My name is Charlotte, sometimes known as Ms Lottie, occasionally as The Slightly Mad Quilt Lady. This is my blog, where you'll find me writing a lot about my quilting and textile arts and a little about my family's life in a small seaside town in New Zealand. Haere mai!

Thursday, January 31, 2013

Hollis and the Kokako

I've just come home from a five-day workshop in Auckland with the amazing artist Hollis Chatelain.  Hollis hails all the way from North Carolina.  She paints her beautiful quilts with dye and then uses quilting lines to enhance the images.

It was pretty fantastic to have five days soaking up as much knowledge as I could.  I had lovely classmates too - which always makes for a good workshop experience.  But oh, I was glad to get home!  The traffic, noise, and the sheer number of people in Auckland sets me on edge after a while.  So I guess that's something else I learnt in the workshop - I'm a rural girl through and through (just call me hermit).

Want to see some pics?

Finished painting with dyes, still damp.
Washed out, dried and ironed.
Halfway through the quilting process.
Hollis is a talented teacher as well as an artist.  She keeps you working, encourages you to be brave and gives you lots of helpful insight.  She insisted that we paint three pieces as it's a matter of getting the hours in with the paintbrush to start seeing improvement.  And whilst we grumbled and groaned, she was right!


Here are all three of my pieces on the wall.  This pictures shows them when they are washed out and dried but no quilting started yet.  I'm really, really looking forward to playing around more with this technique.  It is totally different from using fabric paints and unlike paints you end up with a beautifully soft fabric- yay!

5 comments:

  1. I do a lot of that round here though mono prints are where I'm at at the moment. It's a fun thing to do :)

    I like that kokako btw. Very nice :)

    viv

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  2. Well done on painting with dye - great talent, not just with quilting! I love the wood pigeon.

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  3. Wow, you have got some real talent there! Isn't is always nice to come up the 'home hill' & see the heads! It is always nice to leave Auckland, I too must be of the hermit race!! :-)Glad you had a fun, learning time.

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  4. Did you thicken the dyes with something to get the clear lines between the colours? The wood pigeon background especially has very clear edges between the colours.

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  5. What an awesome experience - a 5-day workshop - and your pieces are beautiful! What did you use to paint with?

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