Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Meeting of studio Q

Yesterday, my art guild buddies met at the home of one of the three who went to Ohio to the Nancy Crow workshop to take a dyeing class from Carol Soderlund. They showed us their wonderful notebooks that they made with swatches of cotton and silk fabrics. What they primarily learned was how to dye fabric and get the exact color you want. My friend Heather's blog has much more information about what they did. I took a couple of pics of what they did, but my setting on my camera was off so they are a little fuzzy.

We always have a show and tell with our meetings. It is so great to be able to share information and ideas with these incredibly talented ladies! I have this book my daughter gave me a year or so ago...."Art Quilt Workbook" by Jane Davila & Elin Waterston. Each chapter has techniques and exercises to "ignite creativity", so I decided rather than just read about the ideas to actually do them! So I have resolved to set aside a few hours on Sunday afternoons and work my way through the book. The first exercise was on Perspective and Color...I am going to do a series on Wheels and my first one is in warm colors. It is just 9 x 12 and not complete. I will wait until I finish all my series to decide if I want to finish them up into something.


The studio Q gals have a new challenge for ourselves. Yesterday at our meeting, everyone brought words, phrases, adjectives, emotions, whatever and we put them all in a jar. Then we drew one slip of paper from the jar and that will be our first challenge for our "Recipe Quilt". We are each doing our own thing, not passing around this time. And our starter block will be our individual interpretation of the word "Whimsical"! Each month we will bring what we have done to share and inspire each other! I think it will be fun!


6 comments:

  1. That sounds like a nice challenge.

    If your Wheels small quilts are 9 x 12, they're the right size for Ami Simms Alzheimer's project!

    Like your blog.

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  2. Jay, your Wheel quilt is wonderful! Looking forward to the whimsical challenge -- better start brainstorming!

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  3. Thanks, all...Mary, I plan to do several more 9 x 12's for my personal "workshop" so we will see where they end up!

    Heather, brainstorming away!!!!

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  4. hey Jay~!!~
    apparantly i finally clicked on the right button and have found you~!!~

    you know i have so many books that give exercises in creativity and i have them because i love the idea of a somewhat structured discipline in artwork/creativity . . . and i read them and am excited by them and every once in a while i will even try one of the suggestions out . . . but that's about as far as it's gotten. i really admire your being able to work steadily through these assignments . . . i know that the benefits have got to be great and am looking forward to seeing your creative progress. who knows, maybe you will light some sort of creative fire under me and i'll decide to become more disciplined . . . although, in my own defense, i will say that i undertook a photo a day daily discipline last summer and i have stayed true to that so far. and i have improved my photography knowledge and skills as well as widened my creative "sight".

    the "recipe quilt" sounds like great fun and what better word to start out with than "whimsical"~!?!~ it will be fun to see the progress on this as well. i always think of my crumb pieced tulips as truly "whimsical" . . . you know that i have a lot of those and love making them . . . if you would like a few to start your "recipe quilt" out . . . i will share some with you . . . just let me know how many and where to send them if you are interested.

    so glad to have found you and i want you to know that i really appreciate your visits to my blog and the comments that you leave.

    :)
    libbyQ

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  5. What a great challenge idea!! i can't wait to see what you all come up with. I also need to look at coming up with a way to spark my creativity... maybe I need to look into getting myself a similar book... or just look at what is already in my library and start following the exercises.

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