Design Workshop

I took a nifty class through my local quilt guild with Denise Green.  She asked us to bring in a "center"and a bunch of things that looked like coordinates and we'd play with them and build borders etc... on the center.  I had some experience with putting pieced borders on quilts but I had an inkling that the class might have some other good information and I was right!
Denise was a wealth of information and my fellow classmate and I had a great time with her all to ourselves! 

I started out with this fabric:

When we got it in the shop I immediately thought, "Oh I would love to play with that and some solids" so this workshop seemed like the ideal time to play since I had no pattern in mind! So off I went and gathered these:

I know not all of them are solids but the dot and the stripe were too perfect with the colors not to invite them to the party too.

Denise suggested several simple pieced border options in her directions. I like flying geese, so I decided to make some of those. I had this darn tool from I don't know how long ago still in the bag 

( can you believe it? *blush*) so I thought its time had come!  I pulled it out, ( brace yourself), READ THE DIRECTIONS and made flying geese four at a time with Eleanor Burns' method. Pretty nifty. Denise told me about another tool for flying geese called a "wingclipper" that is more versatile so no doubt I will have one of those in its package on my notions wall soon....

Anyway.

I pieced the geese together and with Denise's expertise in coping borders had a perfect fit for my center! Wah-lah! My fellow classmate came a bit more prepared than me so she got 2 rounds of borders on hers! We also gathered several other tidbits on making fast an accurate 4 patches and more. We made a pact to show off our products at the next guild meeting together too. 

The workshop was a really nice break for *me time*, I have otherwise been very busy with customer quilts.  Customer quilts are always really enjoyable for me each posing new possibilities and each unique but, then I have to send them home when they are done! It is nice to make something occasionally that I get to keep!

 Here is mine as of the end of class.  I really like it! It is happy and colorful and I have no plans for it whatsoever... should I add more borders to make it bigger? Or frame it on point and continue bordering to make it a quilt? or should I just call it done and quilt it into a wallhanging or pillow? It is about 18" square now.  Any thoughts?

Quilting Improv Workshop

Another speaker I booked for our guild, Mary Ann Littlejohn also gave us a workshop.  This one was called Quilting Improv using scraps which on the outset does not sound very interesting but she is an art quilter and so she really came at it in a whole different way.
She had you take a selection your of strips and sew them together without a measuring and cutting and all of that. The you would start assembling layers around a little focal block or focal fabric to make your little art piece. You could use the strip set to cut different sizes to go around it or you could take squares and sew them diagonally to make irregular half square triangles etc...
My class product was not to my satisfaction. I really wanted to use this print:

Which my grandmother had given to me from a Southeast Asian trip she had taken.
Unfortunately I brought fabrics to the workshop that were too matchy to that. Not enough sizzle or contrast for the look I wanted. I had selected a lot of pinks to match the focal fabric and I don't really like pink so what I was thinking is a mystery...  I guess I was used to picking fabric for a traditional quilt -- so that everything matches, I had to get out of my box. Here is what I ended up with in class, not my cup of tea.

When I got home I immediately started another quilt because I loved the technique, was really jazzed to try it again and had learned a lot from the workshop. Here is the product, which I love. 

It measures:11.5"x 12"

It was fun to use these as little machine quilting experiments- I quilted each little area differently. I added the bead fringe on one part and buttons of course!
I made another one later in that same week! This one reminds me of a crayon box because of that school bus yellow binding and rick rack (and the rainbow of colors within). 

 It measures 11"x12"

A week later my husband woke up to go to work at 5:30 as usual but I was not in bed. I had woken up at 3:30 and when he woke up I was nearly through making this:

 details of quilting:

 

I had a brainstorm in the night about using my hand dyed fabrics and batiks so I just followed my muse despite the hour. This one I constructed more as a row quilt-- deviating from the original technique which started with a square of focal point in the piece.


My friend Diane bravely took the class even though she was very uncomfortable with the lack of pattern and rules.  We were asked not to use ruler with our rotary cutters and she looked like a deer in the headlights. She made it through though with a beautiful little quilt you can see hers on her blog here.