Take Two

Take Two was the name of the class I signed for on my recent trip to USA. I have never taken any official class in quilting or design. I learned mostly from books, magazines, TV, from my mentor Brenda Gael Smith on SAQA mentorship program, from my own experience and my mistakes. But when I got an e-mail telling me about Quilt Surface Design Symposium taking place in Columbus, OH at the same time as Quilt National opening week, I looked through the program very carefully and I got hooked after seeing the name of Pat Pauly as one of the teachers. I knew Pat Pauly from SAQA seminar and I admired her work since. She gave three classes that filled up fast but I signed for the one that had the shortest list of supplies: sewing machine, cutting mat, rotary cutter and two fabrics.

I arrived to Columbus on the afternoon the day before the class started and got registered. This way next morning i didn’t have to hurry and have time to look around. The Symposium took place at Columbus College of Art and design:

Inside there were exhibited small works made by all teachers as a challenge of four colors. My favorites, of course, were those made by Pat Pauly:

There were 19 of us taking this class and it started by the teacher introducing herself and us telling what we expected to learn. The main wish was of learning composition and design and that worked well for me.

We started with few exercises. First we got two cards, had to cut them up and put back together as a collage. Then we did the same with two small pieces of fabrics:

Then we exercised with two small pieces of fabrics:

Finally we had two choose two 1 yard pieces of fabric to work with. Of course, we all had more than two pieces and it was not an easy decision to make. Fabrics were laying everywhere:

My decision was this:

I thought they had enough contrast and I loved bright colors as I always do. We had to cat both pieces in half and sew them back together:

Then we had to cut more and more and try to build an abstract piece of art that would make some sense; I truly struggled:

That’s how far I got. My piece is still not finished but I am going to cut of a big chunk on the left side and move it over to the right!

Looks like many of my classmates did much better job. I apologize for not having names attached to images but these are the ones that I truly enjoyed watching them becoming pieces of art:

This was a very interesting experience to me and I am happy that I was able to be there.