Workshop in Progress

Week two of redefining what WIP stands for!

I mentioned last week that I went to a workshop over the weekend, and I’ve finally had time to get all the photos off my camera. There’s a lot of photos. It was New York just past the peak foliage season, so forgive me if I was a little snap happy!

So I had the extreme fortune to attend a workshop put on by Heather Ross and Denyse Schmidt. It was held in a beautiful home in the Catskill mountains, about 3 hours outside of New York City. There were 11 of us there, and we were told to work on whatever we wanted. Garment sewing, quilt making, handwork, or fabric design, and Heather and Denyse would help us. I chose to focus on fabric design as it requires bringing a LOT less stuff and is something I’ve been interested in for a while.

Heather spent time helping me brainstorm what things I might be interested in converting to fabric designs, and I went off and sketched. I started with sketches based around the Santa Cruz boardwalk, which is somewhat of a Santa Cruz icon. I played with ideas inspired by the rides and then worked with boardwalk and carousel motifs.

It was an interesting exercise, and I did end  up with sketches I liked, but as soon as we started converting it to fabric, I realized that this isn’t the type of fabric I’d actually want to use, which was a good thing to learn. We chatted more, and focused in more on what I was interested in design wise, and I got back to sketching.

I still have a ways to go, and I’m not sure this is the direction I even want to try doing a fabric design (should I do a fabric design at all), but dang it if I don’t really love sketching sea otters. They are so fun!

Overall I feel like I learned quite a bit about what types of designs I’d want to make, and I was able to look at other fabric designs more critically, which is important for helping narrow in on what types of things I’d like to do in the future. Which..maybe shot cotton/cross weaves. 😉

The weekend wasn’t all work, though! Interspersed throughout were amazing home cooked meals, a jam-making lesson by Heather’s neighbor Maggie, a demonstration by Denyse on how to improv-piece a single girl quilt (omg I might actually make one using that method!) and a crewel demonstration by Heather.

Overall it was a lovely weekend with some lovely women and some amazing scenery. I didn’t get as much done as I had hoped (that seems to always be the case) but as a getaway with some now-friends, it was a great success! Oh, and as an added bonus, I finally got to see the Princess and the Pea quilt after it was quilted! Hard to beat that!