Springtime? and Workshop

I am back from Carol Shinn's workshop at the Hudson River Valley Art Workshops. I learned so much I can't believe it! But first, springtime was just beginning to peek through in the Catskill Mountains of upstate NY, but here is what greeted me when I got home.


My Lilies of the Valley opened up while I was gone.


And my Solomon's Seal in all its splendor


I was thrilled to be able to spend several days with my buddy, Karen Asherman, at the workshop. We hadn't seen each other since Lowell Quilt Festival in 2006, so it was great fun and we both learned a lot. Here's Karen at the cutting board, with a view of Carol's work table under the overhead mirror.


Here is the porch where Karen, Carol, Kathy & I shared our pre-dinner glass of wine each night. The porch was just the coolest! It was too ironic to learn the names of everyone in the class - Jeannie, Jenny, Jody, Judy, Karen, Carol, Kathy, & Leslie (and a guest named Lynne!) And of course the owners Kim and Mark! J-M. Oh - and one person who cancelled - Martha! Too funny.


This is the gob of (mostly Judy Sebastian's) thread I collected at the workshop. It will show up again in another form.

Here are Carol & Judy checking out some of the work. You can almost make out Carol's piece behind her. It's breathtakingly beautiful, but I don't have permission to post it. I know she is entering it in a really BIG show, so don't want to preempt anything.


So - here at the pieces I made in Carol's workshop. We began with just practicing the direction of the stitches (top left). She then had us stitch "across the color wheel", blending stitches using many shades of each color and keeping the stitches in the same direction. This was very difficult, but the most important for me (top right).


The next step was to draw and paint shapes on white fabric, which we then fused to a piece of canvas backing. When the paint was dry, we stitched over the picture, practicing keeping all of the stitches in the same direction. That's a lot more difficult than you would think, especially with pears. You can see the distortion that so much thread causes (bottom left) - my bottom pear looks like my pregnant goldfish! Carol suggested I do a contour effect around the pears, which turned out to be much harder than I'd expected, having to keep the stitches going in the same direction!
The last piece (bottom right) is of the center of a leaf that Carol had printed out on a iron on transfer sheet. We transferred it to white fabric and then fused it to canvas. Instead of straight stitches in the same direction, I meandered my stitching around in small circles. It gave it a more organic feel and looks more like underwater fan or coral than a leaf. Carol said the purple part is too fat and I should go back and take some out (by adding more blue/green over it), but I have moved on.

Below is the first piece I've made since the workshop. It is a Black-Eyed Susan.

I was happy with keeping the stitches in the same direction, but I really needed more shades of yellow and orange. More thread!
Here is more of a closeup:

I am working on a much more ambitious piece now, but don't want to show it until it's finished (in case it really sux!) I will photograph it in various stages to post later.