One thing I’ll say right up front: a Nancy Crow workshop certainly isn’t about sitting on the veranda with your feet up, enjoying the gentle breeze and chatting with your neighbor. Nancy doesn’t waste any time and she pushes you to work hard. I love that. Sweet hubby wasn’t able to come with me this week. Although I didn’t especially like coming back to an empty hotel room in my off-times, it did allow me to be completely focused. I started around 7 AM each morning and worked until about 9:30 or 10 PM each night. The exception was the first day, and then we started at 8 AM.
Nancy’s goal for this week was for us to learn about curved machine piecing, color interactions, and the figure-ground relationship. I’ve been using a sewing machine since I was 9, so I am very comfortable with curved machine piecing. That helped a lot, because I could focus on color interaction and figure-ground.
For our first exercise, we made a series of black and white mini-compositions. Once we had a stack completed, we picked out some of our favorites and made a larger composition. While we put it together, we were supposed to pay attention to the figure-ground relationship and the overall balance. Then we recreated the composition using a wider range of neutrals plus one color.
I really enjoyed this exercise. I think there is real value in limiting your palette, especially when you are just learning something new. It allowed me to pay better attention to my composition. I think I’d like to try this several more times.