My Wonderful Doodle Class Debut

I love getting ready to teach a class I haven't taught before. And prepping for Zen and the Art of Doodling at Trent was amazing. I knew that doodling, zentangling and colouring were becoming more popular by the day and the reference materials out there were incredible. I was even able to find a colouring pad for the floor with nearly rug-sized doodles to colour, in case people were really stuck.

But they weren't. Our first couple of days were spent exploring doodles and getting students to come up with their designs. And they were incredible - as individual as the students were - again!  It never ceases to amaze me how our brains work in a creative situation.

I am missing a couple of the students' pieces, but this shows you how amazing they all were.

This was Diane's first study in this design. She is going to do a couple more.

Margaret is doing a series to spell her granddaughter's name. H above and O below.

Rhea's beautiful adaptation from a friend's zentangle-inspired artwork. 

Charlene's funky teapot. A donation for a future fundraiser. 

Connie's amazing bamboo with doodled backgrounds. 

Pam's first and second pieces. She took to this like a fish to water. 

Nearly everyone in the class was hooking with a small cut - necessary to get the detail into the small pieces. And for the first time, I could see myself embracing the 4 cut for these tiny works of art.
When you are working on pieces as small as 5 x 5 (shown in the bottom photo), you really need to think small.

On the third day of class, I made everyone go through an exercise of bravery and daring - lol. They had to grid a 5" square on a piece of backing and then, with no preplanning - no pencils - no sketches - they had to draw a doodle directly on backing with a permanent marker!!!  Everyone did it and survived. No CPR necessary - although one student was borderline for a while. Pam's bottom one shows how quickly she was able to draw and hook her little free fall piece - after finishing her first one.

It was a fun class, one I am repeating in the fall and hope to do again and again. Trust me, once you get started doing these little doodle pieces, it's hard to stop. And it's a great way to use up lots of worms.

Big Things Ahead

Now that the small things are done - little sweaters and  baby blankets all delivered. One baby safely arrived, two more are imminent. The hand quilted panel baby quilt is finished and waiting for the baby. I really found that I enjoyed the hand stitching versus sitting tied to the sewing machine. Yes, it did take longer and No, my stitches were not perfect, but I found it very relaxing and spread it over a couple of weeks.

This little project was so much fun to do that I have decided to take on a much larger venture. Go big or go home, right? Next up, a queen size quilt that I will hand stitch into the design on this fabric.

I started looking for other projects like this online and eventually found some on Pinterest. Although this is not what is technically referred to as a "whole cloth quilt", I am not sure what else to call it. It is whole fabric and I am quilting it. I will join two panels of this 45" fabric - a queen size quilt bat - and a backing fabric and will quilt the shapes that are in the fabric (instead of piecing). I will do the stitching in a "long stitch" method with the Perle Cotton.

There are lots of natural valleys and shapes in here that I think will make it lovely too look at but also interesting to quilt. It will take a lot of weeks, since I think the queen size is something like 85" by 90". About four times the size of a baby quilt. But I LOVE the fabric and hopefully still will by the time I am done.

The other Big Thing in the planning stages is a hooked headboard for one of the guest rooms. I will reveal more about it in future posts. It will need to share the calendar with the quilt, so no speedy progress on either. But they will provide lovely distractions from one another.

In the meantime, off to Belleville on Sunday to teach a Borders class at Loyalist College in the Summer Arts Program.  All the students will be bringing something for which they will design a border - or perhaps multiples. This "in progress" piece will be my demo to use in class.

I will be designing a different border for each of the four sides and hopefully have a bit of each hooked for class. And this will eventually be a pillow to go with the hand quilted 'future queen' above.