My cousin Jason and his wife and their together 5 kids all flew in from Colorado and will convene at
Carrie's house tomorrow. I make the most incredible ribs so they wanted my ribs. Thinking ahead, I gave the recipe to Carrie with instructions NOT to give it out to anyone. And she was supposed to make my ribs. She did a practice run two weeks ago and pronounced them not nearly as good as mine. Hmmmmmmm.
So the job went back to me. Of course, what would you expect from a person who gets her mother and mother-in-law to make Thanksgiving dinner! That's OK, I get to keep the title of the Best Ribs Ever!
So now that 4 racks of the magnificent rib slabs are in the oven and the other 4 are ready to pop in in 2 hours I can tell you about my incredible day in the Metal Working workshop.
I took pictures all day, just for you!Mary Hettsmansperger has been in all the major and minor magazines, she has been juried into SAQA and so many other places we all admire.
Michael and I sat at a table together and he made fun of my tool kit. He called it Sissy tools, I call them ZEBRA!
This was the array of metals she gave us to manipulate. Copper of several weights, brass, the hemp is mine and somehow got into the photo. Some of the metals were thick and some were so thin they draped like fabric. You can sew through about half of these babies.
We used butane burners with self starters. Our Mary who set up the classes, was paranoid the whole time that someone was going to burn the building down!
Here is a copper foil with flux. It becomes almost iridescent in places.
Here are some copper sheets cut, fluxed, burned and beaten with hammers. The coil is a steel wire beaten to within an inch of its life with a mallet head that had patterns embedded in it.
This is a copper mesh burned. Half of it is original.
And here we wove a thin copper foil with basket weaving materials. We WOVE metal!
We burned batting (outside) and we put embossing powder on metals and burned them.
This is a metal sheet that has been sewn through using a regular sewing machine like we all have in our sewing room!
These are some of the things I burned, beat and made.
Do you remember the leaves I skeletonized? they are just perfect here!
Mary H discharges dark fabrics, dyes light fabrics and Rusts amazing things easily.
I want to be her! I do so want to be her!
OMG! This looks like so much fun! especially sitting next to Micheal whom I don't know but from what you've said sounds like a hoot.I like the fact she didn't just sit you down and have you make a necklace or something but has you try all the different techniques that you can take with you. I am intriqued about sewing thrrought the metal sheet. what kind of metal? must be paper thin?
ReplyDeleteClasses like this are awesome -- I know I super enjoyed the glass bead making experience. ENJOY!!
ReplyDeleteSounds like you had a wonderful time with your class! You just like to dabble into all kinds of things!
ReplyDeleteI love that woven metal piece and am excited to see where you go with that. All of the pieces are interesting, and I am certain that I would love to take the class. I understand your saying, "I want to be her." I feel that way when I meet someone with great talent....doesn't much matter what the talent is, either!
ReplyDeleteThis looks like a fabulous day and one that I would enjoy. I have sewn thru copper squares on my regular Bernina with no trouble. The only problem about putting them on a quilt is that you cannot roll or fold your quilt or the copper squares will crease (ask me how I know). I bought my copper already burnished into some very interesting patterns. I'll be it was fun to do by yourself.
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