This weekend was jam-packed with quilting goodness and teaching engagements! On Sunday, I taught "Slice of Improv" at Scruffy Quilts quilt shop. I was delighted to arrive and find some familiar faces from both recent classes and my local quilt guild had signed up!!
I typically kick off this workshop gauging everyone's impression of improvisational piecing. Common responses indicate some initial sense of fear and trepidation. My goal is to introduce them to the Slice and Insert technique and replace any Fear with some other F-words: Freeing, Forgiving and FUN!!!
This technique is a great way to use up fabric scraps and "schnibbles." Everyone arrived with a fun assortment of scraps: batiks, prints, novelty, solids and even some luscious hand dyes. We warmed up with a few basic slice and insert blocks before diving into simple variations that lead to exciting design opportunities. It was such fun to see everyone experiment with the different techniques and variations to create some really exciting block designs. Their once orderly/contained fabric scraps soon exploded over and across their tables and beautiful blocks started to emerge!! They embraced design challenges including intersections, curves, wedges along with stack/slice/shuffle and insert blocks while throwing a few challenges my way (challenge accepted!!)
Judging by the pictures below...I believe these quilters have embraced improvisational piecing and found it to be freeing, forgiving and FUN!! I cannot wait to see how each of their blocks and projects progress (hint-hint: pictures please!)
I will be heading back to Scruffy Quilts on Sunday, November 20th to teach Intriguing Interleaves. This is a super fun class where we'll create the illusion of curves and transparency all with straight line sewing. Best of all is these quilts use quilt as you go technique, so all that will be left to do is to label and bind your quilt!! There have been quite a few sign ups, but there are still a few openings if you'd like to join the fun (hint-hint).
I typically kick off this workshop gauging everyone's impression of improvisational piecing. Common responses indicate some initial sense of fear and trepidation. My goal is to introduce them to the Slice and Insert technique and replace any Fear with some other F-words: Freeing, Forgiving and FUN!!!
This technique is a great way to use up fabric scraps and "schnibbles." Everyone arrived with a fun assortment of scraps: batiks, prints, novelty, solids and even some luscious hand dyes. We warmed up with a few basic slice and insert blocks before diving into simple variations that lead to exciting design opportunities. It was such fun to see everyone experiment with the different techniques and variations to create some really exciting block designs. Their once orderly/contained fabric scraps soon exploded over and across their tables and beautiful blocks started to emerge!! They embraced design challenges including intersections, curves, wedges along with stack/slice/shuffle and insert blocks while throwing a few challenges my way (challenge accepted!!)
Judging by the pictures below...I believe these quilters have embraced improvisational piecing and found it to be freeing, forgiving and FUN!! I cannot wait to see how each of their blocks and projects progress (hint-hint: pictures please!)
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| Clockwise starting with top left: Susan, Kay, Jacquelyn (blocks) and Elaine. |
It was a fun class and got some good instruction. Have added a few more blocks and moving on to borders, yes a plan has surfaced. Thanks Mel!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the update Elaine...I am delighted that you've pieced some more blocks and already moving onto your borders!! I cannot wait to see the finished look...hint-hint!!
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