Textile work -- Class with Nancy Crow part 2

This was my workspace.

A large table with the sewing machine at one end facing the work wall. 

and a long cutting board.

 We made a sketch in black&white and once we had an arrangement we liked we were to sew the sketch into a surface cloth.

 

I experimented and then settled down to serious piecing. It was really difficult!!

I abstracted the image above, with new rules about adding gray to the mix & "going big",   as Nancy required. Two stages of my progression...

 

Then into color with new rules. I opted to dispense with many of the horizontal lines & focus on shapes. There were a couple of new "rules" Nancy set. We were to play out the image in two ways.

Off I go. It feels like a plunge!

Inwardly I am resisting going so big.

I start to think about the colors I will use for the large shapes & the lines.

The black shapes give me a "pattern" for cutting the colors.

Now starts the piecing!! I know the curves will really complicate my piecing. 

Two stages again. We were encouraged to do a lot of documenting so we wouldn't loose good ideas.

The sewing job is really hard here, but I have learned a lot about working this way with this process. I am constantly having to evaluate & maybe revise my color choices. This is as far as I got before I rolled it all up with the batting to continue working in Vancouver where I left off. I have plans for revisions. It'll be a long process to complete it.

I am just amazed at my dreams in the 5 following nights. ALL about this work!! And several nights after that as well. It's as thought I my subconscious were on a new groove entirely. Last night my dream was about two very sophisticated outfits for me with smashing colors in greys, blacks & reds, & another in white, black & turquoise.

That's it for now.

Textile work -- Improv with Nancy Crow

I just finished a 5 day course with Nancy.
It was intense.
We work hard and as quickly as possible & have to shut out
[alas!!] the beautiful beckonings of her hundred acre farm.

Fortunately we were super-well cooked-for.
Our group was replete with interesting women from all over. 
It was a rich week.

We started by making configurations with the black lines. That was mine in process. Then..

We did the same for two contrasting colors. This was the first composition. 

The beginning of the second composition is below.

It was supposed to be "busy".

 All over the room we would hear Nancy saying, "Not Busy Enough", so I made special letters sitting in judgement of my work: NBE.

The Big Project next entry.    That's it for now. 

From OHIO: Color Studies for Surface Design

Monday to Friday this week I was having lessons & sessions with Leslie Morgan who has a textile barn in or near Crawley, in west Sussex. That would be in  England.

It was an intense week of work: I called it measuring, timing & stirring.

I chose to dye in two matrices of gradations. They looked on my sample cloth like this...

My head hurt at first getting into 'mind' of this. Even my math mind didn't always help me.

The 'products' looked like this....

 
Heaven! Lilac smells and oriole, cardinal. & mourning doves came free with the day.

At the end of all the dye runs my accumulated fabric wealth looked astonishing.

It was heavier in reds than I anticipated, but the subtlety of the in-between colors of my matrix ware really interesting.
This is Leslie, our teacher. She did all the charts in the background. She's a wow!

Meanwhile, being on a farm, there were lots of wonderful things to see. I did a few walk-arounds. What a sculpture!!

These rocks were from a canal, made many years ago.

Then two other projects I loved. Years ago I prepared some stitch resist linen cloth in an African style. It was years ago. It was supposed to me indigo-dyed. No indigo opportunity readily presented itself to me. So the piece went into chocolate dye.

I could kick myself that I didn't do a before picture.

Here's the first after.

I love the hairy bits created by sewing the piece before dyeing with dental floss. The floss resists the dye!

 I'm in Ann Arbor with Mary Beecher Price, a classmate from grade 5-9 & we are taking this class together. 

                                               That's it for now.