commercial fabric would have given it a whole different look. Everyone else was going horizontal with their strip sets, but I decided to go vertical instead. Each set was put together with a curved sewing line. Some people made several strip sets and curved cuts to make a very complex background, that took a long time for them to sew.

Claudia also taught us to inset curved strips into our backgrounds, the strips were also varying widths. I had sewn narrow strips into backgrounds before, but not the curves or width variations. This offset the strata we had pieced together, which was impossible to realign, don't even bother trying. 5 of the inset main lines are pieced, the other smaller lines are raw edge applique. We gave up on the cut and piece for more than a few lines. We also played with paints, watercolor pencils, oil pastels and other art products to make flowers and butterflies. Claudia had a quilt of beautiful blue butterflies, that we all admired very much.

I made five butterflies, with double layers of fused fabric, layers of acrylic paint, front and back, and jacquard luminescent paints as the top layer. They became very stiff and sturdy, adding detail really helped. I used a fan brush to add a feathered edge and painted dots to add detail. I was happy with them at the end, but they went through various stages of hatred first. The dogwood flowers in lavender and pink were done with watercolor pencils, blending the lines and shading with a watered paint brush. Pearl pink lines were painted in also. The centers are a small wad of Angelina fibers in a green/copper color. The flowers and butterflies are all 3-D, so they wings and petals stand out from the quilt. This piece is finished with a turned facing, a straight edged top and wonky side and bottom shapes. It was completely unplanned, I just went with the flow. We had four wonderful days at the ranch, being creative and having fun. Most of the work by others was wonderful, but a few beginners got discouraged and did not finish their projects, but they learned lots of new techniques. Several of the beginners did very well. Everyone was excited to do it again next year. I am linking this to Nina Marie's "Off the Wall Friday" click here so you can see what other talented textile artists are doing this week. Please leave a comment, they mean a lot to me. Thanks.