I am so behind on getting around to blogging. Life has me in a total whirlwind right now, so what little spare time I have, I've not been on the computer. I'm falling behind on e-mails... groups... blogging... you name it...
On October 14th I took a workshop with quilt artist Frieda Anderson. She is a nationally known quilter who was recently on the cover of Quilting Arts Magazine. I loved that quilt when I saw it and I had no idea she was coming to the Cotton Patch Quilters for a workshop at the time. I am generally not too good at keeping up with names of all these nationally known quilters. I do my thing and I'm not so good with names, so when it was announced at the meeting it really had no meaning until I saw that it was that quilt on the cover of the magazine that I put it together. So, I decided to do her workshop. We didn't make the quilt on the magazine, but that was OK, we made her quilt Laughing Leaves. She is from what is called the fusing club of quilting where no sewing really happens until the very end everthing is fused together with some form of adhesive. I don't fuse much. I do use some adhesives, but I mostly use them to hold my pieces together while I sew them. I like sewing and making the pieces fit together, it is a big puzzle for me that I enjoy, but her technique is interesting and I appreciate how it all comes together. I usually have an idea of what my pieces are going to look like before I cut the first piece of fabric, but with her technique, you figure it out as go and the way my brain works, it just overwhelms me... All the decisions you have to make as you go. I found it really stressful for me, but I can see how I can use it later on in a piece I'm hoping to start in the coming months. All in all, it was a fun day spent handling fabric and exploring new ideas which is always a great thing to do. Here are a few photos from the class.
This is someone else's piece, I didn't get this far (due to all the decisions I had to make - I know it was good for me, but hard... I do like what I ended up with though and I will use my blocks somewhere along the way.) Everything is cut and fused. We learned how to make the leaves and then what we did with them was up to us.
Again, not me, but here my friend Pat is considering her color options. Frieda hand dyed all the fabric we used. It was impressive the shades she was able to create in one piece.
On October 14th I took a workshop with quilt artist Frieda Anderson. She is a nationally known quilter who was recently on the cover of Quilting Arts Magazine. I loved that quilt when I saw it and I had no idea she was coming to the Cotton Patch Quilters for a workshop at the time. I am generally not too good at keeping up with names of all these nationally known quilters. I do my thing and I'm not so good with names, so when it was announced at the meeting it really had no meaning until I saw that it was that quilt on the cover of the magazine that I put it together. So, I decided to do her workshop. We didn't make the quilt on the magazine, but that was OK, we made her quilt Laughing Leaves. She is from what is called the fusing club of quilting where no sewing really happens until the very end everthing is fused together with some form of adhesive. I don't fuse much. I do use some adhesives, but I mostly use them to hold my pieces together while I sew them. I like sewing and making the pieces fit together, it is a big puzzle for me that I enjoy, but her technique is interesting and I appreciate how it all comes together. I usually have an idea of what my pieces are going to look like before I cut the first piece of fabric, but with her technique, you figure it out as go and the way my brain works, it just overwhelms me... All the decisions you have to make as you go. I found it really stressful for me, but I can see how I can use it later on in a piece I'm hoping to start in the coming months. All in all, it was a fun day spent handling fabric and exploring new ideas which is always a great thing to do. Here are a few photos from the class.
This is someone else's piece, I didn't get this far (due to all the decisions I had to make - I know it was good for me, but hard... I do like what I ended up with though and I will use my blocks somewhere along the way.) Everything is cut and fused. We learned how to make the leaves and then what we did with them was up to us.
Again, not me, but here my friend Pat is considering her color options. Frieda hand dyed all the fabric we used. It was impressive the shades she was able to create in one piece.
This is my pile of scraps I brought home to use somewhere down the road. I'm so insane with it all that I just keep them... You never know when you might need a really small piece in a certain color...
This is the sample we worked off of to get our ideas. The one thing I really liked the most was learning about the different blades you can buy for rotary cutters. I can definitely see me investing in some of these along the way as I think about them and ways to use them. I did buy a pinking blade and I'm going to be making some more cloth napkins for us with that! Talk about cutting straight lines made easy... Even left handed folks can use rotary blades with no problem.
All in all the workshop was money well spent and Frieda was very nice and willing to be helpful when ask. Now I have to decide whether to take the next workshop the guild offers. It is with Joyce Becker another nationally known quilt artist.
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