On August 1-3—in a really roomy, light-filled, and temperature-controlled (it was very sizzling outdoors) classroom off a facet hallway of The Nationwide Quilt Museum—a fantastic material collage faculty of sea-life was within the making as twenty college students let unfastened with their materials, scissors, pins and glue to create nineteen very colourful fish, and one seahorse. In picture above, splendidly untidy (messy however not scary) piles of material and scraps unfold on the tables of Lynn Gross and Corrie DeCamp.
In weblog posts final week and the week earlier than, I gave overviews of my 12-quilt “Specimens” exhibit at NQM in Paducah, Kentucky—put in and hanging till November 19, 2024. The museum additionally organized for me to show a category whereas my present was on show. The format we settled on was a three-day workshop, which is simply sufficient time to sink our material collage enamel into an ideal topic for a sizzling summer time week—fish. Fish imagery lends itself to a sure playfulness and adaptableness to quite a few creative types and coloration palettes.
I like educating this class as a result of it permits me and my college students to throw all warning to the wind and lose ourselves within the play of coloration and sample. There’s quite a lot of data to cowl in simply three days, so there’s no time to dawdle in getting began, and this class jumped proper into the deep finish of creativity.
As all educating mornings start, there have been each day demos and Q&A, main my college students by way of the material collage course of. Under are just a few fishy quilt examples hanging on the classroom wall, so as to add to different quilts of mine we may speak about within the museum gallery.
To get a quick-start in a category similar to this, I recommend beginning with one among my fish patterns, which all however two college students did. In order I proceed with exhibiting you all of the implausible work achieved in such a short while, I’ll hyperlink to the patterns utilized in case you’re impressed to strive your personal hand at catching a fish, or two.
Let’s start on the finish
You’ve seen just a few outcomes, now see their beginnings and progressions within the slideshow beneath:
Catching the waves with, “Wavelength”
This fish sample caught the eyes and curiosity of 4 of my college students (following beneath), however by the tip of sophistication it was laborious for even me to guess at their beginnings. It’s one of many issues that I discover nice about educating this class—no two fish would be the identical, it’s not doable. Since we work free-hand and don’t create templates, it signifies that every collage—even generated from the identical sample—will mechanically, to 1 extent or one other, range in form and association of materials because of the material choice and whims of every creator.
The inventive circulate of “Wavelength” in slideshow beneath:
Dipping into the goldfish bowl
Carpe diem, carpe carpem. Sieze the day, sieze the carp. My college students did each. Simply over 1/3 of the category selected my, “Carpe Carpem” goldfish sample, to base their fish design on. However as you’ll see beneath, they had been something however the identical ol’ carp.
The making of the superb evolutions of “Carpe Carpem” in slideshow beneath:
After which there have been 5
Rounding out the number of my fish patterns is, “Spiny Lionfish.”—a fish that’s extra fin than physique, however an alluring fin it appears to be.
And right here’s the in-progress pictures of the ultimate 5 sea creatures:
