B is for Beautiful!!!!!!!! Ellen Lynn Wolf created this piece as her first line stitch sampler. It seems particularly appropriate as the bee is entering the hive, and she just got married! I believe this piece accompanied her to Mexico for her honeymoon. Apparently Mexico's airport security is tighter than USA's, though, as her scissors got confiscated on the way back. She's got a little more work to complete on the wings.
Bees are all the rage! This is Maria Eife's line sampler, destined for a newborn's nursery. It has a great analogous color harmony, very spring-like, but not too "baby boy". One of the great things about stitching is that you can always tear out something that goes wrong. The wings on the bees started out black, which seemed too stark for this soft piece. So out came the black and in came the metallic- much more wing-like.
Kimberley Clark's sweet cupcake and daisy sampler are great examples of commitment and the need to bring up images in overall layers of completion. The top petal of the daisy is more worked than the others, leading her to try to bring the same level of density in the other petals as well- a lot of work! I think the cupcake started off as a line sampler, but she kept going, filling in all the negative spaces. I suggested just another dark "shadow" line for the text, which says "hello", but which is a little hard to read now. It was a challenge to complete that ring of hearts, but Kimberley was truly dedicated and her work paid off!
This is Rachel Kerner's ambitious applique piece. With the help of the photocopy machine, Rachel was able to maintain her composition despite having to move all the top layers in order to stitch down all the bottom layers. Rachel was worried about her thread colors, but we discussed how using just one or two colors for her applique stitches would help to unify the great variety of color and pattern in her piece. She also ran into an issue when appliqueing the large green square. Because she had so many layers, we didn't want to add another stiff layer of fusible web to keep the green square attached. But then after stitching the edges there were a lot of "bubbles". Some pinching and whip-stitching and her excess fabric became a wonderful vine element for her flowers.
Reyna Howkins also utilized the wonderful photocopy machine to help create her composition. After copying the background fabric, motifs were cut out and used as patterns for the three applique pieces. Once they were stitched, the composition felt a little empty, so by using the reduce-image-size feature on the copier she was able to play with scale and placement for the smaller motifs. The result is a great play of scale, texture, and space.
Maureen Zug is an avid gardener, and this came through in all of her work. This applique piece is in a middle level of completion and will have more of the fine viney stitching in the back as well as additional embellishment with the beads and buttons. It will be quite a dimensional piece in the end. I like the contrast between stitched leaves, plain leaves, and dimensional leaves. The viney running stitch unifies all the separate shapes and helps define the composition area.
Venetta Robinson is a quilt artist primarily, and I love how she took her motif from the collaborative print for this quilt square. The whole piece will be attached to a final square piece with some reverse applique in the corner circles. There is a layer of batting under each of the patches, and this will truly be a dimensional piece when it is finished. Venetta has a bold sense of pattern and color, but she is able to use color in her stitching to connect the various patterns.So, that's it for this summer. Thanks to all my hard-working creative students. There is no greater gift than getting to share your passion with other people.
No more classes until Fall! Keep an eye out for future workshops!
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