Too much….and I tried

I am overwhelmed at the moment; too many things have happened in a short time period. Nothing bad, nothing dramatic, just too. much.

I switched from Android to Iphone last week and that consumed days. It’s not an easy transition. Rule: pleeeeease don’t tell me how much I’m going to love my iphone. It’s. a. phone. And reeeeally don’t tell me how easy it is. It’s a foreign language. Yes, I’m grumpy. I do want this phone; there are things I want that it has. I made the right choice for me overall, but what a huge time suck. I’d rather be creating!

I took 2 exciting-to-me classes online last week as part of the Mancuso Online Quiltfest. Both were 3 hr classes. This I know about 3 hr classes: they are a taste of something. It’s hard to get a lot of content into 3 hrs. I know, I teach 3 hr classes. I was surprised by how much I got out of each of these classes.

I took Maria Shell‘s Color for Quilters class. It was fabulous. I don’t know how she put so much content at a digestible pace, in 3 hrs. I am not a complete novice at color, but I have much to learn.

The “after school homework” was to create a 9-patch by randomly selecting one each of a color prompt and a design prompt. Example: 9-patch, split complimentary. I drew square-in-a-square + 12 colors. Maria has studied with Nancy Crow who adds pink and turquoise to the basic colors.

I was to take 4 neutrals plus my choice of 2’s of other colors. I chose to construct a block on paper. I was there to learn color, not piecing. If I had more time it would have been fun to piece! I settled for one block with pasted strips. Tada:

I controlled the values and then adjusted according to my taste as I got to the center. It was a fun exercise and I did learn a lot from her lecture/demo also; I ended up with 2 pages of notes. I like my single square!

BTW, one thing I do when I take classes or have appointments, I type up my notes. You’ve heard about that research that shows we only retain 5% (allegedly) of what we hear, and it goes up exponentially if we add writing, doing, etc? Well just the act of typing out my notes puts it in my little brain.

I also took an Improv English Paper Piecing class from Michael Eason. It was excellent – Michael is super creative and open to new ideas; he will be teaching at QuiltCon. I was totally intrigued by the concept – who knew you could improv EPP? Michael had some fabulous examples. From his site:

And a screen shot from his class (with permission) of a mock up of a proposed quilt. He had done one of the quadrants and this is how it will look when he adds 3 others:

Isn’t that awesome?

Well, then I tried it…. He walked us through how to design an 8.5″ x 11″ piece with straight lines. Then almost offhandedly he suggested that you could also use a curved ruler. I ran with that:

I randomly chose the “Leaves Galore” ruler and a regular  straight edge.

and got this. Cool, no?

And if I repeated it 3 more times, I could get all kinds of variations; this is one. I just love the way this turned out.

Well then that had to be pieced, right?

I got this far, one section, and I hit a wall. I tried twice. He suggested heavy paper for the base. My first choice was too wimpy. The second was stiff enough but would not release the glue. I ended up with paper in my seams. BTW, when I took out the paper, those stitches relaxed and did not show.

It was also difficult to whipstitch a curved seam. The paper is very stiff. The upper right part in the photo is the end of the seam I started. See how far the edges are apart? That paper is too stiff to be able to accomplish that seam. I kind of eked it out, but it was janky. Clearly, my materials needed some work.

Just for giggles, I include this photo. I know, it will take you a minute to figure out what the heck I did. When you do, you’ll giggle.

So I had the wrong base, possibly the wrong glue, and the aggressive curves were not a match for my rudimentary skill set. I made several decisions that were not the best.

Bottom line: if I had stuck to a more reasonable pattern, this might have worked beautifully. I like the idea of this kind of EPP. I like the idea of hand piecing something, having something portable like that. I will return to this at a later date, but not now.

Both these classes were great and I learned a lot in each, especially given the short time frame. I now need to turn my attention to all the other things I want to do: a quilt for my son and new DIL, tape 2 new classes for Creative Spark (trapunto and feathers), I have 2 competition quilts that I have finally decided how to finish, I have the bones for a fabulous quilted coat (that is on the back burner for now), and I am studying for judge certification.

That is sooooo much to do and I want to do it all now! This is a Good Problem. I wish there were 2 or 3 of me. I’ll just keep chipping away at what is before me.

I’ll be linking up:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday