Classes

Process VS. Product: How do you learn Best?

| ellenanneeddy

I tend to learn about things when I’m neck-deep in a mess trying to rescue something that has just gone pear-shaped. It becomes a puzzle to solve. Sometimes I get a great solution that I use after that for that issue. Sometimes it’s more of a bandaid and it becomes something I regularly work on remedying, hoping for the right answer. Often there are many answers that vary their results enough to be used periodically.

But it isn’t like I did the piece just to learn something, usually. I get an idea. I create my creature, and then I build his or her world around them. It’s like dancing to a different tune each time. The answers aren’t always the same. But they push you further.

But classroom is different. Classes get divided into process classes and project classes. Most people like a project class. They get to see a lot of techniques, and they get to incorporate them into their piece.

But that’s a lot of pressure to put on one day. Most of my work involves hundreds of processes in one small piece. I am happy to show them all in class. Sometimes that’s what students want. Sometimes they want to create something to take home. Sometimes, sadly, they don’t get as far along as they would like with their project.

So I developed my Stitch Vocabulary Book class. It started with the stitch vocabulary I did in most classes. I’d have students doodle, draw, work with zigzag, stipple, do garnet stitch and sign their name on a 9″ square of cotton. That really includes almost all the techniques I do. After that, they could use that square or another one to practice or try something else.

Straight Stitch

Bobbin Work

The Stitch Vocabulary Book class is 5 squares. It includes Straight Stitch, Zigzag Stitch, Bobbin Work, Soft Edge Applique, Hard Edge Applique, Couching, Beading, and Globbing. Because it’s all small squares of fabric, it can be bound together with bias tape into a reference book for your studio. And you can write your notes on the stabilizer on the back.

Soft Edge Applique

I will be teaching the Stitch Vocabulary Book Class for Gems of the Prairie, May 4th, in Peoria, IL. To honor that, I’m putting together a little classroom booklet on the class to go with it. It will be available in early May for sale.

Classroom booklets are another part of process-learning. Rather than being galleries of work, they are crammed with information, directions, and advice. I much prefer them to handouts, because they’re pretty, they’re concise and they aren’t just white paper.

So if you learn best from learning processes or if you’re more satisfied with a product this booklet should open some amazing new doors for you, for you to explore in your own work.

I will be previewing some of the work on the book on my website. If you’re taking my class in Peoria, it will be a fun sneak peek. But if you’re just hungry to learn new free-motion skills, it’s an easy no-risk way to explore what is possible. I’ll add new sections as I get them done, and some extra resource bits to help.

Check my Thread Magic Stitch Vocabulary Book page to see the latest chapter. I’ll show you how it progresses over the next several weeks.

A Visit to the Studio: Designing with An Extra Pair of Eyes

| ellenanneeddy

I

I always love it when people visit my studio. Studios are workplaces, the equivalent of an artist’s ivory tower. They also can be messy, wild, and full of possibilities. But they can feel lonely. I remember a conversation with an African Fiber artist. She told me she was writing from Darkest Africa. I don’t doubt that, but I told her I was within the shadow of the cornfield. It’s true.

So it’s wonderful to share studio time with others, to get their input, to help them with their work, to share the vision, and to get an extra pair of eyes.

My friend Sharon had been working on a contemporary quilt that had her nervous to start. Sharon’s a veteran seamstress with fine quilting skills, but she wasn’t used to the contemporary approach. She spent an afternoon where we tried a whole lot of things, just to see.

She wanted to do a piece with triangles on it. We placed the background on the wall. She had triangles cut of yellow, purple, and fuchsia cotton prints. We place them up randomly. It didn’t quite do it. But we took a black-and-white picture to see what was happening.

Black and white photos show us value. The light and dark of a piece define how it will be seen, what will stand out, and what will be the background. We noticed that the yellow really stood out. So we decided to use the yellow as subject and let the other colors support the yellow as the background for it.

It was still pretty random, so I suggested drawing a pathway across the quilt. She drew a path. She arranged the yellow triangles on the path and made a background of the fuchsia and purple triangles. Much better.

But the yellow was an odd calico, and it didn’t have a lot of punch. we pulled out some yellow sheers and lame`s. Since they were so shiny against the cottons, they illuminated the path. We cut triangles out of those and replaced the yellow calicos.

The black-and-white photo confirms that this is a strong design.

Sharon’s really pleased with this quilt. She’s ready to sew and sure of her design. I’m sure her niece will be thrilled when she gets it. I was delighted we had worked through some design decisions in a way that will help Sharon as she works on her next masterpiece. Studio time is holy.

I do have people schedule studio time. I even have a guest room at the studio where they can stay if they wish. And I do video conferences as well. We do whatever my student wants. I either teach them what they want to know, supply moral and technical support or help them work through design decisions.

Is it like class? No. It’s much more personalized. It’s a way of connecting artist to artist, with a second pair of eyes, to explore where your work might go next.

As for myself, it makes me think about things I never really work with ordinarily. That’s always a good thing. And I love the company.

Do you want to come to the studio? Contact me and we’ll set it up.

ellenanneeddy@gmail.com
219-617-2021
1405 S. Seminary Street
Galesburg, , IL 61401
USA

Take Away Demo Classes at Feed Mill Fabric and Quilting!

| ellenanneeddy

    I’ll be at Feed Mill Fabrics and Quilts in Oneida, IL Friday and Saturday with demos,take away classes and a trunk load of quilts and fabrics to show you!

    Mary Walck and I filmed from Feed Mill Fabric and Quilts

    We’ll be offering two fabulous demos Friday Sept. 29th and Saturday Oct. 1st.

    Watch the demo and do it yourself. It’s easy, fun and fabulous! From 11:00 am to 300. Drop in any time, watch the demo and make your own.

    Texturized Treasures:
    Oil Paint Stick Rubbing on Fabric

    Sept 30,2022 11:00 AM to 3 :00 PM

    Texturized Treasures: Oil Paint Stick Rubbing
    Create your own texturized fabric with rubbing plates and oil paint sticks. hand dyed cotton. So easy, so fun and so fabulous!

    $7.00 fee each person

    Gilding the Lily: Christmas Ornaments

    October 1, 2022

    Gilding the Lily Ornaments

    Take those marvelous Christmas prints and gild them with free motion stitchery to make a fabulous Christmas Ornament

    $5.00 fee each person

    11AM to 3PM each day at Classroom Building Join us For All the FUN!!😃😃😃

    Feed Mill Fabrics and Quilting is in Oneida, IL right on Route 34.

    Which of these things aren’t like the others

    | ellenanneeddy

    Sorting a studio. Sorting a life.

    Ellenism’s roll

    There’s nothing like moving to clear our your life. And give you clarity. I’ve been preparing and sorting my studio for a move to the new studio building, my husband’s old home in Galesburg. It’s a delightful small house and every day is a new exploration into old stuff. His. Mine. But mostly studio stuff. Fabric I’ve kept. Threads. Books. Endless interfacing. And odd bits of stuff that mark a period of time in my career. The trick seems to be in sorting things in like bundles and then figuring out what to do with them and what to put them in.

    But some things just don’t fit in. I found this in a bin of rayon threads. It’s a needle case someone suggested I make as one of several salable things I took to class. They were way too time consuming to consider. But they were fun.

    • inside pockets
      Inside needle case
    • More sayings
    • Lefty loosey. Righty tighty
    • Needle chart

    The thing I find most interesting is that I chose to use my Ellenism’s, When I was teaching, there were things I said always in a particular way so they would stick. If you’ve ever read The Tipping Point, it has a discussion of how to make ideas sticky, available for people to hold onto like an internal post it note. They were a huge part of what I wanted students to take away with in their class, whether they could find their notes or not.

    Some of my favorite Ellenism’s

    • Lefty losey. Righty tighty
    • (how to adjust a bobbin case or turn a screw)
    • New day, new needle. New project, new needle.
    • Everything worth doing, is worth doing badly
    • Stop for bad noises
    • Perfect this time if only different next time
    • Thick thread, straight stitch.

    The Point

    The point to all of this was that it was for teaching. So much of my time was in classroom, that I’d stylized how to capsulize information into phrases they’d repeat and remember. I think they thought I was being silly. That too. It doesn’t matter. They could remember it.

    This new studio is not for me to teach in. it’s a space to go back to my work. So perhaps someone will come visit and I’ll dust this off, so they can remember the things I thought were important for students to learn. If nothing else, it reminded me.

    The Tipping Point is available on Amazon. I recommend it to anyone working on communication skills. It’s brilliant.

    Non-Verbal Communication: Music and Art as a Second Language

    | ellenanneeddy

    flowing-piano-keyboard-e2407I wish I’d taken a spoken language in High School. I took Latin, which is not so much a communication as a repository of history. I loved it. But it really didn’t function as communication.

    I took Spanish in college. I was dreadful at it. There was no one there speaking to me in Spanish about anything I wanted to know.

    Language is not vocabulary and grammar. Language is communication. I was in my forties when I realized that not only were languages different from each other, but the words that created the thoughts in that language likely couldn’t be reproduced precisely in another language.

    I had a family of Bosnians move into my building and spent time doing homework help with the kids. I had days where I never heard an English word.

    I never learned to speak Spanish. I got quite good at communicating in Bosnian. The difference was my need to do so. I wanted to understand and to make myself understood. The surprise with different languages is that they don’t always have the same words. And since our thoughts are expressed in words, you think differently in another language. The language forms the way we think.

    When I hear school organizations suggest removing art and music from their programs, I feel like rushing into the room with the bean counters and explaining to them that they are removing major education from our children. Art and music are not enrichment. Art is the language of emotion. Music is the language of mathematics. You can’t say or think certain things without knowing their languages. Take away art and music and you might as well tie blinders on them. There’s a whole way to think and express themselves they may never learn.

    Schools may not be able to afford to teach art and music. But we can’t afford not to teach it. Or learn it. It changes how the mind develops, what it can think, how we feel, what we can say.

    I am studying singing with Gail Masinda and Masinda Music Studio. Because of the weather, my first class was on Skype. It was incredibly personal and fun. It also was a fair amount of exercise, which I need right now. But mostly, I could feel my brain and lungs both expand at the same time.

    I hope you reach for every language available to you. I hope you learn to think in music and color. I hope you speak to your children in songs and in images. Because it doesn’t just change how we communicate. It changes how we are able to think.

    Reaching for Something Lost: Do You Have to Hear the Word No?

    | ellenanneeddy

    Like most creative people, I’ve had my struggles with the word no. My mother carefully explained to my first art teacher that I had no talent. I did enough crazy art to annoy a number of critics. Sometimes what I did was good and judged good. Some of it caught a lot of flack. So I know how to ignore people who tell me no. You can tell me that you don’t want to help me, you don’t want to see it you don’t like it. Well and good. But you can’t tell me no. Only I can tell me no.

    Outside of my art, I took a great deal of joy in music. One of the things I’ve lost over the years is my voice The Episcopal and Anglican churches in my area have shrunk to the point where they sing only in unison. I sang for years in several church choirs and loved that time. Drastic changes have brought just less tolerance for differing positions. It split the denomination. And now no church near me has enough members for a choir.

    Now I’m an alto. I can’t sing the melody. I never could. As the choir has gone away, my music has gone, I  spent some time mourning that. I tried singing in several local choirs only to find that my voice is largely gone. I was asked to leave a choir.

    falling upward  I’ve been reading an interesting book called Falling Upward. The point to the book is that as we get older, there are more and more things we have to put aside, put away, forget about, mourn but then do something different.   Perhaps in some cases it’s right. The things we value change.

     

    But I’ve had to hear the word no quite a bit over the last year. I’m not good about it. Point of fact, I’m lousy at it. I take a real snit and hold my boundaries, And this year, I’ve  had to simply accept a lot of nos. Those who know me know, that’s not my nature. By hook or by crook, you can tell me you don’t want to help me and I get that, but I will find my way.

    One of the things I’ve lost over the years is singing in a church choir. The Episcopal and Anglican churches in my area have shrunk to the point where they sing only in unison.

    I’d taken so much joy in being in a choir. And so much learning from singing what was holy. And so much pleasure out of my very average alto voice. When that happened there was nowhere to sing for some while.

    I applied for a choir where I lived and was told I was “no good”. I was too loud. I was off key, I was not good enough for their choir.

    The horrid thing was that they were right.  I was rusty enough that I was off pitch, wavering, and unable to read enough to fit in.

    I almost crawled under the couch. Then I pulled on my bootstraps and told myself it didn’t matter.

    How long can you lie to yourself? I’m pretty good at that too. But it does matter. I was raised in a culture where people regularly burst into song, whether it was appropriate or not. I’d rather not embarrass myself by sounding bad.

    So, I can whine or I can learn.
    gail

    Gail Masinda has an amazing music studio in Galesburg, IL where I live. On Tuesday I’m going to start singing lessons. Am I going to sing solos? I don’t know. I just want to not let my voice go without a fight.

    Gail offers piano, voice, and organ music for all ages. You can go to her studio or she can work with you online. I am so excited to be studying with this amazing musician who is so fun, so funny and such an excellent teacher.

    So, what are you mourning? What did time take from you? Are you willing to let go? Or will you find someone who can teach you to do it in a new way in a new space and time.

    I’ll be sharing my musical journey with you, because I hope you can find teachers to help you refuse to hear the word no. And if you’re looking for an amazing music teacher, check out Gail to see the fabulous things she offers her students, in her studio or online. You can find more info about her classes at www.gailmasinda.com or masindamusic@gmail.com or check her Facebook page