Arabesque workshop 29th & 30 August 2015 cancelled

Arabesque workshop with Jenny Bowker   2 days

This workshop will teach you to play with a selection of patterns to produce designs suitable for quilts made with blocks – but your blocks will be appliquéd like Islamic blocks.

It is really curious that quilters make hundreds of wonderful block designs with geometric piecing, but the moment they think about appliqué they use a cream square and put something in the centre that does not touch the sides. We will work with ways to create stunning tile patterns for appliqué.

Pattern is defined in the Concise Oxford dictionary as "a regular form or order … or design." We will look at the way pattern appears in nature - while there is usually an underlying structure there is often a lot of variation within the basic design. We can play with patterns that nature produces for us or produce patterns of our own using several different systems.

It is a design based workshop where you will not produce a finished quilt, but will work with many small sample design ideas in paper. Most of your time will be used in working up designs

Student Requirements List: is available on Jenny Bowker's website  http://www.jennybowker.com/arabesque/

Skill level: A willingness to work in new ways is necessary for this class. Some experience is useful but not essential.

Jenny Bowker

Jenny has been working in Textiles since 1997 - from the time she finished a Bachelor of Arts Degree (Visual) and decided to make just one quilt.

Her background - life before quilts - was in science. She is moving towards a melding of her fine art work and her textile work. She is interested in the way pattern comes into many parts of our lives and often include some geometrical piecing in her work as she thinks it keeps her technically on her toes and provides a key for traditional quilters to link to her work.

She has four children and a very supportive husband who worked as a diplomat for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. While following him she lived a total of fifteen years in Arab and Islamic countries. This might seem irrelevant to quilting, but has influenced her subject matter and much of her work reflects her love of the Middle East. She has lived in Syria, Western Samoa, Malaysia, Jordan, Jerusalem and Egypt.

She teaches and really enjoys it. There is no greater delight than to offer tools to a quilter who wants to make original work but doesn't know how to access her own ideas.

For more details about her background and experience in quilting go to her website at www.jennybowker.com.