Here We Go!

Well we've completed our first weekend which was great fun but exhausting! Above is the view from college - unfortunately we moved classrooms on Sunday so we don't see this out of our window now but it is a lovely part of the world. In fact I love it so much I've decided my theme for the Research for Design module will be 'North Yorkshire Landscapes'. I'll be trying to use my limited artistic ability and a range of materials to explore images which could lead to quilts. I started my sketchbook off on Saturday with a photo and a couple of really simple pieces:

Photo taken at Brimham Rocks near Pately Bridge

Watercolour pencil sketch washed with water to blend the colours. Mary is much better at this type of thing than me. She did some wonderful paintings based on her photos of National Parks in the USA and very generously talked me through her method. I'll have to practise!

I painted paper with watercolours then tore them up and arranged them for this collage piece. I may draw some details on this later.

On Sunday we mainly worked on stitch samples for our machine embroidery module. Our tutor encouraged us to have a go at stitching with automatic machine stitches onto textured card which we'd coloured with wax crayon. Then we cut it up and pieced it with some painted cotton rag paper she'd brought along. Here's my 'crazy quilt'.

I was really pleased with this! I actually only used one feather stitch for the decoration on this (number 49 on my Bernina 440) but varied the length and width and used a variety of threads. I'll have to mount it on another paper as all our samples have to be the same size for this module. We have to make 3 samples to show how we have experimented with a single automatic stitch so I did start another piece using fabric. I'll show that when it's done.