Nancy Crow Quilting Course

Back from the quilting course in the Northern Drakensberg, South Africa. What a wonderful experience and a huge learning curve. We learnt about lines, shapes and their proportion to the background - how lines form shapes etc. Much like positive and negative space. It is a design course - certainly the most advanced I have ever done.

We arrived at the conference centre on Sunday afternoon, unpacked and started work bright and early monday morning. Nancy did not say much before sending us off to discover the exciting world of "lines, lines and more lines". Our brief was to produce 18 pieces using different types of lines by 9am the next morning (Tuesday). What a journey of discovery, a bit nerve wracking as well. The following is a photograph of one of my pieces from this task:


 

The following morning we were tasked with doing a piece 4 feet x 6 feet (1.2m x 1.8) using our chosen colour palette and "lines, lines and more "lines". We had to have the piece completed by 9am Wednesday morning for a critique. (Help). The start of my piece.

This is as far as I got.... still a large amount of work to do.

On Wednesday morning we were tasked with making a sampler with at least 7 different shapes from a "C" curve to a "S" shape to a circle. I have not started this as I took Nancy down to see the Drakensberg Boys Choir perform. What an amazing experience. It was totally worth going to see the boys sing especially as one of my boys is in the school. :LOL

On Thursday morning we woke up to the start of the major work - an 8 foot by 8 foot piece. This is what it looked like when I started work. We had about an hour to put the following frame work together and then start working on the detail.
















 


This photograph shows the final detail of the top right hand quadrant - It's all I managed to do in 2 days. My sewing skills need to be radically improved......

The first thing I need to do tomorrow morning is organise myself a design wall and then I can finish these 2 projects. I can't wait..

For photos of the area that I stayed in see the following blog : http://slicesofafrica.blogspot.com

Quilting Adventure

I am off on a quilting adventure - a quilting course in the Drakensberg mountains with Nancy Crow. Not sure if I am excited or just plain scared or both. Should be fun and the scenery is beautiful. I hope to come back with stacks of photos.

Yet more Postcards

Fabric Postcards are wonderful. This is a monochromatic landscape - well supposed to be :LOL of a winter sunset in rural South Africa. Because of all the burning fires, there is a lot of smoke and the sunsets get very red.

Website design

I have just finished building my first website for a client and what is more exciting is that I used a photo of the sea that I took in Mozambique for the background. You can see the website at www.pacificchiller.co.za

Shapes and colours - more tales from an infrequent traveler

Last Saturday, I had to take my daughter to Underberg - a town in the foot hills of the Drakensberg. The winter landscape is awesome. The different shades of brown are amazing. It gives a different shape to the mountains, hills and farmlands than in summer. In summer everything seems to be the same colour green. There is a lot of snow on the mountains - we are having a cold winter this year. This photo shows all the snow on the mountain - It was taken at sunset



There were a lot of bush fires burning. I could not stop to take photos but if you can imagine a round hill with one half brown and the other half black with a red fire line running through the middle of the hill.

The Creative Journey

Adding to yesterday's post titled "The Journey", my very good friend and author, Elana Bregin, suggested that life is not only a journey but a creative journey. How true....I never thought of it this way before......now, if I could just remember this and learn to take each day as it comes... How much easier life would be.

On another note, I was thinking yesterday that the 2 best things that I have ever bought are my camera and my sewing machine. I am so grateful to have both - they open up such wonderful avenues for being creative. It is awesome to be able to take photos and then use them in my quilting.......

The Journey

Life is about the journey - the process along the way. Now why is that so difficult to remember......it's about taking each day as it comes and doing the best you can for each day, not worrying about the rest....So simple when you think about it, but so difficult to implement (well, for me at any rate)