Summer Quilt Class at MISA

Madeline Island School of Art (MISA) is on the largest of the 22 Apostle Islands on Lake Superior.  It is a bilingual place with road signs written in English & Native American (Anishinabe / Ojibwe / Chippewa).  Madeline Island is is the spiritual center of the Lake Superior, Chippewa, on Lake Superior.

For the quilt class, I selected Valerie Goodwin's "The Complex Composition", for July 9th to the 13th.  I departed from Butte, MT, so 3 Delta flights were needed to get there.  I went from Butte to Salt Lake, St. Paul, to Duluth.  Then MISA had a nice driver John pick me up and drive me onto the 20 minute ferry ride from Bayfield, WI, which docks at LaPointe on Madeline Island. MISA is then a quick 1.6 mile ride on from  there.  Students are to arrive on Sunday, the day before classes begin, for a welcoming reception at 3 PM, but my flight to St. Paul arrived late, therefore we had a late take-off, so I missed the flight to Duluth and had to catch a later one. Inevitably, I missed the reception.

Then early the next morning (before class started), I went to set-up my sewing machine that had shipped from New Jersey to MISA by FedEx, and found that the sewing machine light came on, but not the screen light.  It would not operate.  I felt such despair, however I found that MISA rents Bernina brand machines.  So I had to rent a Bernina and deal with FedEx to figure out how to make a damage claim. I tried to do this subtlety , along with listening to the teacher , when the class started at 9 AM.  I was not familiar with Bernina brand machines, so I had to learn to operate that.  The Babylock Symphony machine that I had shipped was a great machine that I had just had serviced before the trip.  Upon opening the FedEx shipment box, and unloading the machine, I noticed the plastic on the side of the machine was bent out of place, and the metal plate below the needle had popped up.  I think this shows that the 71 pound box had been dropped. The box itself had a bent bottom side and some punctures on the bottom of the box.

There were two other classes going on as well at MISA, one of which was Painting and the other Mixed Media.  We were free to walk around and check them out when we had time, though the painting class went on expeditions  everyday to paint the beautiful scenery on the island.  Never the less, everyone came to meals, where we got to intermingle.  I must say the food was delicious!  I had not requested vegetarian meals, though I often eat that way, but hey had plenty of vegetarian food, and also got to eat local fish, chicken, and beef.  They supplied dinner 2 nights, but lunch and breakfast everyday, with plenty of snacks available anytime, if anyone desired.  Our sleeping rooms even had a microwave, small refrigerator, and a coffee maker with supplies.

This quilt class was for intermediate to advance quilters, and had 9 students.  The teacher Valerie Goodwin is an architect/professor/quilter.  She struck me as a very talented artist.  As a teacher, she gave us many ideas, but let us do our own thing, with helpful suggestions and advice.

Class began with learning about different types of maps, for example; Climate Maps, Resource & Economic Maps, Political Maps, Physical Maps, Road Maps, Topographical Maps.  Maps have always fascinated me, which was interestingly the similar response from all the other students in the class.  Our class goal was to combine different perspectives and aspects of the location we picked on our map quilt.  If you look deeply into Valerie's quilts you can see more and more.  They have a depth of interest.

I was torn between choosing between 2 subject ideas, weeks before the class began, as Valerie requested that we send her pictures of areas that we were interested in doing.  She could then help us narrow it down before class, to save classroom time for actually making the quilt.  Other people told me that it was exceptional for her to work with us before class even started.  She also helped me locate other map sources on the internet, which I was not familiar with.  My subject ideas were Strathmere, NJ and Woodbine, NJ.  I decided to start off with Strathmere.  In fact, the class opened my mind up to so many more ideas to pursue.  Working on them is such fun to me, even though I make many mistakes along the way.

I had never used silk organza before, which is a semi transparent fabric, so this class showed me ways it could be used in a quilt.  One mistake I made along the way, was when painting it.  Using a white organza to paint the colors I would use for my ocean and bay, I had painted it my first and second blue colors (Valerie recommended 3 shades of blue for the water).  I protected my work surface by painting the silk on plastic bags taped to the table.  But the plastic was so dirty after this that I had to discard it and find something else to use.  So to substitute I tried using a poster sized print, of one of the maps of Strathmere, I had had made at Staples.  My fabric paint was so diluted with water and paint medium that it soaked right through the silk organza onto the poster.  The ink from the poster stuck permanently to the organza.  It was a wonderful discovery.

The photo below shows my hand behind one of Valerie's masterpieces, illustrating the transparency of silk organza.

Daylight lasts until 10 PM  during the summer, since Madeline Island is at a high latitude. So MISA has bikes we can borrow to ride to town or around the island after class.  I totally enjoyed that and even got a little lost because of misinterpreting the Indian language on the road sign.  But I was not worried  because the island is only about 16 ,miles circumference and I new I would end up in familiar ground eventually, and looking forward to running into a delicious ice cream parlor, where I could take a break along the way.  I just needed to get back to MISA before dark though, as there is no light pollution there.  They even give you a flashlight at MISA to help you find your way around campus after dark.  The art studio is open 24 hours a day, and one night some of us even worked in the studio until 11 PM.  Enjoying some wine and chatting while we worked.

Sandy Evans won the opportunity to take the class, with a stipulation that she would make a map quilt about MISA.  MISA seemed to be using our class for marketing, as they were also filming us while we were working.  I always seemed to be fixing mistakes when they were filming me (darn), instead of showing my creative genius (haha).  But I must say, we all agreed that we seem to learn more from mistakes.  Sometimes(if not many times) new inventions or dicoveries are found that way., as I learned from painting on top of ink jet prints.

These photos were taken on the last day of class, when we were asked to hang our work and discuss it.  No one had finished their quilt top except Susan Ziel, who amazingly, had even made about 7.

Susan Ziel

Sandy Evans

Gayle Cepparo

Danita Rask

Leslie Pope

Sue Walsh

Robin Roderick

Sue Perse

My work in progress of Strathmere

My warm-up project of "Map of MISA"

View from my room at MISA

P.S.  From Gayle Cepparo and Valerie,  I learned about Empty Spools Seminar quilt classes at Asilomar Conference Grounds in Pacific Grove, CA.  It is on the beautiful Monterey Peninsula, which also has great places to play golf! I plan to go.