I sometimes advise fellow quilters to take classes in other media to develop composition and design skills. Finally I took my own advice. I just finished up Jane Davies’ Sketchbook Practice downloadable class, which I took with a friend.
Working in tandem with someone else was a great idea. We exchanged photos of our responses to the numerous assignments and commented on each others’ work. It was amazing to see how differently we approached the prompts. I like to think we learned from each other. I know I did.
Jane described the goal of the class exercises as “inquiry. These are all studies, all experiments. Put them out there like question marks: What happens if I do this? Or that? These questions do not require answers. It’s enough to just put them out there.” The class is meant as play, to push you off balance. Finished compositions aren’t its goal.
That said, I’d like to share with you our joint output over six lessons. Because each lesson has several parts, I’ll save some of our work until my next post.
We began with line exercises to explore how different materials act and how line can express different emotions and feelings. I won’t make you look at our lines, but move onto the circles, which began with black and white and finished with color.
The first piece is P’s. The last are mine.
Again, the first is P’s. The last are mine.
Moving on, we did black and white scribble paintings and then chose interesting bits to cut out. We then pasted those bits on blank paper and extended the bits to fill up the blanks.
Top, P’s work, then mine.
In the paint-collage-line activity we were to combine a collage shape, a line shape, and a painted shape in small studies of the relationships of the shapes to each other and to the paper’s edges.
My pieces are on the left; P’s are on the right.
I’ll conclude this week with a piece by P, a narrative (airy, claustrophobic, etc., circles) that was part of the circles lesson. Mine are too basic to show you, just black circles on white paper, but P went beyond the brief into full color.
Maybe you can see the differences in our work – color palettes, compositions, lines, lightness, heaviness, etc. You can also see who was going for extra credit. Just kidding, P.
I’m linking to Off The Wall Friday.
The Snarky Quilter 
The Quilting World Has Lost An Advocate
In late July I learned that a longtime quilting friend had succumbed to cancer. While I hadn’t seen Peg Bingham for over a year, I followed the state of her health from afar. She had recovered from cancer many years ago, but it recurred.
I worked with Peg for many years in our local quilting community. She organized quilt shows, taught classes, judged quilt shows, ran a quilt camp, plus held a variety of jobs IRL. In everything she did her enthusiasm was infectious, and she was always ready to help fellow quilters solve problems. She loved to teach others, and had a deep knowledge of quilting’s nuts and bolts. I can hear her now, saying “ya know, you could do this…” With Peg around you didn’t have time to wallow in your mistake. She would be working to solve it.
Some years ago I wrote a profile of Peg for the National Quilting Association’s Quilting Quarterly (Fall 2014), titled “Plant the Seed, Pass It On.” The article focused on Peg’s fiber arts seminar at the University of Akron, in which she involved a new generation in many aspects of quilting beyond making quilts, though they did that as well. I enjoyed the time I spent interviewing Peg about the class, and was impressed with her dedication to education.
Peg also designed quilt patterns, especially celtic knots.
Peg, thanks for encouraging us to quilt more and for reminding us that quilting is meant to be fun.
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