Textile design class helps students develop skills

Aqua and hot pink. Dusty purple. Earthy browns. Boisterous orange. Vivid yellow. Ocean blue. Designs and colors with a distinctly global flavor.

Junior and senior students spread out their works in progress, revealing pieces of fabric vibrant with tie-dyed circles big and small, with batiked elephants, seahorses and penguins, with stenciled lacy fans and with swirls of marbling. The textile design class at Bangor High School is an art class imbued with a modicum of what used to belong to the realm of home economics – sewing.

“At the end of the year,” art teacher Sarah Tabor always tells her students, “the batiks will be your favorites.”

Tabor, who has taught art for 18 years at BHS, has offered the textile design class for 16 years. “It’s something I developed,” she said. “You probably won’t find anything like it anywhere else in the country.”

The class begins in September and ends in May. During that time, students – mostly girls, although a few boys take the class from time to time – learn to decorate fabric with tie-dye, silk screen, batik, stamping and marbling techniques. They begin with white muslin and create blocks and strips of fabric until they have enough to sew together into a quilt.

“The biggest challenge is coming up with design ideas,” said Cornelia Spyra, who was in the process of tying her quilt together with dusty green embroidery floss. A piece in her quilt bore an ornate letter “C.” One of the class assignments is to include a repeat design using the maker’s initial.

“It’s a 40-minute class,” Tabor said, “so they all help one another, like a quilting bee.”

Alexa Steele was at the ironing board smoothing out the pieces she had designed. Her sister took the class three years ago. “She still has the quilt she made,” Steele said.

Adrienne Given wanted an underwater theme for her quilt, and seahorses figure prominently in it. She carved the stamp for the seahorse, giving it a graceful S-curve and intricate detail. She also did a repeat design of an exotic-looking fish which, when viewed a certain way, fooled one into thinking it was a splendid green and orange butterfly.

“It’s nice to have something tangible to take away from a class,” she said. She enjoyed the experimenting with dyes and getting the colors to harmonize. She wants to make another quilt and to use the techniques she learned in the class to make clothing, handbags and other accessories. The class, she said, more than met her expectations.

Elizabeth Burroughs-Heineman was busy hand-sewing small pieces of plastic bag over the white areas in a design of a female figure stamped in black. Other parts of the fabric were done up into tiny sections fastened by elastic bands. The next step in her process was to dip the piece into yellow dye. “I hope it will look like lights in the background,” she said. The plastic-covered parts would remain white and the elastics would create small circular designs.

At the other end of the room, four elderly sewing machines were set up. Several students were laying out pieces of designed fabric on the floor, deciding which one to place where before stitching them in place.

“The best part is getting the quilt finished, not the sewing,” said Megan Mireles. Only about a third of the students came into the class knowing how to use a sewing machine.

“It’s doing something I love,” Tabor said of the class. “I love seeing the kids getting excited about finishing their quilts.”

But Tabor’s most important lesson, which gives them permission to try ideas and to experiment, Given said, is this: “Do it over until you like it.”

The quilts created in the textile design class will be on display during Academic Recognition Night from 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, May 25, in Peakes Auditorium at Bangor High School.

Snippets

Rug hooking demonstrations will be held 11 a.m.-3 p.m. Saturday, May 21, at the Maine State Museum in Augusta. One-on-one instruction and advice from rug hooking experts will be available. Admission is free. Call 287-2301 for more information.

Ardeana Hamlin can be reached at 990-8153 or e-mail ahamlin@bangordailynews.net.