My introduction to Karen came many (10?) years ago when I took a class at Quilter's Haven in Olathe. The class was Karen's Cinco de Mayo - a fantastic, somewhat chaotic New York Beauty. This class fueled my search and collection of wild, colorful fabrics. These fabrics are part of my daily round now, but back then they were way outside of my comfort zone.
Cinco de Mayo is made of a series of blocks using the New York Beauty block - all of them varied in terms of the number of points and bands. This is not mine - I only have the first two rows done (yeah, I know I started it 10 years ago). But isn't it beautiful! I love the variation in the size and number of points.
My next close encounter with the force of nature that is Karen, was a class at the first Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival. I am an EPP fan and she was teaching EPP by machine. It was a challenging technique for me because I balk at a lot of prep work - and this technique took a lot of prep. It's a good tool to have in my kit, but I haven't used it yet.
This brings us to the present - well, last month, when Karen came to our guild. She is a dynamo of a speaker - I've love to get a little of her energy. The story of her quilts was mostly about color and value. It made me think about not being so matchy-matchy with my color schemes.
For the workshop after the talk and trunk show, Karen choose "Wild Women Don't Get the Blues" as the pattern. I choose Tula Pink's Raccoons for my focus fabric. I thought those little guys would be so cute surrounded by the colorful star points. After I took this pic, I added a black and white striped flange between the raccoon and the star points. I really liked it but i was a lot of work. So now I'm looking for something similar but easier. Or maybe I'll just leave it as is. Hmmmm Dilemma!Curious about Karen? Look for her workshops and programs. She is a bundle of positive, quilting energy.
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