Last week, I was privileged to take a 2 day workshop with Fran Skiles. I had so much fun and it was kind of like making a mystery quilt. She would do a demo and give us instructions to create some pieces and then we would move on to something else. She purposely did not show us a finished piece so that we would not have a preconceived notion of what to do.

We started by making random stitches on a piece of plain fabric.

Then we coated one side with gesso.

Next we made monoprints on Chinese rice paper using printing ink.

Then we drew on Japanese rice paper with a bamboo pen and India ink.

We learned how to transfer photos from copy paper using gel medium.

I don’t have photos, but we also drew on stitch and tear pellon with watercolor crayons which we then transferred to the fabric with gel medium.

Once, we had all our parts, we started assembling collages and then doing washes with thinned paint.

I have 3 more skins (Fran’s word for the treated fabric) and lots of parts to make more collages. It was so much fun and so freeing to create the parts without a plan – just to play.

On Thursday, we have our Oregon SAQA one day conference. Our guest speaker is Kay Khan, who does intricate 3-D fiber work. In an homage to her, we were invited to create 3-D pieces. I am cutting up a boring quilt which will become a structure. I glued the parts to stiff pellon tonight.

Tomorrow I will assemble it and hope it stands upright without too much work!!