Last Nancy Crow Workshop Project

Since my floor is now clear, I was able to get a quick picture of the last exercise project that I did during the Nancy Crow Workshop.

This is the "mother" of stack and whack. ;-) It is fun to do because you never know what you are going to get and can create endless combinations of color.

I created 6 units because I used 3 colors of fabrics. I was running out of time at the end so I just grabbed 4 units and sewed them together. So I didn't have the time to figure out which units I liked best together. This means that this combination could change completely before I'm done with it. I'm also toying with the idea of just using a component of the composition surrounded by some other unit. Who knows. It is on my design wall and is next in line to work on after I finish the townscape I started this past winter.

Here is a close up of one of the units.

For comparision, here is the piece that I created from the same exercise in the Nancy Crow class that I took in 1998. In the 1998 class, she had us do the exercise first in black and white and then in color (I never made it to the color version). It's called Forest Vortex and is currently hanging in one of our guest rooms. The border is creating with a free form crazy quilt-like piecing method that I learned from Diane Leone (former owner of the Quilting Bee in Mountain View, California). Then I added appliqued leaves swirling to the center of the piece because it looked like a vortex!

Paige asked how I learned to piece the pieces that I created in Nancy's class. Well, it is probably a combination of experience from multiple workshops and classes. It was very useful to have the sewing classes in high school, for example, because I learned how to do inset seams, how to handle the fabric going around curves, and other clothing construction methods (this is useful knowledge for knitting, too). I also took a traditional sampler workshop many years back. The instructor made us promise to piece at least one of the blocks entirely by hand. This really gave you a close look at the seams and how they fit together. The book we used in that workshop is by Diane Leone and I think it is just called The New Sampler Quilt.

I'm sure that in the first Nancy Crow workshop, she gave us pointers on piecing the irregular shapes and curved pieces, but I can't remember for sure, I just know that I learned it somewhere.

I finished one other piece on my day in the studio. The title is The Collection. I'm going to frame it in a shadow box frame, which is why I have not done any finished of the edges. I've been wanting to try a shadow box frame from my work and this is a good excuse to order one now. I'm going to try a frame from the American Frame company. I recently order a frame from them to replace one of our room mirror frames and I was very happy with the quality of the frame. I'll post a picture when it is done.

I used some silk cocoons, mulberry bark, and silk rods from a multimedia pack from Stef Francis that I bought at Friends Fiber Art shop in Lowell, MA