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Susan Shie
“Diary Quilt Paintings:
Don’t Forget to Write”
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This
class is almost entirely about painting (with writing and drawing),
with a little bit of extremely simple machine quilting, and NOT AT ALL
about hand sewing or beading. You can see this new way I’ve made
my art quilts since the start of 2005, in the galleries in my website www.turtlemoon.com.
It
doesn’t matter if you think you can draw or write or paint, or
not. I will help you open up to your ability to let things flow
out of your inner self onto the fabric. You did that quite well
when you were little, and you can do it again! We’ll
work with white cotton fabric, fabric paints, markers and airpens
(optional), and will each create one new painting per day of
class. You will have at least one piece turned into a quilt by
the time you leave, using my Crazy Grid style of machine sewing (not
measured). The sizes of your paintings will vary, but figure 18”
x 22” as an average size. (Thinking in a childlike way, we won’t
need to measure.)
If you want to stay completely
away from the airpen, since it’s a tool that requires some fussing,
then you can leave it alone and use markers to write and draw all
week. Don’t miss this class just because of a tool that scares
you! I teach airpen one-on-one, so I hope you’ll at least
let me show you what this amazing little gizmo can do! All of us
will be using markers to draw and write with more than we use the
airpen, but if you want to learn it, you’ll have time in class.
In this class, I’ll explain how I think when I’m painting and writing
on my work, how I try to stay in an innocent, non-analytical mindset,
and let the ideas and images flow onto the cloth, playfully and
unjudged. I’ll help you learn to stay intuitive and creative, instead
of worrying about whether you’re messing up!
The
whole class will work together to create a big list of possible
themes for our work, and then vote one in for the group theme for each
day’s painting. Examples of themes are: Kitchen rituals;
Friendships; My family; My hopes for the future. But these are
just examples. Who knows what the class will come up
with!? And each student will be allowed to not follow the
theme the group comes up with each day, if she prefers to do her own
thing!
I am much more interested in pictorial
storytelling in my work than in the sewing processes. I was
always a painter who happened to also sew, and if paintings on
stretched canvas weren’t so hard to transport, I might be doing them
yet. But quilts are flexible, wonderful to hold and touch, hang
well on walls without frames, and photograph more easily than paintings
on stretched canvas do.
I’ll demo turning
a painting into a Crazy Grid quilt, using the simple sandwiching method
I created, and quilting a funky grid intuitively. You’ll turn one
of your class paintings into a similar machine sewn quilt in class,
unless you want to wait til you get home to put down the paints and
start sewing.
Join me in diary and story telling via artmaking and learn to be relaxed and happy while creating your own personal work.
MATERIALS LIST
SEWING
MACHINE: You need one. It can be a fairly simple machine, as
we’re just straight stitching, but if you have a walking foot, put it
on, as it helps. Make sure your machine is running well, that you know
how to use and maintain it, and that it has its tools and oil with it.
Bring some sewing machine threads you like for quilting and a pack of
machine needles you like for simple quilting.
FABRIC
--Kona
or Kona-like cotton, white, PFD (prepared for dyeing):
bring at least 1 yard for paintings. I use Kona-like PDF cotton
from Test Fabrics. www.testfabrics.com. This is their cotton
#493, their, 60 x 60 cotton sheeting, at $4.39/m, sold by the meter,
not by the yard. It’s 55” wide. I think the 60 x 60 refers
to thread count in the weave. It’s slightly heavier than the Kona
I was getting from Lunn Fabrics, who closed down in 2005, and it takes
airpen applied fabric paint line absorption really well for writing. If
you get this wide cotton, I think one meter will be enough. If
you just buy white, medium weight cotton that’s not PFD, then wash,
dry, and iron it, to prepare it for painting.
--2 or 3 plain, white
or light colored old flat sheets for absorbent drop cloth under
painting, while you paint, and for paint rags.
--Backing
fabric: At least four one yard pieces to choose from, to sandwich
and quickly quilt a painting in the last part of the class. I
love light colored, mottled hand dyed fabrics (which my writing will
show up on well, for the border), but pick what you like and then see
what goes with your painting. Backing fabric must be woven
cotton, and about 8” larger than the painting in both length and width,
to allow for the self border we’ll do.
BATTING: Bring enough batting
to quilt one of your paintings in class. To be really safe, you
can bring a crib quilt size, so you don’t run short.
Standard thickness of any cotton batt will be fine. I’m now using
Poly-fil’s bamboo and cotton mix batting, so you may want to get some
of that. Before I was using Warm and White.
PAINTS: Bring Jacquard
Textile Colors (a very good transparent fabric paint, found at Dharma
Trading Co., Dick Blick, or Jerry’s Artorama online) or other good, not
opaque fabric paints. (Any good, not opaque fabric paint brands will
work fine, but do not bring textile inks or silk paints, which are too
runny. Regular fabric paints are all interchangeable.) I suggest
bringing 2.25 oz bottles of Jacquard Textile Colors paint, including
yellow, goldenrod, orange, true red, apple green, emerald green, sky
blue, and violet. Also colorless extender, which is used to lighten
colors. You can choose to add other colors and black, or to vary the
colors you buy for the class. If you think you’ll keep using a
lot of paint after class, buy 8 oz bottles, if you like, since they are
a better deal, per ounce. Order the fabric paints well before class, as
they are often not all in stock when you order from Dharma. Put your
name on all your bottles, at least with tape. If you’re flying, wrap
the bottle lid edges with electrical tape, to keep them from leaking,
and put them into Ziploc bags.
BRUSHES : I’ll bring the flat boar
bristle brushes I use, for the class to use. I use the long
“brites” – flat tipped, stiff boar bristle brushes used mostly for
painting with oils and acrylics. The cheap ones are as good as the
expensive ones, I think. They all wear down fairly fast, but will get
you through this class just fine. I use tiny widths to about 1/2 “
width. I never use the round tipped brushes.
If you need super
fine detail brushes, you can bring some of the very small brushes sold
for fabric painting, the ones with stiff white nylon bristles. You can
get some nice small, flat ones, to do fine detail work on your
painting, but make sure they’ll stay stiff after you rinse the sizing
out of the bristles. Forget watercolor brushes! You’re welcomed
to email or call me about what to get. Brushes must be very stiff, or
they just drag on the fabric.
MARKERS: Buy 1 - 2 new Rub-a Dub
Laundry Markers by Sharpie in black, fine point (that’s all they come
in.) These are NOT regular Sharpies, and regular Sharpies are bad
for on fabric. Rub-a-Dubs are notoriously hard to find in stores,
so google “Rub-a-Dub laundry markers” and check enough sites to find a
good price. Find these online, or at big office supply stores or their
online sites. (You need plenty of new markers for the lines to
stay very crisp and rich, as the fabric wears down the points.) Bring a
new Sharpie black ultra fine line marker, too, if you want to do very
fine detail work. Must all be new markers. Bring one
Painters paint marker in black, fine or medium tip, and a Ziploc bag to
store it in after it’s opened, so it doesn’t dry out.
STRAIGHT PINS in a pincushion, sharp SCISSORS.
A
9 x 12” or so SKETCHBOOK to write and draw in, and a small, inexpensive
set of fine point WATER BASED MARKERS, to be used for sketching on
paper, not for your paintings on fabric. Crayola or RoseArt
markers are fine, for instance. Crayola makes a great set of 50
markers, fine-line, that is cheap and good quality.
OPTIONAL: A
package of middle sized (1” or so) safety pins for quilt basting.
The bent ones that look like boomerangs are my favorites, because they
go into quilting layers more easily. Bring your camera and its
charger and batteries! Bring a few music CDs for us to listen to
in class – mark with your name. Bring a few pix of your home,
studio, family, pets, to share with the rest of us, so we can know more
about each other. Bring a couple of pieces of your art, or pix of it.
I
will have some respirators for heatsetting the paintings, if we can’t
do that outside. If you are too claustrophobic to wear a respirator,
you don’t have to do heat setting. Some of us will volunteer to do
it. I’ll bring the brushes, as I said. I will provide
all the airpen equipment and the black paint we use it the
airpens. Don’t bring an airpen, even if you already have one, and
please wait to buy one for yourself until after the class, in case you
decide you don’t want one.
Class fee: $5.00 – $20.00 to be paid
to instructor, depending on airpen use and my brushes wear and tear.
Mainly I’ll charge for use of my airpens and the paint we run through
them. So your fee will depend on if and how much you use airpen,
though you will do at least some writing and drawing with markers, due
to time constraints, even if you want to only do airpen. That just
isn’t possible in a big class. And remember you don’t have to use
airpen at all. I’ll bring at least two airpens and black Jacquard
paint for them. You’ll bring your own paints for brushing in the
colors.
If you have any questions about class, the following is contact info for your instructor:
Susan Shie
2612 Armstrong Dr
Wooster, OH 44691-1806
Home: 330-345-5778
Click Here to Download Workshop Registration Form
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