"Crosscurrents" Workshop with Rosalie Dace: Day One

I feel so fortunate to be taking the 5-day Crosscurrents design workshop with S. African art quilter, Rosalie Dace.  What an incredible teacher!  The workshop is at the Stitchin' Post in Sisters, OR.  In the weeks leading up to this workshop, our assignment was to pay special attention to the shapes x and +, which have intersecting lines, and collect images of these shapes.

My design wall: Day one

Day One was all about PLAYING, EXPERIMENTING,
and trying out different ways of designing with intersecting lines. Tomorrow we'll begin our actual design compositions, but Day One was all about exploring.


   
 Rosalie brought a wonderful selection of images that featured intersecting lines.  I sketched a few ideas from them, but went back to a previous little sketch in my design journal.  Here's how it looks now that I've interpreted it in fabric:

My first piece.  (Ignore the dark line on the right; I don't have a photo-editing program on this laptop!)

Exploring that idea further, I had a good start on my next piece.   Then Rosalie came around and asked the magical question   " . . . what if . . .?"  She gave me that extra little push that I needed, resulting in this piece:

Designing in layers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I knew about "what if . . .?" but now realize I hadn't been asking it enough when designing art quilts.



 I began one more composition before quitting time.  It's not finished yet, but here's where I left off:

3rd design, still in progress.

I'm very excited for Day 2!  And something special happens Thursday evening -- Jean Wells, who's also in this class, has invited all of us to her house for dinner that evening.  Then at 8pm, it's time for Oregon Art Beat's season premiere (Ore. Public Broadcasting); one of the two featured stories is the one about Jean, filmed this past July!  I was privileged to be at the filming as one of her "students" working through the critique process.  It will be so much fun to see the results of that day's filming, done in the classroom and at her home studio!