Category / online class/group

by Jacqui

review of 2021

Last year started off well (creatively) as I signed up for a drawing class with Susan Shie called Lucky Drawing # 000. At the time, I didn’t appreciate how much of a benefit this class was to me. It really kick-started me into working solidly on something, rather than wandering around my head, ‘should I or should I not do this?” It definitely pushed me into directions I wasn’t used to or tended to fight against. I used the sketchbook one time after that to record my feelings about the big Freeze in Texas last February. It was brutal. I need to get that sketchbook out again!

Quilting was my main focus last year, as it was in 2020. However, I have got to the stage where I know I don’t want to do traditional quilting, but where do I go next? I started off the year by finishing a UFO, which dated back to when I started to quilt in 2018, my Oops quilt. After that, I did a bit of exploring, beginning with a class curated by Lisa Walton called Aurora. I liked it so much, I did another class with her called Fantastic fusion. It was very similar to another course I had taken at the end of 2020 with Susan Carlson. I did a couple of other small quilts after these classes, and then I did a deep dive into Ruler work quilting. I am an OK free motion quilter. I think my ability to draw makes it easier for me than a lot of quilters. I am not a good piecer which is why I have decided I will not be doing traditional quilts, as they cause me too much stress which takes out the enjoyment for me. Given my recent obsession, it is really no surprise that I was drawn to the preciseness and patterns of ruler work. Ruler work, as the name implies, uses a ‘ruler’ or “template’ so you have more control over the shape and size as you sew. With free-motion sewing, it’s harder to keep the stitching regular and the shapes uniform. Well, that is the theory but both methods require a lot of practice. That is what I ended up doing much of the year! By the end of October, after spending too much money on templates after watching videos on YouTube, I came to the realisation that maybe ruler work quilting wasn’t for me unless (pause) I could find a way of using it in my freeform work which is what I did with 2 of the small quilts I made, Solar and Standing stones on a wall. My breaking point came with a set of placemats and a table runner. They are still waiting to be finished and the truth is, it could be done in a day or so; I am that close. But I hate them!
So, where am I going to go with my quilting in 2022? More freeform and mixed media. I have an idea which, given how slow I work, will take me until we move in 2024, at least! It will be a series of smaller wall quilts that could be hung separately or together. I want to explore painting my own fabric and printing on that fabric. I will use all the skills I have gathered over the last decade with beads and embroidery. It will be exciting and nerve-wracking. It will be FUN!

My very 1st project of the year, which I have already started, is a t-shirt quilt. It’s a practice piece before I tackle the main project, making three wall hangings from the t-shirts of my former daughter-in-law. Her mother gave them to me late last year to share among her family in her memory. This is one project I need to get right!

In November, to drive me out of my now familiar funk (I think it must be a seasonal thing), I began trying out my hand with Zentangles and drawing on the digital drawing tablet my son got me last Christmas.
I began my foray into the digital drawing world by downloading Krita, a professional drawing website. The 1st page was daunting enough, without the thought of drawing, although my nine-year-old granddaughter uses a drawing app all the time! Youtube to the rescue again. One particular video channel was very useful. ‘Learn Krita with Bob Ross’ on the Age of Asparagus channel. It was great fun as well as being a good learning experience.

I do a regular countdown to Christmas project on Instagram, and originally I intended to practice my digital drawing by drawing a day up to the 24th of December. I quickly realised that was way beyond my abilities. The tablet has been put away for now but I fully intend to get back to it once I am back into my routine.

At the same time I was delving into the world of digital drawing/painting, I decided to look at Zentangles. I had some experience of them as I was given an instructional book by one of my kids, a few years ago. I tried it out but the book wasn’t overly inspiring. I noticed that one of my long-time Facebook friends was exploring them and posting the results. I knew it had an aspect of mindfulness that I thought might help with my current state of mind (it helped me stop using sleeping tablets after nearly a decade!). I was only going to do it for a week or so. Yet again, Youtube came up trumps! I have found a few very useful channels and have used them with my drawings. However, they take a long time to complete and on some days, I had to stop or end up frustrated. The opposite of the intended effect! I am doing them in a bullet journal which I have never used dued to the pandemic. Not much to plan when there is so little to do!

The beginning of my Zentangle adventure.

My Christmas project turned out particularly well, although I never quite completed all 24 days as normal! Next year, I will start a few days ahead of December. Then I might complete all 24 days.

5th Dec – 14th Dec
The rest!

That about sums up my year of work. I did forget one period and that was when I signed up to do a free course by Louise Fletcher called finding your joy. Sometimes I feel guilty about not painting anymore. It was an effort to rediscover the love I have for painting. Maybe I will find it again when, or if we move back to Scotland, I hope so. This course did not help in that regard. You can read my posts about my feelings on this program. In my head, it’s forgotten. It’s the art world’s pryamid scheme basically.
The highlight of this dull year (apart from my art, of course) was receiving the people’s choice award at our local quilt guild’s annual show. I loved making this quilt, and yes, I painted it and quilted it on a domestic machine, but the real credit should go to Helen Godden, who designed it.

Quirky Collections designed by Helen Godden.

That is my round up for 2021. Now onward to 2022 with even more success than last year!

by Jacqui

Revamping my website

I decided to add some more pages to my website and change up the design. Unfortunately, it has proved more difficult than I anticipated! I have used WordPress for more years than I care to remember, and I have toyed with the idea of changing to Wix or Squarespace. Then I try them out and hate the thought of starting anew. My main driver in the quest for change is that we (my husband) will be downsizing our house in two years, and I look around my art room, sigh, and think, what am I going to do with all this stuff! I have no idea, but making a huge bonfire out of it might be one solution!

I was definitely in a funk after my disastrous venture with ‘finding my joy’ I did a lot of practising with the Westalee rulers. I watch a lot of their videos, and I would get excited about another template. They are expensive, though. More than paint and canvas! I signed up for one of their free classes for a set of placemat designs. I totted up the cost of the templates (I have a couple), and if I brought the whole lot, I would be out of pocket to the tune of $305. However, you are better off getting their sets with the complete size range, which would be a staggering $990. Fortunately, most of the instructors only use one or two rulers for each project

My 1st actual project after that debacle was a piece based on a NASA picture featuring the birth of a star. I started it while I was doing the painting practice:

  1. I used Mistyfuse to create a painterly collage of fabric.
  2. I used a couple of Westalee templates to enhance the spiral effect of the collage. After that, I embellished it with some thicker embroidery thread and bobbly yarn.
  3. I added some beads.

Solar

Once I finished that, I signed up for a free class from the grandly titled Westalee Design University. It is excellent, and the projects are well priced. The designer I chose to do a course with was Angela Attwood, and it was a templee quilt, a form of reverse applique. It used precisely one template, the 12″ Arc. It was a great practice piece, and I was pleased with the result.

Radiance design by Angela Attwood.

I also did some practising on paper with the templates. Because you are using a ruler foot ( designed to be used with templates) when you are quilting, you have to consider the quarter of an inch that the foot uses. To get around this, you used stitching discs designed for use with a variety of drawing implements. It seems simple enough, but they do tend to slip under the template at times!

Finally, I created another fabric collage with Mistyfuse. I got the idea from a photograph I had taken when we were in Scotland last of some small stones on a wall looking over the sea. It is the direction I am going to continue going forward. I used foil for the first time, plus some paint, beads, quilting, the whole gamut, in other words.

While I wait for a set of templates to arrive, I will continue to redesign this site with additional pages showcasing my past work.

by Jacqui

Finding your Joy Part 2.

I never did get back to the ‘finding your joy’ taster course. It wasn’t exactly a scam as the instructor was very upfront about this being a marketing exercise, but it felt like one. Reading the Facebook discussion which followed as she announced each practice exercise was very distressing. Lots of people became convinced they couldn’t paint as instructed, which made them feel like failures. Who wants to deliberately make an ugly painting, which is what the 2nd exercise was. However, I hung on to the bitter end as I wanted to see the last video call where Louise talked about the 10-week course. Of course, it was about money like anything these days, £895 or $1230 for an 8-week study with two catch up weeks. Last year she had more than 900 people sign up (that might be a marketing ploy, an exaggeration, but given the number of members of this group, it might be even more!). That would add up to a whooping £805,500 for eight weeks! No wonder she has managed to build a beautiful fancy studio in the few years since she started these courses. Since I did this taster course, my Facebook feed has (predictably) been filled with similar adverts, so now I wonder if it is a pyramid scheme like the make-up companies such as Younique or Fields and Rodan.
Above is just my opinion. However, I did come across someone else who felt the same way.
As I didn’t continue with that course, I worked with the Westalee rulers I have recently purchased. I signed up for a class on their University page at Sewsteady.com which featured just one ruler, the 12″ arc template. I will write a separate post about that next.

by Jacqui

Nixon’s Birthday

Okay, I would have written a longer post about this image, but it would have just come across as whiny. That would have been wrong as I enjoyed the class, but by this time, I knew it wasn’t a direction I wanted to follow.

Nixon’s Birthday

Nixon was something that happened when I was a teenager. I was aware of him and Vietnam; however, it was not something that concerned me at the time. I was enjoying life, as many teenagers would. That was my focus, not some misbehaving politician in a country I would never visit. Also, at the time, our nation was going through a tumultuous time, with a miner strike, a three day week while having rolling blackouts, two elections and I needed to learn the square dance to Tiger Feet performed by the pop group Mud.

How to deal with this subject? I decided to relate what was happening in the UK as the Watergate saga played out, leading to Nixon’s resignation in August. I turned 17 that month.

On the sketchbook’s left side, I drew about the miner’s strike and the rolling blackouts that occurred due to the strike. 1973 saw the start of an intensive IRA campaign about the presence of the UK in Northern Island. I remember hearing the bomb that went off in Chelsea Barracks, where several of my school friends lived. Fortunately, none of my friends were injured in that attack, but the continuous attacks left a mark on me for a long time. 1st January 1974 was the first time New Year’s day was a public holiday in the UK. In Scotland, where New Year’s day (Hogmanay) had been a National holiday for a while, Boxing day (26th December) became a National holiday for the 1st time. I also found an article by the Observer on the British viewpoint on the Nixon resignation.


On the right side, I drew about the research I made on the Nixon resignation which I will be honest about, wasn’t much. I also included two cultural things I knew about America at the time. One was a film of a book written by Stephen King. The other was the all-time classic show, Happy Days. Apart from the Watergate scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation, I also researched that he was the primary force behind establishing international relations between China and the world.


In the end, I completed the assignment but to me, it looked like one of those information sheets you get at museums. I wasn’t happy with it. It was all over the place and had no real structure.