DesignMatters Art and Craft School

This course has five video workshops:

Making Materials:Paper:
In this video Laura demonstrates some of her favourite techniques for customising a wide range of different papers to create one of a kind materials suitable for design work and collage. Laura will demonstrate simple ways to make rubbings and block prints and show how effective they are in combination.

Developing Designs:
In this videos Laura revisits her stash of custom papers created in the Making Materials - Paper video to create a series of beautiful small collage designs in her sketchbook. Working in a very small scale provides an excellent opportunity for experimentation. Laura works direct to the page of her sketchbook but also shows how she integrates her loose sheets of paper prints and rubbings into her book building a number of layered designs.

Making Materials: Fabric:
In this video Laura shows how she transfers the techniques she showed previously on paper to achieve similar effects on fabric. The techniques are the same but sometimes need just a slight change of medium to result in a fantastic range of highly individual fabrics for your quilt making or garment construction.

Composition with Applique:
In this video Laura explains how she translates her sketchbook ideas to cloth using printed fabrics and bonded appliqué. Her sketchbook pages for this work rely quite heavily on collage and print - both of these techniques are perfect for an art quilt and it’s a short step from collage to bonded appliqué. Laura will discuss how she arrives at a successful composition by auditioning her fabric prints before finally committing them to the backing fabric.

Considering Quilting:
In this video Laura talks about the questions she asks herself to help her decide how she will quilt a series of small appliquéd and printed pieces. She explains how she uses the elements and principles of design to create a cohesive machine quilting plan. Finally she discusses how she embellishes one of the quilts with a little hand stitched detail.