Class to Quilt-Compositional Drawing

As it turns out I am not very motivated to clean my studio. I headed out there this weekend with all good intentions of getting my space clean and I honestly cleaned (or more accurately, contemplated cleaning) for a total of five minutes before I found myself distracted by a drawing I had started at Quiltcon in my Compositional Quilting/DRAWING class.

I have to admit that after returning home from Quiltcon I have felt a little panicked. Panicked that I taught everything I had and that I was going to be out of ideas.

I began looking through some of the pictures I had taken while teaching (admittedly way too few) and that beautiful quote by Leonard Nimoy came back to me again.

"The Miracle is this, the more we share, the more we have."

Some Brilliant student work 

Wow.

Wow. 

Wow.

and WOW.

It was either the threat of cleaning or all of the energy and openness that I absorbed from my students that inspired me again....or maybe a little bit of both.

 I wasn't really out of ideas after all. Phew.

I put away any thoughts about cleaning (which wasn't hard) and started drawing and then quilting something I am pretty sure will be a sample for another class.

As a rule I don't generally mark on quilts. A whole cloth type quilt is obviously an exception to this rule. In my Compositional Quilting/DRAWING class we spend the class marking on mylar and then marking on a whole cloth.  Many years ago I took a whole cloth design class from Karen McTavish. It was a full day spent designing a whole cloth quilt that we took home to quilt. If you ever find yourself with an opportunity to take a class with her or see her lecture,

 DO IT,  I'm not kidding.

Whole cloth quilts are traditional by nature and are generally designed using beautiful floral or feathered motifs, stencils and if you have the patience the quilting usually involves some trapunto.

This was my finished Wholecloth quilt from Karens class.

From class to quilt.

In my Compositional Drawing-(expanded version) class it is my hope to merge the traditional with a more modern aesthetic. I don't know that a whole cloth will ever be considered "modern" but I do believe in my heart of hearts that there is a place for this type of quilting and design somewhere.

This is the fundamental basis for Compositional Quilting 

Filling in the blanks

I had to get rid of my free motion drawn swirls, I found I could not follow my own drawings.

I managed to quilt in the areas of feathers I should have left unquilted

Some new moon ideas

This is as far as I got, not bad for a weekend.

As you can see, cleaning is overrated and I am not out of ideas yet. I am hoping to be teaching this class and many others in the near future. I will keep you posted on the details here.

For those of you who feel inspired by this post, awesome. For those of you who enjoyed this post but feel less inspired and more discouraged by this post this last picture is for you.

While I openly admit I have skills,  I know that those skills didn't come without a lot of failures, practice and flat out shitty quilting.  Give yourself the benefit of the doubt, be ok with shit quilting, move on, take classes, learn as much as you can from yourself and others. You will never quilt exactly like me, just as I will never quilt exactly like Karen McTavish. And thank goodness for that, lord knows theres only room for one of her, and me and you. Be ok with that.
You be You.