John C Campbell

I just returned from a wonderful week at John C Campbell Folk School.  I taught the class - Playing with Surface Design, I also call it a Surface Design Buffet.  This workshop gives students a taste of many techniques to enhance the surface of fabric.  Students can choose to do a project with the many samples they create or just keep it as a sample.

 The weather was with us. Some of the techniques do very well in strong sun and strong sun we had! One of the things we had so much fun with was rusting.  It usually takes my things a couple of days to rust but with such strong sun and the fabric sealed in plastic, it was a couple of hours. We became rusting fools, rusting everything in sight and this was just the beginning.

 We are lucky to have a Blacksmith studio right down the road and part of the campus.  The have a big bin outside with discarded iron, most of it rusted and ready to be used. Yvonne used a lot of that rust to do the table runner below. She also painted and stamped it - a gorgeous piece.  She plans to quilt it and I hope she sends pictures.

 Yvonne treated us all to t-shirts to rust.  Judy rusted hers and then did some spray painting using leaves as a resist.

 I was able to do one also. The Blacksmith class at one point was cutting out animal shapes and this was a discard. Can you see a fish in the middle?

 Winki was our "resident ruster"and showed us some beautiful things she had already done.

 I think she used some kind of wheel cover to get this wonderful effect.

 Winki"s scarves were very soft and subtle in color, they were luscious.

 She revealed her secret which she gave me permission to use on my blog. Besides the rust, she uses spices such as tumeric and curry along with fruit like blueberries. The coloring was just beautiful.

 More of Winki's beautiful work.

And more to follow.
I'm going to Cotton Patch Quilters tomorrow in Athens, GA and will be back Thurs to share more of the fun stuff we did this last week.
Til next time......

Return to Mousetown

I've been going to JCCampbell Folk School for many years - both as an instructor and as a student and I've never heard of "Mouse Town" until my last visit in October.  People were asking "have you been to Mouse Town", or "have you seen it lately"? Quite frankly I was puzzled.  Turns out - Mouse Town is a very special part of the JCC campus that started years ago with a piece of pottery.  Some student decided to plant a piece of pottery in the shape of a mouse on the outside part of a building. What started as a joke,  caught on..... and grew... and grew.....

 People started leaving little artifacts on the wall and ledge.  Signs and little pieces of furniture - perfect for a mouse!

 All classes were represented including the metal workers.

 It's so darn cute and full of interesting things, you could pour over it for hours.

 A paper was started called the Mouse Towne Gazette and has been around for over 10 years.

What started as a joke, turned into something very special on the campus. I hope if you're ever in the area, you'll check it out.  I'll be going to JCC next week to assist with a marbling workshop.  Karen Tunnell, a gifted artist and fabric marbler, will be teaching the workshop. I can hardly wait.

Textures

While at John Campbell a couple of weeks ago, I had the opportunity to take photos of some wonderful textures. Often my pictures are of odd things, not your typical photo. Most times I haven't a clue where I'll use them, but eventually they do wind up somewhere. I have a good friend who is very creative, takes lots of pictures, especially likes the perspective of things on the ground. Someone asked her once, why she kept looking at her feet - not realizing, that that was her favorite place for subject matter. This beautiful barn was covered with fall foliage. I love the old weathered wood...

and lime green leaves
and this wonderful old plank of wood with nails sticking out.
The forest which provides a shortcut between buildings had some wonderful lights and shadows My love of trees pulled me in.
I also love old, weather-worn windows and doors. They are so interesting with lots of texture.

I'm working on some small studies right now using old windows and trees; this will probably wind up in one of them.

John Campbell Projects

We had a wonderful class at John Campbell including one male student - Dan who did beautiful work and is destined to be an art quilter. The man in the middle - dressed as Christopher Columbus was David - who gave massages - you know the deal - a dollar a minute and worth every penny. He was very good and also very funny - he did his best work dressed in something unusual. He couldn't find his "tu-tu" so Christopher had to do. Behind the students are some of the beautiful quilts made by them this past week. 

The quilt studio at JCC is very large and the class size is kept to 12 people or less.
Plenty of room to walk around and everyone has their own design wall.
This next piece was made by Mary Jane - 78 years old and still loves to make quilts.

Mary Waterman made the same quilt, different colors. They were hanging side by side and fun to see the same pattern made up in 2 different kinds of fabrics and color.

We had a young woman in class - Aino Riiho who was from Finland and married to a man from this area. She is studying to be an arts and crafts teacher in Finland; quilting was the one area that wasn't covered in her course of studies and this was her first attempt at quilting. She first learned the basics of half square triangles and made a heart quilt for her baby due in February. From the beginning I knew she loved art quilts, she designed and made this incredible piece (below) - her second quilt and all in the course of 5 days!  Keep an eye out for her - She is a wonderful artist!
It was amazing to see how much one could accomplish in a mere 5 days.

John Campbell

This past week, I had the great fun of assisting my long time friend Sandy Bonsib at the John C Campbell Folk School. At JCC, when your class fills you qualify for an assistant and Sandy asked if I would come - a great chance to visit with a friend I don't get to see very often. So I was packed, off and running! The week that Sandy taught followed the Fall Festival weekend - the biggest event of the year which draws thousands of people. I had to be there on Sunday which provided a great opportunity to see what it was all about. It was perfect weather, lots of wonderful crafts for sale, music, animals - something for everyone.

The huge barn has music going on throughout the day and lots of bails of hay to sit on.
All the banners hanging throughout the barn have been made by various fiber artists.
I came upon this booth which was soooo "sixties".
And these beautiful Alpacas were my favorite. What a wonderful face!!!
All the studios on campus had demos going on. This is the weaving studio which is also connected to the quilting studio where I was working all week.
So of course, I wandered over to see what was up and was surpised by this beautiful quilt exhibit going on...made up of quilts by instructors of JCC. I loved this piece by Elsie Campbell as I love the pieced background with appliques on top - so subtle and effective.


Karen Reese Tunnell is a wonderful marbler and does the most amazing things with the fabric she creates like this kaleidoscope quilt - "Nouveau Fractals" below
and "Maternalis" where Karen will create the marbled fabric and add further imagery on top. Karen will be teaching marbling at John Campbell this coming January. I'm already signed up and can hardly wait.
Marilyn Walls beautiful "mother and child" is based on a photograph she took while on vacation. She was so touched by the love this woman felt for her child, she felt she had to capture it in fabric. I think she nailed it!
It was a great day which was only the beginning of a great week. Please join me again for the further adventures, pictures and crazy goings on.

John C Campbell Folk School Revisited

I'm finally getting back into a routine, always so much to catch up on when you're gone for a week and quite frankly sometimes just hard to enter reality again There's no one to cook your meals, no being able to "play" all day. Here's a recap of the wonderful week we had at JC Campbell and some of the fun things we did - fabric painting was first on the list. Using a textile paint, we did many samples using creases, plastic, salt and other technques. The painted fabric provided a nice backdrop for some of the techniques to come later on.
Happy accidents can make the best treasures. Debbie accidentally dropped a thread with paint in the middle of her fabric. It started to wick and we all loved the results, so what do you do? Add more "thread worms"!

Carving a block on Master Carve is a lot of fun because the material is soft but doesn't crumble. You can get great results and really fine detail. I love the block that Jeann created.

Carolyn did a wonderful block print which she turned into a book cover for her journal.

Debbie did a wonderful fish and I love the brush strokes in her print.

We were in the Davidson building AKA the wet room. It's a new building and also houses the cooking and music workshops. We lucked out during our week as both were going on. We had the wonderful aromas from next door and beautiful mandolin music up above - a heavenly combination. We dropped enough hints to the cooking class and were treated every day to one of their culinary masterpieces. This particular day was a curried chicken served on a very unique bread, and the dessert - roasted banana icecream!

At night there's always activities going on to entertain - contra dancing, readings from the writing workshop, a slide tour of Ireland from Jon Riley who was teaching photography and so on, or you could just go back to the studio and work.

Our display at the week end closing ceremonies was wonderful. My ladies worked very hard and did a beautiful job at showing the wide variety of things they did. Marlenes painted piece (lower left) was wonderful and spontaneous using leaves and twigs from outside.

Everyone made a lot of scarves to use as presents and to practice some of the techniques they learned. The eggs on the piece (far left) were done by Karen who became the master of the paintstik; the eggs look like the real thing - we were all so amazed to realize how many different and beautiful eggs there are.

We also did sun printing, monoprinting, printing using a gelatin plate, vegetable printing, rusting fabric, working with Shiva oil paintstiks, fabric crayons, foiling and Angelina fibers. In the photo below, you can see the beautiful journal cover that Carolyn made using her block print.

Carolyn made a beautiful scarf (below) which started out one way, didn't work and salvaged it to be even better! Another happy accident and it matched her jacket perfectly!

Such a great week with so many fun things to bring home and think about!

Thanks to all my ladies who made it such a joy to be there!