Tuesday, October 12, 2010

Restructuring report

All right! All right! For friends chomping at the bit, here's my lowdown on the second workshop week at the Crow Timber Barn – Strip Piecing & Restructuring with Nancy Crow. I'll report about the first week in True Colors with Carol Soderlund later.

It was great having familiar faces there, including three from my guild - EBHQ - as well as meeting new ones. Everyone was focused and produced terrific pieces. I can't show you their work but here are mine.

Out of many many strip-pieced fabrics, we produced three compositions. What? You only see two?

I am not showing you my third and final composition. It was a disaster. I was constipated - not bodily, but creatively. And Nancy absolutely agreed. I don't know what happen or why. Let's just say my approach did not produce the desired results. I will begin that final one anew.

I am very pleased with the first two compositions. And miracles do happen - I finished them on time! They came together easily. Even Nancy was surprised! She revealed that my so very s-l-o-w deliberation in the very first workshop - Best of Strip Piecing 1 & 2 -gave her fits! Ooh! Sorry about that Nancy! That was only two years ago, yet seems ages.

Despite the labor intensiveness of strip piecing, I like this way of working. But there's no way I could do a quilt top a
week like Nancy's recommends. Maybe one each month. Or so (yes, I'm hedging).

Addendum: see Robert Genn's, The Painter's Keyspost about choking. Did he read my mind? To prevent creative constipation, I will sing as I work. You may suffer a little dissonance, but better that than a visual cacophony.