I just returned from Houston a couple of days ago. It was another great show! This year, I took classes on Monday through Wednesday, before the show opened, and left the rest of the time to enjoy the quilts and the vendors.
Charming Cathedral Windows with Lisa Ellis
On Monday morning, I took Charming Cathedral Windows with Lisa Ellis. Cathedral Windows is a traditional quilt with a unique construction. Traditionally, these quilts were made by folding and sewing background squares into smaller squares that are finished on the front and the back. These squares were then sewn together in a way that allows you to set little pieces of other fabrics over the intersections and fold the edges of the background squares to cover the raw edges of the contrasting fabrics, giving you a finished quilt, front and back, with no batting. I started making one of these in the traditional fashion (except using a sewing machine) many years ago, but haven't worked on it for a long time. I really need to dig that project out again because I love it!
Anyway, Lisa Ellis has a different way of constructing Cathedral Windows blocks that allows you to play more with the colors, but also doesn't give you a finished quilt without adding batting and backing. Here is an example of one of her small quilts:
In a traditional Cathedral Windows quilt, the black and white areas in the above quilt would all have to be in the same fabric (the background fabric); in Lisa's method these are different fabrics. Also, in the traditional method each background fabric block provides the background for 4 of the melon shapes that meet in the middle of the block, so these 4 melons must all be the same color. In Lisa's method, each melon piece and each folded over curve are different fabrics so you can mix and match in any way that you want. The down side of Lisa's method is that you end of with 4 layers of fabric in the quilt top alone, so you have a very bulky quilt.
For this class, Lisa provided fabric kits so we didn't have to bring anything except sewing basics like scissors. I really like that for classes like this! We also got to use mini irons, so we didn't have the gridlock at the irons that you usually have in a Houston class. So, in the 3-hour class, we were able to learn the method and completely finish a potholder, including the binding. Here's the potholder I made in class:
I really enjoyed this class. Lisa is a knowledgeable teacher and she had a lot of really good example quilts to show us. She talked about the method, but also talked about color, how to work with the bulk of larger quits and how she likes to do bindings.
Thread Sketching -- Snowflakes with Susan Brubaker Knapp
Monday afternoon and evening were spent in Susan Brubaker Knapp's Thread Sketching -- Snowflakes class.
I was really looking forward to this class because I've watched Susan on TV on Quilting Arts and have seen her work in the associated magazine, but I've never met her. As expected, she is a very sweet and talented lady! She also is very sharing and brought a huge pile of little art quilts to class, demonstrating all of the different techniques that she uses and teaches. So I have a bunch of pictures of quilts to provide ideas and inspiration in the future.
For this class, we were working on the little quilt behind Susan in the picture above. Here is a close-up of one of the snowflakes to show you the detail:
She gave us drawn patterns for the snowflakes and wind swirls, but also talked about how to make our own patterns. She had us trace the patterns on a piece of stabilizer and sew from the back side of the piece so that we could easily trace the patterns without a light box, but also talked about how she would do this at home. Here is what I did in class:
I'm not sure if I'll finish this project at home since I'm not really pleased with my swirls, but it's always a possibility if the spirit moves me in the future. I really enjoyed this class and would definitely take more classes from Susan.
Free-Motion Machine Quilting with Philippa Naylor
Tuesday morning and afternoon were spent in Philippa Naylor's Free-Motion Quilting class.
I'm never sure if I'll get anything out of a free-motion quilting class because some teachers, understandably, focus the classes on the most beginning of the students. In those classes, I often end up just sitting and playing and doing my own thing. But Philippa handled this class differently. She asked us up front what our experience was. Then she taught things at the level needed for the beginners, but also provided suggestions for more advanced things for more experienced quilters to try with the same designs.
Although she didn't talk about it, Philippa had this sample quilt hanging up, demonstrating some of the designs we were going to learn:
I was really intrigued by the background quilting design in the dark brown squares and the design in the star points and their background patches:
For each design that she taught, Philippa had samples stitched using the design in different ways:
I have pictures of all of them that will be helpful in the future when I try to remember how to make the designs. Here are the samples that I stitched in class:
I've had several classes with Philippa Naylor and I highly recommend all of them! She's an incredibly talented and detail-oriented quilter with a lot to share.
Thread Coloring the Garden with Sarah Ann Smith
My final class was Thread Coloring the Garden with Sarah Ann Smith all day Wednesday.
I took this class because I lack confidence in how to realistically quilt flowers and other flora. I have a quilt that I'm making for my sister that has fused pictures of herbs on it that I need to move forward on. I have everything fused, but I need to do some threadwork on the pieces before I sew them together into a quilt and quilt it. So I need to get some confidence doing this.
For this class, Sarah provided a picture of a flower printed on fabric, some matching threads and a piece of stabilizer to keep things flat. We were asked to bring a selection of green threads for the leaves, etc, and batting and a backing in case we wanted to do the stitching on the finished top. I didn't use any of the supplies that we brought, but I understand the reasoning. Here is her sample of the flower that I picked:
I didn't enjoy this class like I've enjoyed other classes. What I wanted out of the class was some talk about how you pick your lines. That is, how you get the right curve and how much you should overlap your colors and things like that. But Sarah didn't talk about any of that. She just gave an overview of threads, tension, needles, etc, then told us to start stitching. I ended up not feeling well after lunch so I left early and took a nap rather than finishing the class. But here's what I got finished while I was there (there's just some stitching in the center of the flower):
I don't know if some of my opinion of the class was colored by how I was feeling, but I probably won't take any more classes from Sarah.
Well, that's all of my classes. I'll try to get posts out about the quilts soon.
Nancy
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