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Today’s Fiber Postcard Class
Today we had a gas at Maine-ly Sewing in Nobleboro, Maine. There were just two students in the class…
normally I don’t do classes that small, but since going to Houston is just around the corner and being able to pay for hotel and food is a good thing, I decided to give it a go. I’m SO glad I did! Elizabeth and Karen were my students, and what wonderful ones there were! Scroll all the way down to see more of their work!
I taught them a bunch of tricks and techniques. The hotlinks are mostly to Dick Blick, a website that I’ve used and this is reputable, that supplies artists and could be a serious Visa Accident waiting to happen. You have been warned! The techniques included:
*Fusing a chunk of Wonder Under (or whatever brand of fusible web) to the back of a chunk of fabric from which you then free-form cut shapes
*Fusing leftover bits and strips of fabric to a chunk of Wonder Under—like fitting together the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. That way you can use all those too-large-to-toss, too-small to really use pieces of fabric. Keep the fused bits in a box or bag, and you have a ready-to-go stash of fusible for postcards and other small projects.
*making freezer paper stencils
*using freezer paper st encils with Shiva Paintstiks (regular and irridescent) or fabric paint (Jacquard, Lumiere and Setacolor Transparents today)
*doing rubbings over rubbing plates with the Paintstiks–I bought mine at Festival from Laura Murray, but she has a great online store, too…check this out for a direct link to the page with the rubbing plates on them, or start at her home page.
*playing with Angelina fibers
*leaf prints
Creating your own compositions, too, then stitching them, and finally couching (sewing) yarn to the edges to finish them instead of the typical quilt bindings or satin stitching! I’m glad we were few…don’t know how many students I could help well in this sort of class!
Elizabeth and Karen are both new to quilting, and they did FANTABULOUSLY well! Elizabeth wanted to do a picture (from memory!!!) of a saddle-back ridge near her home here in Maine. She also hunts, and brought with her some incredibly gorgeous Wood Duck feathers which she ended up using as trees on her postcard. Here she is during the composition phase:
The photos just don’t do her finished composition justice….angelina for the sunset sky, the hills and feathers….
look at the colors in the first photo for a better idea of what they really look like.
Karen got many postcards begun…trying a bit of everything. She has three daughters, and wanted to send each one a card with a tree: one is angelina fibers, one is stenciled, one is a leaf-print! 
Then she took some leftover strips and fused them up into this wonderful abstract composition. Last weekend, she took my machine quilting class…her first time doing machine quilting…she is brand new and says “I don’t quilt.” Fiddle faddle! She’s a quilter NOW…this is great!
Also, at long last, I finally remembered to take pictures of the shop!!!! Tomorrow I’ll do a post about my favorite quilt store: Maine-ly Sewing!
October 22nd, 2006 at 6:52 am
Looks like it was a fun class, Sarah, and the postcards turned out great!
October 22nd, 2006 at 11:10 am
Two good students are so much better then a class full of not so good ones.
The post cards turn out great!
I am lucky I have a Dick Blicks store near me and I have done great credit card damage at the online site too.