Workshop report 3 -- best recycling

If you've ever attended a strip-piecing workshop with Nancy Crow you will find this panel familiar:

Linda made it with Nancy as a color study, and though she liked the result, could never figure out what to do with it.  So she brought it to our workshop and wondered if she could use it in the small-to-large exercise.

Well, why not?

She sliced some strips off the side and already had a few rows of small-to-large piecing finished, at about the time the other people were barely starting to choose fabrics and cut strips!

Here's what she ended up with: not a complete composition, because she wanted to make a larger piece and didn't want to use up her whole "fabric" right away.

Notice how she has rearranged the strips to break up the order of colors, so it isn't so obvious that everything was cut from the same strip set, and how the two short horizontal rows "frame" the center and give variety and interest.

Maybe you can also see the striped fabric she used for new skinny lines: perfectly coordinated with the original colors, it's going to give the finished piece a lovely sparkle.

Having come home with a lot of unfinished color studies from the Crow Barn myself, I am always thrilled when an opportunity arises to use them in another project.  I was proud of what Linda came up with; even though the pre-existing stripes weren't as skinny as in my instructions, the effect was striking and the spirit was certainly in keeping with the fine-line ethos.

I'm not one of those teachers who gets in a snit when people go off on tangents.  I think when the muse decides to strike, you have to go for it.