Sheer Play - QBL 2018 - Off the Wall Friday

Jeannette at work

It seems impossible but another Quilting by the Lake has come and gone.  Taking a class with Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer is always a pleasure and this class was no exception.  What I loved the most about it was that there was a little bit of something for everyone.  We started the week with learning how to paint on silk organza.  From there we learned techniques on how to seam together sheers using the Korean form of pogaji by hand and machine. After that we went into a bunch of
different ways to manipulate the sheers. Quickly we realized that if you didn't like a certain technique that was okay because we were soon onto another one and there were several to choose from.

QBL Artist in resident showing her work

After a few exercises, Jeanette had us choose a direction to do some independent work.  While sitting there thinking of what I wanted to do, I realized that for once I didn't have a big idea.  Really, what had fascinated me the most was how the sheers interacted with each other and how with layering them you got change of colors and value and that new shapes were formed.  All very unexpected and interesting!  So I started working on 4" block little studies.  All the material was provided under our supply fee and there was plenty of colors to play with.  After a couple of days work I had 25 studies done that really did make a kind of grouping in themselves.  I'm not quite sure what I am going to do with them but they are a nice start.

Looking around the room at the end of the class, there was  a very diverse body of work going.  Some people choose to work on the techniques she taught, some worked on big projects, some just played around abstractly.  It was kind amazing all the different directions we took.

Quietly walking back to my room on the last night I marveled at so many little things about the week that make QBL special.....the patience Jeannette showed me when demonstrating how to sew a seam for the third time,,,,how good the hand cut fries were at lunch...meeting up with old friends and hearing that their year went well....the 6 full days of just being with people that understand what I do.

It really was a good week.