This is the final post for the Crow adventure. It's been an incredibly rewarding two weeks. I got there early on Friday morning (7 o'clock) so I could finish my flat and glowing piece. I succeeded in doing that by about 11 o'clock.  9 blocks, 16" x 18", which makes it 48" x 54".

Then it was time to pack up and load the car. Lunch. In the afternoon we had a final review of our work. We posted everything we had produced during the class and talked a couple of minutes about the experience. Nothing but positive feedback. And it was interesting to see everyone else's work.

That took us till 5:00, and then it was time to say good bye.

More of the same today. I got 2 1/2 more blocks done. That leaves me with four to finish tomorrow. I don't think I'll make it.

Then my sewing machine broke. It's leaving big gaps in the stitching and shredding the thread about every 10 inches of sewing. In the downstairs class there is a woman who is a Bernina dealer. She came up and gave it a good cleaning, and for a while it seemed to be fixed, but then it started in again, so I gave up and came back to the hotel.

It's not too big a disaster because Nancy (Crow) has a bunch of Berninas of various ages that she rents out. Tomorrow, I'll get one of those.

After thinking about it over night, I decided that my design was to complicated and hard to make. So this morning I worked up something real simple and got cracking. When Nancy arrived she said she wanted to simplify the assignment by limiting the design to two columns. So I finished one block with three columns and two and a half with two columns.

Here's the motif, very crude.

And here's what I got done today.

Nancy liked my colors and said I was handling the flat/glowing thing well. I don't think I can use that three column one in the final piece, so it's 7 1/2 blocks to go.

I'm happy in my hotel room. I've got a coffee pot and a fridge -- everything I need. It's cozy and cocoon-like.

I'm exhausted. Didn't get home until 10 o'clock. Really big day of sewing. It's so nice to be in a room with other sewing maniacs. The intensity of the effort everyone is making is palpable.

We got our first assignment for Week 2 on Sunday night after dinner. Apparently there are glowing and flat versions of every color, even black. So the exercise was to pick a linear motif and two fabrics, one flat and one glowing. Then make up 15 blocks and sew them together. The design emphasis was lines.

Here's mine.

Conceptually, this exercise was easy. But it was challenging to make all the blocks in the time we had, which was about 6 hours. But I got it done on time, and she said it was successful.

Then came exercise 2, which has sort of blown my mind. Again we're to use a linear motif, two dark colors in their glowing and flat versions (one of which is black), and two light colors in glowing and flat. Design a block. Divide it into three sections vertically. Then place your colors so that they alternate dark glowing and light flat, dark flat and light glowing in each section. Then repeat, making 8 more blocks, each one 16 x 18". It's mind boggling complicated, and so far I'm struggling.

Here's my motif.

And here's how the construction is going. I find this free hand construction difficult, and I'm not doing very well. Very slow because I make lots of mistakes. Very imperfect, but she doesn't seem to care.

Good night.

I went to the Dairy Barn Art Center in Athens, Ohio. It's the home of the Quilt National exhibit.  A sort of pilgrimage. They had two quilt exhibits, one from SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) and the other from the Modern Quilt Guild. It's a neat building in a beautiful spot, and it was nice to see in person the quilts of some famous people. I especially studied the quilting which you often can't see in photographs.

The studio closed at 5:00 today, so I didn't get a whole lot done. I got a good portion of the second column pinned up, but I forgot to take a picture. Here's a picture of the mostly completed first column. It's in 5 big pieces right now. She still hasn't offered any criticism.

I went out to dinner with a group of the ladies from the class. They're nice.

Another full day. This is the progress I made on the gradation quilt. Nancy Crow said I'd done a good job with the background, so I'm pumped.

There's no way it's going to be finished by 5:00 tomorrow. But there's no penalty. You just pack it up and get ready for the next project. I'm sewing mine together a little ahead of schedule because there's no way I could move what I've got pinned on the wall. I wish I could show you some of the others, but we're not allowed to post photos of other people's work. The quilts are wildly various. Some are outstanding and others not so good. I'd give mine a B.

She liked my two pieces a lot. That's the good news.

Now we have a new assignment which we're supposed to finish by Friday at 5:00.  Using our motifs we're to make a substantial quilt with gradations in both size and color. There are a lot of technical parameters. So my quilt will be 4" x 6" and the mock up looks like this:

All the black figures are to be in light colors; all the white in dark and medium colors.  The second column will be more of the same with the size and color gradations reversed.

We're supposed to pin up all our colors before we start to sew, but I can't work like that so I made up the top left square. It took me over 2 hours. Way too hard. So I found a Walgreens on my way home and bought some poster board. Tomorrow I'm going with templates.

I finished the two assignments which are due at 9:00 Wednesday morning. I think I'm the only one to finish so far, although there is one other lady who will probably finish tomorrow morning. I think, given the assignment, that the pieces are successful. The whole point was to create visual texture. She advised me to trim them down to 2" square, so they are really tiny now. Sewn in, only 1 1/2".

There are 100 of those little blocks in each piece -- a full two days work.

Well, I have to say, even for me this was a full day of sewing. 12 hours with a couple of breaks to eat. Good thing I like piecing.

Here's what the barn looks like.

And my space.

The first assignment was to choose a motif. I chose this one.

And make 200 miniatures in five color ranges. They're 2 1/2" square.

The first 40 are light and bright colors on a black background.

The next 40 are medium dark and dark colors on a white background.

The third set is dark colors on a medium light gray background.

That's as far as I got. Two more sets tomorrow. The only criticism I got was that they were too perfect, so I'm trying to make them wonkier as I go along. I'm doing good here. Some of the others are still working on their first set.

No pictures today.

Arrived in good shape mid day. Hung around the hotel for a couple of hours, then went out to "The Barn."  Set up my work space. Put up all my motif designs. I'm nervous as a cat. Welcome dinner was at 6. It was a very nice light meal. Then we went around the room and introduced ourselves. There are 40 people there these two weeks -- 20 downstairs taking a composition class from David Hornung, and 20 upstairs with Nancy Crow. She's exactly as I expected.  She said the first exercise, which we'll get tomorrow morning, would separate the boys from the men. We'll see.

I'm on my way. I'm spending the night just east of Louisville, KY. Should be there by lunch time tomorrow.