Local Courthouse Colourplay Workshop

The Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild invites non-members to join us for my Courthouse Colourplay class on Sunday, April 28th at the Croatian Cultural Centre in Vancouver from 10 am to 5 pm. All of the info is here. The price for non-members is $80.

Explore the possibilities of colour expression and free-cutting without rulers while you create this wonky, nested Courthouse Step quilt (reminiscent of paper lanterns) in your own personal colour story.

I made this wallhanging for the MQG miniquilt swap at QuiltCon2018

We’ll work intuitively from the center out, creating a dynamic quilt with loads of personality. There will be no squaring up with this one — instead I'll show you how to “build out”, finding the fit between adjacent blocks and using up all of your scraps in the process.

This one is a baby or small lap quilt with 25 blocks.

As in all of my workshops, I'll share loads of tips while encouraging all students to find confidence in new techniques.  Put your patchwork and rotary cutting skills to work and explore improvisational design and piecing in a fun, supportive environment!  The supply list includes ideas, resources and tips for selecting your colours. Make a wall-hanging with F8's or a lap quilt with FQ's or 12" WOF cuts.  A layer cake of solids or tone on tones like grunge could even work with some prudent cutting ; ) 

This one, Emerald Court, has 16 blocks with slightly wider strips. It's about 40" square. It's made entirely of Northcott solids that I loved working with! No fraying and a lovely hand.  I'm currently hand-quilting it with Aurifil 12 wt and Aurifloss. 

To register, please email workshops@vancouvermodernquiltguild.ca 

Courthouse Colourplay - LOCAL WORKSHOP

Hi all!

I'm back to tell you about an upcoming local workshop here in North Vancouver that has a few spaces open. Hot on the heels of a super fun debut class last weekend at the Dinkydoo warehouse, the Seymour Quilter's Guild is offering up some space in their class to non-members.

The workshop will take place in North Vancouver on Wednesday May 8, 2019 from 9:30 - 3:30 at a cost of only $55! Please email me directly for the guild contact information (my email address is just up there on the left side under my photo, use actual dots and the @ symbol when writing out the email address. I have it written funny that way on this page to automated avoid spam).

Although it is a bit of a mash up, I wanted to show you some of the student work from last weekend's class. There were several very experienced quilters who had never tried free-cutting without rulers or done any improv piecing before and they had such fun creating their quilt tops and playing with solid coloured fabrics. Two people attending were brand new quilters and this was only their second or third quilt project!

You'll learn how to freely cut your fabric with confidence, how to manage wonky strips and blocks in construction, how to puzzle a collection of oddly shaped blocks together using my building-out technique (instead of 'squaring up'), the secret of hiding the block boundaries in your final layout and how to let go and allow your fabrics to guide your progress throughout block construction.

I hope that you'll join us!  If North Vancouver is too far away for you, I'll also be teaching this class (along with 3 others) at QuiltCanada in Ottawa this June. Registration for members and non-members is currently open HERE.

Stringy

Hi folks, just popping in today to share my LAST bee block of the year. This one is for Dan. He's going to end up with an amazing collection of odd-sized, free-pieced, colourful, fabulous blocks made mostly from solid fabrics inspired by this quilt.

We could chose any size, any construction, any shape we wanted. I can't wait to see how Dan puts them together. He seems to be a bit of a genius when it comes to jigsawing blocks together, so I know it will end up an inspiring quilt!  I struggled with the concept of tossing a bunch of colours together, hoping they would jive. I'm not sure I met with any success on that front...nor do I have any confidence in the old "if there are enough colours in there, it'll look good" adage.  Maybe because that's not an adage. Maybe I made it up.

I used Gwen Marston's wonky string block construction method from her Liberated Medallion Quilts book (an amazing book if you want to check out free-pieced border ideas). The 3 1/2" blocks were sewn on scrap paper cut to 3 3/4".  After sewing down the strips, I trimmed the squares, then removed the paper, then pieced them into this 6 1/2" x 24 1/2" block. It's the dog's breakfast, lunch and dinner on the back with all that seam allowance pointing every which way, but a liberal spritzing with Mary Ellen's Best Press seems to have tamed it into a state of acceptable flatness.

It's pouring rain here for the foreseeable future. Sewing Season is definitely upon us in Vancouver. I just saw a teeny tiny hummingbird land on my clothes line minutes ago. Poor little thing, it looks like a single raindrop could take it out! My neighbours have a feeder on their deck and there's been a little hummingbird couple that have flown together all summer - snacking at the feeder, then resting on our line. I think it's time they headed south to the sun. 

Hope you are cozy today!

Blocks for October

The Vancouver MQG held a Friday night sew-in last Friday and I took the opportunity to sew with Agatha  for the evening. Agatha is my trusty Singer Featherweight that belonged to my late MIL and was generously given to me by my SIL. I just love piecing with this little machine.

Tonight, the VMQG will hold it's annual Hallowe'en block draw.  Guild members can bring as many blocks as they like (blocks must have a finished dimension of  6" or multiples of 6"). You get one entry for every block you put into the draw and if your name is drawn you get to choose a number of blocks to take home. Last year I made 6 blocks and came home empty-handed. This year I've made three 12 1/2" blocks, but I won't be able to attend tonight so I'm sending my blocks with Berene and counting on her good luck to bring a set back to me!

I free-pieced both of these pumpkin blocks with scraps from my orange box. I love free-piecing because you never know what the end result will look like until you get there.  I'll also send along a duplicate of this Great Granny Block that I made for Cindy in the Stash Trad Bee this month.

Have you got any spooky stitching going on for Hallowe'en? I've always wanted to have a Hallowe'en quilt, but never made one. Maybe this'll be my lucky year for a set of blocks to get me started!

Road Trip - Quilter Style

Last Friday my Mom and I packed up the rental and hit the I-5 for a 36 hour quilting road trip! We started with a stop in Blaine, WA at the postal service I use for U.S. purchases. For a change there was only one fabric package awaiting pick up and two other items for the men in my family (B's birthday gift of a hydraulic seat post for his mountain bike and a neon sign transformer for T - more on that later!).

From there we continued to the gorgeous town of La Conner, WA where their incredible quilt museum was hosting a Quilt Festival. Quilts and wearables on display at 3 locations in town! Sadly, photography was not allowed, but Mom and I along with members of my Gathered Threads stitch group enjoyed the quilts very much. It was a treat to see so many gorgeous hand-appliqued quilts. I'll never make a Baltimore Album, but I do love, respect and appreciate beautiful hand work. After a delicious lunch at the Calico Cupboard (featuring tons of gluten-free baking!), the two of us set off for Seattle.

Pioneer Square, late afternoon

After checking into our hotel at Pioneer Square, we hopped back in the car to catch the ferry over to Vashon Island. Check out this gorgeous setting sun from the ferry!

This entire trip was prompted by the opening night of Krista Withers Longarm Quilting show ev.o.lu.tion at Island Quilter. Krista is affectionately known in these parts as K2: I am K1 due to my advanced age and Krista Fleckenstein is K3 due to the fact that she's still a kid.  This all started when K2 came to stay and attend one of my retreats and my husband couldn't handle having two Krista's in the house simultaneously answering all questions directed to "Krista". As in "Krista, would you like another glass of wine". "YES please!" in harmony.

K3 and I had conspired on a congratulatory bouquet. K2 had worked tirelessly for the past two months preparing work for the show and we are so proud of her!

If you're on Instagram you may have watched this Frankenquilt grow from a pile of hexagons into this masterpiece over the past 6 weeks. Incredible! It really drew in the passersby attending the first Friday gallery night on Vashon's main drag.

Krista's paintings from her life before quilting - I think she's going to do some more painting soon. Lucky us!

Here she is explaining how a longarm machine works to a very interested couple. It's great to see people truly fascinated by the art and process of quilting!

 

The front and equally awesome back of Krista's free-pieced bee quilt

This is K3's corner! Both of these beautiful quilts were pieced by K3 and quilted by K2.

Here's Lynne's pretty block all quilted by Krista in another bee quilt.

And finally another shot of Krista (her husband Mike on the left) and some friends enjoying the show! Can I just add how awesome Mike is? He even complimented my camera bag with a "Did you make that bag? Nice Echino!" Melt.

It was now 9:00 p.m. and we'd still not eaten dinner, so Mom and I joined Sandie and Keli at The Hardware Store for a delicious meal served up lickity split so that we could catch the 9:50 p.m. ferry back to west Seattle.

The fun continued the next morning...but that's another post. If you find yourself in Seattle sometime during October, please make the gorgeous trip to Vashon to see Krista's exhibit and shop with Anya at Island Quilter. You won't be sorry! Almost all of her quilting cottons are only $10/yd and her selection is incredible, including all Westminster prints, shots and a ton of modern designer fabric and home-dec weight.

There are more photos from Krista's show in my flickr stream. Just click on any of the pictures here to take you there! 

Make progress, not dinner

Do you have those days where you simply cannot tear yourself away from your sewing machine and suddenly it is 6 o'clock and the natives are restless? Hungry? Opening and closing the fridge every 5 minutes hoping a meal will suddenly appear?  Well, I have those days every day. I distinctly remember a great line from a presentation I saw by Jane Sassaman once where she said "If no one asks about dinner, I'm certainly not going to mention it!"

I am still playing catch up since our travel in March and am slowly plugging away at bee blocks in between sewing stints at D's circus school in preparation for the big production, Blue Sky Circus in two weeks. I'm helping with costumes and have sewn my first serger seams!  Unfortunately, 10 hours of cutting in one week was partly responsible for my back spasm, but I'm slowly returning to normal thanks to my massage therapist and chiropractor.

I am in two bees at present (and I've decided that two concurrent bees is plenty for me!).  First up, the Free Bee. This one is a really fun challenge every month. The idea is to make free-pieced blocks within some sort of guideline specified by the Queen (or in the case of this group, King) Bee each month. We use our own stash.  Both John and Dan are in the Free Bee!

I first had to make Krista's March block which is awfully late:

In fact, so late I made another smaller one to go with it.

Krista's making a 'Modern Mood' quilt inspired by the work of Sherri Lynn Woods. You can read more about these stunning quilts at Sherri's blog here.

Then today I made this block for Ethne, which I think turned out really well.

Ethne's inspiration comes from graphic images in a calendar by Leah Duncan. She asked us to use any dark blue as background and solids or hand dyes for the triangle highlights.  I think both of these Free Bee quilts will be a fabulous challenge to assemble and I look forward to seeing them come together!

Finally, here's a block I made for Elizabeth in the Stash Trad Bee. In this excellent bee we are making traditional blocks with modern fabrics from our stash each month. This is a fabulous block and you can make one yourself using Elizabeth's Radiant Ring tutorial here.  Elizabeth requested either a cool-, or a warm-coloured block from each of us.

Well, it's 5:00 p.m. and that means I can cram another hour of sewing in before people will be thinking about food. I hope that my next post will be my Dresden Pillow pattern release. It's all set up and ready to go, I'm just awaiting confirmation of my new Paypal account.  So exciting!!