Dancing with Irene
And a final project from last year which i saved till last.
Irene Roderick is the Irene in question. She is an artist who moved on to quilting a few years ago. She has a special technique unique to her called "dancing with the wall" It involves a sewing machine, a pile of fabric and a design wall. The idea is that you simply make up pieces of improv using the fabric at hand and then put them on the wall-the dancing is the part where you are going back and forward from sewing machine to design wall (there is no mention of the stage when you just sit there, staring at the wall, wondering what the hell you are doing....)
We did this course over a week. The first night Irene went through the process, referenci
ng her work, which is absolutely stunning-check it out on the link above-and sent us off to play. Two days later she was back to go through the mechanics of sewing together many random pieces of fabric which have now taken over your life. Irene constantly monitored our WhatsApp group, adding encouragement and helpful hints. Two days later we were all back to show what we had achieved. I'm sure no-one will mind me saying that this was somewhat varied! We all met up again 6 weeks later to show our final (or as final as they were going to get) Here are the things that we produced-some more finished than others!
This one belongs to Jo. We has almost as much fun naming these as we did making them. This one so closely resembled a favourite cake which had landed on the floor (?) that it became known as Oops i dropped my battenburg. Although this does rather miss the point that if anybody did drop any cake several of us would have caught it before it got anywhere the floor
This one belongs to Barbara. All those flying geese seemed like a really good idea until the time came to sew the whole thing together. It's known as Flight of the covid geese
This one is Irene's quilt. She put us all to shame by finishing this well before the rest of us even had anything remotely resembling a quilt
This is Juliet's quilt, called Evolution. This went through an initial phase of looking a little gynaecological. Every time Juliet tried to do something about it, she made it even more gynaecological so we just stopped mentioning it
This is Heather's. This went together with considerably less swearing and general angst than the rest. Note the beautiful quilting!
This one belongs to Pam. It went through many different versions of assorted animals, from dragons to this, which was known as Ferdinand the fancy pigeon (or something like that) Rumour has it he migrated to warmer climes and was never seen again
This one belongs to Mags and it's called I've got the blues. This is possibly a reference to how she felt after this class, which she didn't enjoy at all. I still think it's brilliant!
This beauty is by Karen and was a bit of a nightmare to construct. So much so that she resorted to applique for some pieces, leaving some of us to wonder why we hadn't thought of that
This one is by Pauline and is somewhat smaller than the rest. This is mainly down to the fact that she only started making it the night before our six week later review! I like it best this way up, where you can marvel at it's main feature. It has no name, but i think it should be called Decapitation of a llama.
This one is the last. It belongs to me (Cat) and i have no real idea how it ended up looking like this. It's called One angry dwarf and two hundred solemn faces. Just because. Bonus point if you recognise the title.
So that was it. Possibly the most fun, and most inspiring class we will ever do. Irene is still running these classes-info on her website. You should sell your granny if necessary to get yourself a place. I promise you won't regret it.
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