The Best Reward.... Ever!

I've been teaching a two-day workshop called Improvisational Bead Embroidery for more than 25 years now, teaching both techniques and process to more than 2,000 women + a few men. In every workshop, there are one or two students who really stand out, who learn the stitches quickly and easily, and who embrace the idea of working intuitively. Often, they are the quiet ones, the ones who focus on their work and get a lot done in class, who don't ask many questions, but who pay rapt attention to all that I say and demonstrate.

Sometimes a promising student sends me an email with a photo of the project they started in class, which I always love to see. But the most gratifying reward of all, the thing that makes all the prep time and all the travel time worth while, is when I meet a student again and they bring the finished piece, the one they started in class, to show me in person. That is the best reward for teaching... ever!

Last week, I taught a group of 19 ladies from the Camano Island Quilt Guild, a very lively and talented group, many of whom will make me proud in the future! See how focused and hard-working they are?

One of the students, Becki Applegate, of Whidbey Island, took this same workshop one year ago when I taught it here on San Juan Island. At the time, she was definitely one of those stand out students, and she later joined the Bead Journal Project, continuing to make compelling bead embroideries.

When I asked her why she was taking the workshop for a second time, she said she was tired at the end of the second day (a year ago), and had not been able to absorb some of the things I taught, especially the finishing techniques. This time, since she already knew all the basics, she figured she could conserve her energy for that last segment about how to finish various types of bead embroidery, how to frame, line, back, sculpt, etc.

That is gratifying to a teacher, for sure! But even more gratifying, in this case, was seeing the finished project, Becki started in my class a year ago. She gave me permission to photograph it and show it here. Below is the front of her beaded pouch. It snaps closed at the bottom center.

Below is the back of the pouch. I especially love the patchwork design with the gradation from orange to yellow beads. As always, you can click on any of the pictures to open a "slide show" of enlarged versions, which better reveal the details.

Below is the front and back, how it looks when the pouch is open and laid pocket-side down, showing all of the bead embroidery. Becki uses many size 15 seed beads, which is how she gets so much detail into a small pouch (about  3.5 inches wide).

If you flip it over, you can see the pocket inside, suitable for a special treasure or photo. The pouch is lined with Ultrasuede Soft Premium, a synthetic leather. The color is "Carrot."

I couldn't be happier or more proud of Becki and the beautiful bead embroidery she is doing!

Fetish Doll Celebrates Beading Workshop

I just had to post these pictures of a fetish doll made by Peggy Kemp, who is organizing the bead embroidery workshop I'm teaching here on San Juan Island March 30-April 1.

Isn't she just as fun as can be? Her name is "13 Fishes and a Turtle". I think Peggy's intent is that she and the 12 other students in the class are the fishes. Am I the turtle? She didn't say, but if I am, it's OK with me.

We still have 3 openings in the class. Won't you join us? We are going to bead, learn, share, eat, shop, and have a blast. The island will be perfect by then... flowering, ornamental trees, daffodils, hellebore, and beautiful green everywhere by that time. Of course we won't have a lot of time to enjoy the out of doors because we'll be beading. That's OK though... when I remember to remind everybody to stretch, we can at least get up and look out the windows.

To find out more about this happy event, you can go here or here.

Still Have a Couple of Openings!

  

Bead Embroidery

Beautiful San Juan Island

March 30-April 1

Join me, Peggy Kemp from Hawaii, and 12 other beaders

for a fun-filled two and a half days

intensive bead embroidery workshop

bead sharing

and beadwork show-tell-solve session!

Spring Getaway! 

As of today,

we still have a couple of openings!

Email Peggy for information

or to register.

More information
here on Beadlust!

Spring Getaway - The Isle of Beads!

It's all Peggy Kemp's idea... her dream comes true March 30 through April 1, 2013... something to cure the winter blues for sure... and YOU are invited too!


Two and a half days to have fun with beads - learning, practicing and creating - on lovely San Juan Island - at the friendly Earthbox Inn and Spa! You can bring your partner, friend or spouse to enjoy spring wildflowers, hikes, kayaking, bicycle exploring on San Juan Island, while YOU play with beads.

March 29 - evening

Gathering at a local shop (yes, of course, beads) to meet me and the other students, and enjoy some light refreshments.

March 30-31 - all day + optional evenings + delicious, hot, catered lunch on both days

Improvisational Bead Embroidery, my favorite in the whole-world workshop to teach.

Learn all of the basic techniques for sewing beads on fabric, including high relief and textural variations, bezels, edge stitches, and fringing techniques. Practice them on a sampler similar to the one below.

Then begin to work on a small piece of bead embroidery, which can be made into a pouch, appliqued on a large bag, framed, sewn into a quilt, or one of many other possibilities. Throughout the two days, I will be teaching how to work improvisationally, without a plan or drawing, in a way that is fun and very empowering!

April 1 - morning

 Beady Problem Solutions

This optional half-day session is an opportunity for you to bring, show, and discuss your own work. I am prepared to assist you with "problem pieces," perhaps beadwork you like except that something doesn't "feel right," or pieces that you don't know how to finish. Bring any type of beadwork to this session.

Register now! Enrollment is limited to 12 students to provide for one-on-one instruction for every student.

Cost:

$250 for Gathering and Improvisational Bead Embroidery workshop

$50 for Beady Problem Solutions

$275 for both of the above (save $25)

To get all the details and/or to register, please contact:

The workshop organizer - Peggy Kemp - email

Join us... we'll have a blast!

Anne Bagby & Lynne Perrella - Clown Workshop

It was my over-the-top-LUCKY day when I learned Anne Bagby and Lynne Perrella were coming to my island (little, remote San Juan Island) to teach a 4-day workshop! Their theme was clowns... they would alternate teaching, two days each.

I've taken classes from both of them previously (at Art Fest), learning much of what I know about painting with acrylics and collage from them. I've incorporated painted, decorative papers into all of my beaded books. Above all, I owe to them the techniques of layering and glazing.

I want to write more posts about the workshop, which just finished yesterday, and show some of the teachers' and other students' work. But for today, I'm just going to show my own work.

Day 1

Anne taught some methods for drawing faces, and how to alter a picture of a face (perhaps taken from a magazine) to suggest a clown's face. We used white oil markers to make the faces white. I had two types. The whiter face was done with a Sharpie marker. Some of the other students used color pencils to shade the faces and make them look realistic. Since I've never even attempted to draw a face, I just stuck to outlines this time. But I envied the more realistic look.

Clown with Beard

Using painted 5x7 canvases, we collaged papers over the surface as a background for our "clowns." On other canvases, we simply sponged paint on the surface to give it a more complex look.

Lee and Madeline

We cut a "lump" out of painted papers from our stash (or Anne's stash) for the body, and used matte medium to attach it to the canvas.

Clown with Red Hat

Finally we added the face. To complete the pictures some students added ephemera, such as lace, buttons, etc. to make them more clown-like.

Babushka

 I chose to keep them simple, but did glaze most of them to soften the look.

Day 2

Lynne taught how to work with a toner-copy of a photograph, how to make it our own using her new favorite medium, Portfolio brand water soluble oil pastels (24-colors). She showed us how to cut stencils and masks to enable coloring in certain areas and to make lines like the shoulders on my painting below.

Alfred Tomkin

Using gel medium we attached our pastel-worked faces on 8 x 10 canvas boards, which in my case, were pre-painted. Lynne showed us how to collage papers and work with paint and/or pastel layers to integrate the faces with the background. Since my face images were face only (no neck, shoulder, or body), I had to create those parts with paint and pastels.

Lilly Tomkin

The images I used were family photos - my great grandmother, Lilly Tomkin, and great grandfather, Alfred Tomkin. I never knew them, but always loved these pictures of them. I just couldn't make them into clownish, clowns. So I just suggested the clown idea with colors and the use of the diamonds (harlequin) motif, while trying to preserve the dignified portrait look.

 Day 3

Anne taught four different methods for creating masks and stencils of figures. She also taught us how to make complex papers, which are collages of various painted papers, used then as a single sheet of painted paper. Her work using these methods is phenomenal (as you'll see in a future post), but I struggled hugely this day.

Cab Calloway

We were supposed to do four figures. I only did one. His face is one I drew on day 1... again, I wished I knew how to shade the features. One student was using water soluble pencils to shade her work, and the results were stunning.

A problem for me was that I couldn't find a way to relate, personally, to the faces and figures, to care about them, to find meaning in doing them. This one, for example, didn't have meaning for me until last evening when I showed it to my husband. He said it reminded him of the musician, Cab Calloway. OK... now I like it better.

Day 4

Lynne worked with us to pull it all together... everything we learned in the previous three days. The project was to make a vertical or horizontal panel with several faces.

Directors

What fun it was to turn a photo of my husband, our Siamese cat, and my grandmother into a painted-collaged piece! I call it "Directors," because these are three influences that in different ways direct my life journey. The night before, I re-read favorite chapters in one of my favorite books, "Improv Wisdom," by Patricia Ryan Madson. Brilliant! It really freed me to have fun, to play, to let go of "doing it right." I love the results!

More pictures from the class soon. Don't forget, you can click on Lilly and Alfred (day 2) to enlarge and see more details.

Workshop with Karin Franzen!!!!

When I saw the above wall hanging by Karin Franzen at the La Conner Quilt and Textile Museum, I nearly swooned! My reaction was partly because of the subject matter, fire weed and cranes, so realistically, yet so compellingly portrayed and partly because the transparent quality of the layers of silk organza used in her hangings gives a sense of ephemeral spirituality to her work.

It's a whole day trip at a cost of about $100 to go to the Museum from our island, yet I managed to go three times to see Karin's work during her exhibition there. No wonder, when she emailed that she was teaching a three-day workshop, I HAD to do it. What follows is a little about her techniques and a little about my experiences in the workshop.


Above is one of her current pieces. Her work has evolved, as you can see if you take a good look at her gallery (here), from being quilts (layers stitched together) with borders to her current pieces which are layers of hand-dyed silk organza joined at the top with the subject and background sewn partly on the front and partly on the back sides of the organza... no batting, no borders, no quilting...


Here she has flipped up the top (subject) layer of the piece to reveal one of the hand-dyed layers of silk organza.


Here you can see the same piece back-lit by sunlight. Her pieces change entirely depending on the lighting. Wouldn't this be lovely hung as a room divider where it would get front-lit part of the day, back-lit the rest of the day and entirely different lighting at night?


While we're on the subject of this piece, above you can see a detail of the egret, the many little pieces of fabric that she uses to reveal her subject and the stitches that further bring out the details.


And here is the eye. Sometimes Karin uses fabric paints or dyes to create detail, texture, or alter the color of her fabrics. In this case, I think she may have painted the egret's eye.

Below are some pictures showing the steps Karin takes in developing her subjects.

She starts with a good-quality print of a picture, most often one she has taken, of her subject bird or flower. She then takes the image in Photoshop Elements and applies a filter called poster edges to the image. Then using a sheet of transparent acetate, she traces around the edges to create a cutting pattern. In the picture below, she has outlined the edges right on the image, but that's not how we did it in class.


The next step is to reproduce the acetate tracing on plain paper using a copy machine to get the desired size. This will become the cutting pattern for the fabrics.


Karin's method for creating the subject is to fuse bits of fabric to a very thin piece of non-fusible interfacing. She uses Pellon 805 Wonder Under (nothing else will do!) to fuse fabric to the interfacing. Below you can see the bird outline traced from the cutting pattern onto non-fusible interfacing. Now we're ready to begin fusing!


Starting with the medium value colors, select appropriate fabric. Take a small piece of Wonder Under and place it paper side down over the subject cutting pattern. Use a fine point marker to trace the shape on the glue side of the fusible. Cut around the shape, leaving a 1/4" edge. Iron to wrong side of fabric. When cool, peel off the paper backing. You will be able to see the traced outline on the glue side. Cut out the shape. Place your non-fusible tracing over the cutting pattern and align the cut piece. Iron to fuse it to the interfacing.


Following the same steps, trace, fuse, cut and fuse the fabrics of lighter value next.


Next do the dark fabrics. I didn't say this above, because there was already a lot of information, but the first fabrics applied, generally the medium value fabrics, should be cut about 1/8" larger than the actual area. These pieces will be overlapped by the more precisely cut darker or lighter fabrics in the next steps. Below the little chickadee is now recognizable.


Last, cut and fuse the small detail pieces to complete the subject.


When all the details are in place, the next step is to stitch around all the fabrics using a free-motion foot on your sewing machine. The stitching is used to keep all the bits of fabric in place and to enhance the detail. You can see this stitching in the picture above of the egret's eye.

After the stitching is complete, Karin cuts around the outside edge of the subject, cutting away all of the interfacing that isn't covered with fabric and stitching.

She then places her subject on a piece of silk organza and stitches it in place. Finally, she hand-dyes other layers of organza, fusing background fabric pieces directly to the organza and hand stitching on them to enhance design elements, and combines layers with her subject layer to achieve the look she wants. She then stitches the layers across the top and mounts them on a hanging rod.

Obviously, I've simplified her methods greatly here, as I do not intend this as any kind of tutorial. Indeed, in three long days of class, we only touched the surface of how she creates her pieces.

The first day of class we did some sketching and used our sketch to create a background for our subjects. Her suggestion was that we sketch a dream, a childhood memory, or a childhood fantasy. And then, using the same methods outlined above, cutting and fusing fabrics to an interface backing, we were to make a piece from the sketch. Below you can see mine, from a sketch of a childhood fantasy about being a ballet dancer.


Here it is again showing a layer of dyed organza over the background and the picture of a northern flicker, which is my chosen subject for my class piece.


Not having a good idea of the whole when I started, my background did not seem to relate very well with my subject.

The second day, we spent a lot of time evaluating the backgrounds we had made, trying to find a way to make them work with our subject, deciding on which organza to use and how big to make our subject. At the end of day two and for all of day three, we worked on our subjects. I learned several things right away:

- It's so easy to iron the wrong side of fusible, making a terrible mess on the iron.
- It's so easy to trace on the wrong side of the fusible, making a mirror image piece.
- It's so easy to iron the fusible to the right side of the fabric, making a mirror image piece.
- Cutting out intricate little pieces is not very easy.
- Knowing which piece to cut bigger so they can be overlapped later isn't easy.
- Keeping track of which pieces you've already applied isn't easy.
- It takes concentration, concentration, concentration to get it right, and at the same time, it's a bit like paint-by-number, something I never enjoyed much.

Perhaps this type of work is all about me deriving great pleasure from looking at Karin's pieces and not at all about me doing it. At the end of a whole day, I didn't have much to show for my efforts. Below you can see that my flicker still needs spots, two feet, a wing, a tail and lots of TLC stitching.


My plan is to make the background a separate piece, to make the subject for it a rabbit which will be placed on the organza so that it covers the white bunny on the background and be much more realistic. The white bunny will be its spirit or totem energy.

For the flicker, I plan to make a new background of madrona trees in berry phase. The flickers come to our property every year to feed on the abundant madrona berries. The subject layer will include a madrona branch, some leaves and berries as well as the bird.

We'll have to see if I actually do these two pieces. For me they are character building. Also, if you know my work, you know that it's quite abstract. Even the few somewhat representational pieces I've done are not very realistic. I'm fairly certain that my primary role here is to be a huge fan of Karin's, to swoon at each new piece...

In case you're still interested, I thought I'd end with a few photos of other student's work. (My apologies, I only took my little camera and had to contend with the affects of indoor lighting sources.)

The first photo is Lunnette Higdon-Hertel's swan. She's the only one in class to finish fusing her subject. Like mine, her background story didn't quite match her subject. In the background review, it was suggested she turn her background upside down, which is how it's shown below. However, she plans to make a new and more appropriate background.








Useful TIP for Beaders

In order to stabilize the silk organza so that you can sew on it, Karin taught a very useful method using Solvy.


She tore off small pieces (4" x width of roll) of Solvy and one by one dissolved them in about a cup of warm water, stiring all the while. When the mixture was slightly thickened, like pancake syrup, she poured it into a spray bottle. She pinned the organza on a piece of insulation foam covered with plastic and then sprayed it with the Solvy mixture. When it dried (2-3 hours later), the organza was impregnated with Solvy, giving it a stable hand for stitching. After the stitching is complete, she simply puts the piece in a tub of water to rinse the Solvy away.

I believe this method might work well to stabilize cotton or silk fabrics for bead embroidery! I now use acid-free interleaving paper under the fabric as a stabilizer, which works fine. However, I'm going to try the Solvy method as soon as I get off-island to buy some. I'll let you know!