| After finishing my PhD, I finally allowed myself to sign up for a 2-year course at the DIY-textile school in Amsterdam. And the first four course days are already behind me! Developing new skills – like sketching and drawing; these have never been my favorite things, the results were always poor, and the teacher in high school looked always a bit pitying, when he saw my results! However, I realized that sketching and drawing are skills that can be developed, even in people like me, who think they can only use a pencil for writing ;-). And the internet is a great source for tutorials, like the one by Graham Shaw. I managed to draw a cartoon, and even dared to use paint to fulfill one of the first assignments.
One of the main objectives of the course is to inspire and be inspired. And I can only agree that working on projects and assignments is so inspiring, (and also time consuming, but who cares? As long as you can do your favorite things?). The different teachers each come with their own expertise and skills, and their instructions and comments are really pushing the students forwards. |
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Some of the exercises were so contagious that I hardly could stop. It resulted in alternative holiday wishes.
One of the teachers is in the DIY course is Jette Clover. Jette is a very inspiring art quilter, working with mixed media. I gave my mom one of her Small Notes (Anne Frank) for Christmas.
The year 2015 is almost over….my brother and his family who stayed with us for two weeks, returned to Canada. Time to work on DIY projects. After paper collages, I switched to fabric collages, using the book ‘Happy Villages’ by Karen Eckmeier. This was really a fun project, and also a very good exercise for free motion quilting with my Janome Skyline S5. Never did machine quilting before, and must admit that I am not an addict, but as mentioned before, it is nice to develop new skills! Never give up! Happy 2016!
