School's Out, School's Out...

I know, I know -- it's October, and school is definitely NOT out for pretty much anyone I know -- except for me ;) Tonight was the last meeting of the class I teach each fall. Yeah, I know, it's a totally crazy idea -- I can't figure out why they keep asking me back either!

So, I teach a class in public/media relations for students at the Eastman School of Music. It's just seven weeks long, for one night a week, and it can be stressful on top of my "real" job. That said, it's kind of fun to work with these talented students and help them understand how to work with the media to promote themselves and their work. The final project is a complete media kit, with a bio, press release, pitch letter and photographs.

Speaking of photographs, you've GOT to see some of them. My fabulous friend Tammy (IdeaGirl) shot all 13 of my students (plus four others)... and has about 4,800 images to prove it! There's other work on her professional site too, but you should definitely visit and take a look here, here and here. (Scroll away, it's totally worth it!) Amazingly, many of the kids chose photos other than these, although I noticed a couple of my faves were theirs too. They loved the experience and their photos (and each others photos!). Thanks, Tam!

Sensuous Lines & Curves

At LONG last (I think this class was last fall -- it's been long enough that I can't remember!)... here's MY finished top from Carol Taylor's Sensuous Lines & Curves class. I had to do a little fudging when I cut the length of the center panel too short, but it's barely noticable, so I'm pleased. My "big idea" was the beach, like at home on Lake Michigan -- water, sand, dune grass and sparkles of sunshine.

There's a LOT of work still to do before this piece is finished. The center panel has all the yarns and trims couched onto a "full" quilt already (top fabric, batting and muslin). The entire piece now gets layered with batting and backing, then that panel needs to be quilted to outline each of the couched yarns. In my mind, that was overkill, but I tried it on a sample (I'll show you that in a minute), and it's definitely worth it. Boring, though! I'll do that in invisible thread, I think, and then add in a few strands of copper hologram thread as accents (and to help balance the left, which is a little pale). I'm not sure what I'll do in the outer blocks yet... I guess take it one step at a time!

Class with "Mrs. Mel" -- all the details!

We had such a fun time in class with Melody last week. After a little confusion first thing in the morning about which day it was and what class we were taking, we got to dive into a stack of her absolutely yummy rainbow hand-dyed fabric. Good thing the class was small -- that was a little frenzied! Here are my picks, laid out in all their glory:

We started by fusing Wonder Under to each piece of fabric, covering it completely, then peeling off the release paper. According to Melody, this allows us to cut shapes freely, and the fabric won't fray because we're not picking at the edge of the paper.

Then we cut a long strip, and subcut into segments, keeping them carefully in order so there would be a progression of color in the chevron units. I'll show you my mom's chevrons, since I failed to photograph mine!



Next we made our own new fabric, by cutting strips of fabric two, then cutting them into skinnier pieces with fancy rotary blades and curvy shapes. We shared strips at this point, and fused them into new sections. You can see mom's finished results in the above picture, but here are a couple of process photos:



From there we cut squares into quarters and made these quarter square units:



Cut more strips, and then the real fun begins! All the leftover odds and ends, as well as any other ideas, became fair game as we tackled the most free-form and artistic section. Here's mine:



Then to decide how to put the pieces together... You've seen mine (although I just realized I posted it upside down the other day -- I'm going to try to fix that!). so I'll show you a couple of the ones made by others in class:



Aren't they all fantastic? I wish I had pics of some of the other quilts... hopefully Melody will post the ones she took so you can enjoy them, too! All in all, it was a fun and freeing class. There wasn't too much thinking about the process -- until the third panel, at least for me -- and we got to play with the lovely fabrics and enjoy learning something new.

PS -- click the photos for bigger sizes, or visit my Flickr album for a few more notes...