How do you control a heart exploding with pride?

Some of my brilliant students are sharing their completed and almost completed creations from my class "Dare Design":

The complexity of Ann's piece is quite amazing! Her color choices, the way the diamonds form negative spaces, and how the beads are situated, are all enticing!

Pat's piece is so lovely! She called it Step Into My Garden, which seems perfect. It looks like a manicured small royal garden and all I want to do is step into it and stay!

Sally Barton's piece is mesmerizing, the crescents seem to be dancing across the canvas. Her colors are so appealing!

Melita's design, Crescent Journey, received a 3rd place ribbon and scored 94 out of 100 in her judges' critique!!

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Sally Barton, the journey she took in my class Dare Design...

Sally tunes into my online class, Dare Design, all the way from New Zealand! Her journey has been really fun to watch. At first, it seemed that she was a bit intimidated, and perhaps not sure how brave she wanted to be with color, however looking at where she took her design, I see a daring designer in the making!

Here is one of her very first drawings. The goal was to look at triangles as a composition of shapes and colors. We played with possible tessellations of her shapes.

Above are her second set of drawings.

The triangles from above were tessellated and this is what Sally achieved:

Next Sally looked for the right stitches to convey the shapes she came up with.

 And after much work and trials, we charted her final triangles. She decided to work with two different triangles and bring them together in a complete design.

Her final master chart looked like this:

Here is her work in progress!!!!

It's quite brilliant!

Kindly remember!! 

We are all well aware of the importance of respecting the ownership of a designer's work. 

These designs belong solely to Sally Barton. 

Do NOT print or use these designs for any purpose without Sally's explicit permission!!!

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Another Student to Designer transformation!!

Lynn Decker Miller is now stitching her completed piece. 

While she works on that, let's take a look at the path she took...

The first assignment was to map out a triangle and then paint it with watercolors:

Next the process of transforming the shapes inside the triangles into stitches. 

Here students found that they needed to be flexible, 

what looks good on paper doesn't always work on the canvas.

With the chart in hand, Lynn tackled the canvas, with great success!

She worked on a second colorway for the same triangle:

Her work was now in my hands. 

I charted her original triangle and then tessellated a few options for a final piece. 

Here are Lynn's charts for her design.

Kindly remember!! 

We are all well aware of the importance of respecting the ownership of a designer's work. 

These designs belong solely to Lynn Decker Miller. 

Do NOT print or use these designs for any purpose without Lynn's explicit permission!!!

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How my Students became Designers , AMAZING work!

Dare to Design, one of my most challenging and yet gratifying classes is in its final stages. 

I want to share some of the work of my very talented students. 

Patricia Karpenko has taken us on a wonderful journey. 

She began with the watercolor phase of the process and came up with this beautiful triangle, 

an initial cell of her tessellating design.

After working off of this painting for a bit, she woke up one morning with a variation that excited her, and she embarked on a slightly different direction.

After this initial drawing, she went to the canvas and interpreted the drawing in an exquisite way!

 The shapes and colors are magnificent.

Once she finalized the stitches, it was my turn to chart her design. 

Pat received this first laminated chart of her new design: Step Into My Garden.

I also sent her this chart of her triangle tessellated, coming together into a square. 

The ball is back in her court. Pat is working on her piece, stitching the complete design 

with any final changes or additions she may come up with.

I will share her completed design when she is done.

Congratulations Pat!!

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Lion getting ready to roar!!

Making progress ;)

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Dare Design - amazing needlepoint in watercolors!

How do you teach needlepoint design? If you are me you take a road less travelled, some may even say strange.
In my new online workshop "Dare Design", I asked my students to paint triangles using watercolors. These triangles were to be filled with smaller shapes. Go wild with color and design, I said. They did.  Next, taking their triangle creations, we tessellated, turned, flipped, and manipulated. The results are knock out!
All of this happened before we talked about any stitches, certainly before we touched the canvas or threaded a needle.
This is not for the faint of heart...

Let me share some creations with you.

Here is one of Lauren Bloch's triangles and two tessellations of it below:

Here is a triangle by Ann Moody, tessellated in two different ways:

Melita Glavin's triangle has a kaleidoscope look that is dazzling when tessellated!

Susan Heider's example is of the same triangle, painted in two different colorways, and then tessellated together:

Sally Bee's triangle is another example of same triangle, two different colorways:

Mary Frances Kelly-Poh is in Brazil but that hasn't stopped her from working on triangles! The effect here is very almost like a weave.

Kari Hofer's triangles have a bit of fantasy to them. Two colorways tessellated beautifully.

Lynn Decker gave her triangle two unique colorways and they make for a very interesting tessellation.

Patricia Mott Karpenko came up with two colorways that could not be more different! Look at what happened here!

I have only shown you a small collection of these amazing pieces of art! 

There are many more to share.  The work presented by this group of students is spectacular. 

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Thoughts on design - an insight.

Geometric canvas designs are magical. They begin like a doodle game. I remember the days when there were only landline phones and you had to sit right by the phone because it would only move so far from the wall outlet.  There you sat listening to the person on the other end and your hands wanted to do something. I think that's when doodling was invented!
A large area, just a simple shape, began splitting into smaller areas that resembled a jigsaw puzzle. Any two smaller shapes formed a negative space and in turn that area would be a playground for some more doodling.
I use the practices I developed during the long phone sit ins when I go about designing a geometric.

Let's look at one of the more important parts of my Dare Design workshop, the watercolor part. You are given 25 pieces of fine quality watercolor paper for experimentation. Your large outer space will be a triangle.

I will begin with some dividing lines and I will split up the triangle to smaller parts.

I drew a line across the top of the triangle, about 1/2 way down and then drew some dividing shapes within the top triangular shape. And I kept dividing these areas up and filling the negative spaces.

I continue working on the areas I've determined, now with color.  Each section is given a color, some are repeated in a symmetrical fashion and I build up the top triangular area until it seems right. 

Of course there is much more I can do with the sections I have formed. But that will come later, on the canvas. For now I have drawn and painted a beautiful map which will be a guide when my needle hits the canvas.

Why don't you join in on this exercise? Look at the shapes I have painted and make some suggestions as to which stitches you would use to translate the shapes onto canvas.  I have numbered a few of the areas below. Reference the numbers and make your suggestions in the comments here on the blog.

This is a small sampling of what we will be doing in my Dare Design workshop.  Our journey will lead you to acquiring the tools to design your own geometrics. 

Can't wait to hear from you!! 

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