Stitch and Surface Roundup Winter 2012

I had the pleasure of working with a wonderfully talented group of Stitch and Surface students this past 10 weeks of the Winter 2012 session at Fleisher. Thursday was our last class, and as usual, I asked students to bring back everything they worked on over the semester for a little critique. Here are some things form our design wall:

Catherine appliqued her mandala to a border pattern fabric and will complete it with a square of algerian eye. The cretan stitch used to applique is beautiful.

 The sampler mandala project was a big hit. Starting with a button center, each new stitch learned became a new ring in the mandala. Every week over the semester I taught 2-3 new stitches. So they weren't complete until the last class.

Ashante's became a spiral. I love the blue seeding behind the orange algerian eyes.

Quincy actually made 2! She may make more and start a quilt.

Our second project coincided with Valentine's day. I provided a simple heart quilt block pattern to use as a base, but some students branched off into their own designs.

Ashante is an accomplished quilter, but shisha stitch and embroidery are inspiring new ideas.

Catharine successfully pieced, appliqued, and embellished a variety of commercial fabrics, and turned the skeleton characters into avatars for herself and her spouse.

 After an interlude of block printing with our home-made foam stamps, students launched into individual projects.

Quincy completed a fascinating cloth book of "colors" for a baby gift and began an embroidered alphabet quilt. She found a typography alphabet pattern, and enlarged. transferred,  and personalized the letters.

Gerard started this text piece in a  previous class, and added a screenprinted frame. This sparked a series of silkscreen frame/embroidered text pieces.

Catharine used her printed fabric as a background for this plankton-inspired piece. A border of appliqued colored organza  frames a pool of 3 plankton. Two of them are stitched onto the printed cloth, then an organza piece was overlaid, and a 3rd plankton is being stitched on top.

Lucky for me, I know some students are returning for another session in the Spring! I think we'll be doing a group screenprint to start off a sampler, a text piece, and a sculptural surface (with pleats, trapunto, gathers, etc.) If you are interested in joining me for an adventure in fiber, there are still a few spots left for the Spring semester. Visit http://www.fleisher.org/ for registration.