Making Do Recology: What I Learned During My Residency at the San Francisco Dump
1.5 hour Livestream Lecture
Follow along as I describe my four-month artist residency at Recology in 2016. My goal was to explore the nature of making do while creating an exhibition, including six quilts, made entirely out of materials scavenged from the San Francisco dump.
Improvise Live! Creating, Quilting, & Living Courageously
1.5 hour Livestream Lecture/Demo
Improvisation is at the heart of living creatively on the edge of the unknown. Music, dance, theater, cooking, gardening, and navigating life during a pandemic, all benefit from the flexibility of mind that improvisational process engenders. This comprehensive presentation reviews key practices important for developing your skills as an improviser, and concludes with a demo, with time for Q&A. Leave with ruler-free techniques, mind tools, tips and a fresh perspective on how to apply the liberating skills of improv learned through patchwork to creating new patterns in life – and vice versa!
Ruler-Free Improv Mashup
1.5 hour Livestream Interactive Demo
The event begins with a short brainstorming session about the limits of patchwork and how to set limits to access your creative flow. The fun begins, as I demonstrate a variety of ruler-free techniques and freestyle composition and the basics of improv process as applied to patchwork by following audience prompts to improvise a composition on the spot.
This presentation is primarily a demo and is a great follow up to my most popular lecture/demo Improvise Live! Creating, Quilting, & Living Courageously
Patchwork Improv: Transmit The Wild Within
multi-day / advanced / all skill levels welcome
Explore and transmit your experience of nature in unique and unexpected ways –free from the tediousness of mimicry. Practice observing the deep rhythms of nature through daily synesthetic, field meditations that activate sight, hearing, smell, touch, and memory. These meditations and subsequent field notes, focused on color, shape, line, movement and texture will become the source material for defining a series of scores (a set of limits that support creative flow) for improvisational abstraction, resulting in a single composition or a series of studies according to your preference. Learn basic ruler free patchwork techniques, improvisational process and composition without a predetermined plan. On a deeper level, discover your unique syncopation with the natural world, as a source for nurturing the creative wild within.
Get Your Curve On Intensive
multi-day / advanced/ all skill levels welcome
Get your curve on in this multi-day improv workshop. Learn innovative ruler-free techniques for grid-busting simple curves, layered curves, wedged curves and bias-strip piecing on the curve. Commit one step at a time as you incorporate multiple curve techniques into a finished composition. Develop a personal/intuitive approach to color, and celebrate your "mistakes" along the way. Whoopee!
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Improv Mashup
1-day 6hr / intermediate / all skill levels welcome / NEW!
The goal of this patchwork improv workshop is to interrupt fixed pattern design habits of coordination, symmetry and harmony, in order to discover spontaneous aesthetic paths of design more suitable to the goals of flexible pattern work, such as diversity, mismatch, and the unexpected. We will accomplish this through a series of quick, randomly determined, improv challenges or scores during the first half of the workshop. In the afternoon we will learn strategies for including the diverse design scores into a single, dynamic composition.
Making Do Recology: What I Learned During My Residency at the San Francisco Dump
1 - 1.5 hour presentation
Follow along as I describe my four-month artist residency at Recology in 2016. My goal was to explore the nature of making do while creating an exhibition, including six quilts, made entirely out of materials scavenged from the San Francisco dump.
Grid Busting Improv Curves
1-day 6hr / intermediate / all skill levels welcome / NEW
Discover the freedom and ease of piecing template-free curves. There are no mistakes here! A range of approaches and techniques will be demonstrated, beginning with the humble quarter square curve, to layered curves, to freestyle curve composition. The goal of this experimental improv curve workshop is to explore a variety of ways to bust out of the grid.
Making Do: The Architecture of Clothing
2-day, 12hrs / advanced / all levels welcome
Engage in the receptive, creative practice of making do. Learn to collaborate with the given architecture of clothing, as the score for your improvisation —pockets, plackets, necklines, cuffs, the curves of sleeves and pants— to discover and express unexpected geometries, meanings, and memories. Learn ruler-free piecing techniques, deconstruction strategies for preserving architectural elements, and how to stabilize and combine diverse materials.
Improvising from a Score
1-day 6hr / introductory / all skill levels welcome
With jazz music, a score, or lead sheet, indicates basic chord changes, and arrangements of a song without specifying how the song should be performed. Now imagine a score written for a quilt! Learn basic ruler-free patchwork techniques and how to set limits that support your creative flow. Finding flow not only feels great, it quells the urge to plan ahead. Leave with the confidence to create your own patchwork improv scores for exploring flexible patterns.
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Improv Round Robin
1-day 6hr / introductory / all skill levels welcome
Say YES AND... to this improvisational twist on the Round Robin. Free your creative energy, use up your scraps, affirm and build without a plan, while learning basic ruler-free patchwork techniques. At the end of the day you and everyone else will leave with a distinctive quilt top that will surprise you! There are no mistakes in this fast-paced class, only discoveries, community, and FUN! Sign up with your friends!
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Passage Quilting through Life's Transitions
1 - 1.5 hour presentation
Passage Quilting is an improvisational process about relationships, past and present. Working with materials that carry meaning, memory and emotions, the creative process of Passage Quilting fosters a healing heart. In this multimedia presentation, I review the traditions of memorial and scrap quilting with historical images, and share stories from my practice which illustrate how Passage Quilting supports the bereavement and growth process we all experience during times of transition.
Powerpoint presentation, digital projector required.
Learn more about Passage Quilting.
Improvise! Creating, Quilting, & Living Courageously
1 - 1.5 hour presentation
Improvisation is at the heart of living creatively. Music, dance, theater, drawing, cooking, conversation, play, child rearing, and even science benefit from the flexibility of mind that improvisational process engenders. Leave with mind tools, tips and a fresh perspective on how to apply improv skills learned in life to your patchwork – and vice versa!
Powerpoint presentation, digital projector required.
Based on The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Ruler-Free Mashup
1.5 hour interactive performance demo
Basic strip, bias-strip, wedge, curve, stack, float, repetition, flow, bleeding, darting, natural fit, approximate measuring, trouble shooting, and composition tips, tricks and techniques for ruler-free improv patchwork will be demonstrated and performed on the spot according to audience prompts and participation.
Encourage audience to bring large scraps from their stash to be incorporated into the patchwork as it unfolds.
Sewing machine, cutting mat, ironing station required.
Group Stitching Mantra
1.5 hour participatory performance / all skill levels
Join me on a communal, restorative journey that merges the Eastern spiritual traditions of mudra, mandala and mantra, with the simple act of stitching. Experience with others a syncopated, resonate, rhythm of attention through movement, image, and voice, that will leave you feeling refreshed and renewed.
Materials and tools provided for up to 25 participants. Materials fee $10.
Listen and view results from past Group Stitching Mantras.
Passage Quilting
2-day, 12 hrs / advanced / all skill levels welcome
This is a workshop about relationships, past and present. Work with the architecture of clothing and meaningful materials to improvise a quilt without a fixed pattern. Learn ruler-free patchwork techniques and tips for deconstructing and stabilizing all types of clothing. This process will be the vehicle for inner work and outward expression as it reveals and orients the patterns, by which we survive, thrive and transform.
Learn more about Passage Quilting.
Wedge Curve Improv
2-day 12hr / advanced/ all skill levels welcome
Get your wedge-curve groove on in this improv quilt-making workshop. Commit one step at a time, as you explore advanced approaches to improvised patchwork and composition, develop a personal/intuitive language of color, and learn ruler-free, wedge-curve, and bias-strip piecing on the curve techniques.
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Modern Block Improv
1 to 2-day 6-12hrs / intermediate / all skill levels welcome
Practice your patchwork scales. Start with a fixed “traditional” block pattern or one of your own, and transform it through a series of repetitions and variations. Explore and create flexible patterns by listening to internal cues. Learn ruler-free patchwork and composition techniques, and gain a deeper sense of how patterns work and evolve for you.
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Freestyle Strings
1-day, 6hr / introductory to intermediate / all skill levels welcome, NEW
Explore intuitive color, make narrative relationships, articulate your line, cut from your core, find your flow, and discover your preferences. Experiment with three methods of choosing --random, spontaneous and planned, to create expressive ruler-free strip pieced foundations. Remix the results with stunning effect to create a one of a kind quilt.
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.
Online at Creativebug Patchwork Improv: Working with Strips
Bias-Strip Improv Curves
2-day 12hr / advanced / all skill levels welcome
Get your bias-strip curve on and celebrate your mistakes! Learn the innovative ruler-free technique of bias-strip piecing on the curve, how to troubleshoot and flatten internal bubbles as they arise. Learn to create wedge-curves along with a variety of options for utilizing both techniques in fixed patterns or improvised compositions. This is an advanced technique that takes time to master, pushing you to the brink of beginner's mind. Imagine the possibilities!
Featured in The Improv Handbook For Modern Quilters.