I was delighted to return to the
Piecemakers Quilt Guild of Southern Alameda County for a day of Pebble & Play! What a fun and adventurous group of quilters, with a great mix of free-motion quilting experience levels. A number of attendees were trying free-motion quilting for the very first time ever, along with a number of experienced free-motion quilters, and all levels in between!
The day was broken up into 4-5 demo sessions, where I would introduce a group of Pebble designs, along with stitched samples and quilt examples.
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| Many Thanks to Host Extraordinaire Cindy S for Capturing Some Action Shots |
And then, everyone would return to their machines to play. This workshop is a choose-your-own-adventure with everyone working at their own pace. Some of the quilters were busy exploring their machines and testing what settings worked best for them. Others spent some time warming up with tracing and doodle exercises. A few fearless quilters jumped right into stitching out the various pebble designs on their quilt sandwiches!
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| Practice! Practice! Practice! |
At the start of the workshop, everyone was super quiet as they focused and worked on a new skill set.
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| Free-Motion Focused! |
But as they continued to practice and play, I noticed everyone start to relax, talk and HAVE FUN!
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| Free-Motion Quilting is FUN!! |
In this class especially, I encourage everyone to take stretch breaks so as to not cause stress or strain on the body or mind.
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| A Well-Deserved Break is in Order After All that Fabulous Stitching!! |
Check out everyone's stitched samplers!!
Everyone made great progress, both over the course of the day and over the course of their stitched samples!
And I absolutely love seeing how each quilter add their own personality and creativity into the designs!!
At the end of the day, I like to mix things up by demonstrating non-pebble designs. Since many of my quilt samples incorporate a range of FMQing designs, I often get questions about how a particular design is achieved. So I make a list of those design requests and doodle them out so they can add a few new motifs to their repertoire!
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| Mixing It Up with Figure Eights, Ribbon Candy & Kite Tails! |
And I like to end the day with a little show and tell where each quilter shows off their stitched samplers and share their favorite motif of the day!
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| These Quilters Made for a Super Fun Day of Pebble & Play!! |
One of the take away messages I try to instill is for quilters to be on the lookout for Pebble design inspiration, both in nature and in their fabric stashes. Quite a few of the attendees noticed how I dressed for this special occasion...
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| FMQing Inspired Fashion |
Many thanks to Cindy and everyone today for a truly wonderful day of Pebble & Play!!!
You are so busy, Mel, and your students are always cheerful and excited. How inspiring you are. No wonder they wanted you to come back. Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteI like to keep busy as it keeps me out of trouble! ;-) This may just be my new favorite workshop as everyone makes great progress over the course of the day, especially those brand new to FMQing!!
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