More images from the Penland class

Above is a view across the studio with the great big windows looking out onto the meadow and distant mountains.  A beautiful spot!  I think the ladies on the far left got so excited they lost their heads! (and arms!).

There were just 12 folk in the class (I posted six 2 days ago), and here are the pieces made by the other six.

 

Here is Michelle crouched over her sewing machine, she had never made a quilt before, never done free motion quilting….but she loves bugs!  She was absolutely determined to take home a completely finishing piece – and she did!!    Isn’t her quilt stunning?  She took a couple of elements from her original inspiration picture and placed them on a grid.  All the fabric in all the quilts was hand dyed during the class; students brought only white fabric with them.

Many were inspired by nature:
  Donna’s inspiration pictures were some wonderful photographs she had taken of the North Carolina mountain forests in the fall.  For this piece she used the design manipulations of cutting, rearranging and overlaying.  Hand dyed, shibori dyed and screen printed fabric. Donna’s use of values made this quilt glow with light from across the room – just like the light glows almost white on leaves – looking, really looking,  is key to coming up with a piece that is fresh and personal.                                                                                                                                  

Roz is inspired by butterflies and moths particularly their complex gorgeously marked wings.   Her dynamic cropping gives us a sense of movement and speed which subtly relates to the theme – great use of direction.

 

Pam is also a nature lover – she surprised us by very quickly whipping out this little gem of an abstract piece based on dandelions in a meadow.  Pam also used texture to convey her meaning…fluffing up the deliberately exposed raw edges to symbolize the thistledown!  Pam became so enamoured of the dye process, she called a carpenter to convert a room in her house to a dye studio!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

These are just two of the 5 quilts that Janet made!  And she also arranged and made two lovely gift boxes of fabric for the Penland auction! A demon worker!  Can you see that the piece on the right is based on a small detail of the piece on the left?   The dark street was heavily textured with quilting – sorry it doesn’t  show in this photo… Janet’s piece was an elegant representation of an entire picture, with all unnecessary elements omitted.  The curving lines of the tree beautifully echo the curves on the road.

Caitlin worked on portraits:

She tried two totally different techniques.  On the left the original photograph was reduced to two values only and sewn through both layers then cut away.  On the right, the values were not reduced and the image gradually built up from tiny scraps of fabric.  Everything was sewn – I’m not mad keen on f**ing in my classes!!!  Caitlin’s faces are also reveal just how much can be gained by losing the edges of the shapes…these were amazing!  Then I introduced the class to screen printing with dye and we lost Caitlin to the dye room of the Textile Studio for the rest of the session – here’s one of her gorgeous screen printed fabrics:

  As you can see this was a super class, brimming with talent and energy – we covered a lot of ground and had time for plenty of fun!!

Roll on my next trip to Penland!   And, if you have been, thanks for reading!  Elizabeth