Houston Class #3 - Wool Applique with Catherine Redford

As you can tell by most of the pictures in my blog, I like modern, colorful quilts.  In the past I've been able to resist the temptation of wool applique because most of the patterns were very traditional or primitive in style. Not so anymore.

The new trend in wool applique is whimsical, colorful, and full of wonderful embellishments. So, count me in! 

I've had my eye on Sue Spargo's work for a couple of years now. Unfortunately I haven't had the opportunity to take classes from her.  So it was lucky for me that Catherine Redford was teaching wool applique among other things in Houston.

Our kits included wool, cotton, applique threads, and embellishment threads to make a little needle case like this one. I'm not finished yet, but I am really enjoying it. It's refreshing to be able to applique without having to prepare the applique pieces. That's the beauty of wool!

Catherine's pieces are awesome and she is a great teacher. She also teaches beading and embroidery embellishments.  To see more of her work, check out her website.

While at Houston, I bought a wonderful wool applique pattern by Australian quilter Wendy Williams. Round the Garden is quite an ambitions project, but I'm itching to start on it. I bought a piece of linen for the background and have begun collections wool felt for the applique.




Look for updates on Round the Garden later this year.

Houston Class #1 - Paint Sticks with Laura Murray

The Houston International Quilt Festival was fantastic. You can read about the overview here.  I was fortunate enough to be able to take several classes and I learned so much in each class. 

My first class was a Paint Sticks class with Laura Murray.  I had bought some of her tiles and paint sticks at a show several years ago, but this process was so far out of my comfort zone that I hadn't even cracked the plastic on the products. So I was uber excited to learn from Laura how she makes these terrific fabrics by embellishing plain fabric with paint sticks and textured tiles.




It really was quite easy. You just place the fabric over a texture tile and rub over it with an oil-based paint stick. OK, there are some tricks to it to get good results, but even my ho-hum (technically and color choice speaking) results looked stunning.

We used Laura's Exotica stamp set and a choice of several paint sticks to make several different mini blocks that were cut apart and layered to make a complete block. No sewing - its all fused. Laura's website is great - it even includes instructions on how to create the Exotica block we did in class. You can find it here.




Since I don't have the exact colors of paint sticks at home as we used in class, I decided to use the single block to make a mini project. After micro stippling the background, I had the block framed. I think it turned out great.

I can really see making more of these. It was fun, pretty fast and easy, and with several different tiles and colors I can envision tons of creative colorful blocks.

Curious about paint sticks? Check out Laura Murray's site. She'll also be teaching at the Kansas City Regional Quilt Festival in June 2017. 

Another Great Program at KVQG - Peg Parnell

KVQG monthly meeting was earlier this week. With each speaker comes new insights, experiences and techniques. Peg Pennell was no exception. Coming to us from near Omaha Nebraska, Peg described her history with quilt challenges - in fact she admits to being a "challenge junkie". It really resonates with me when people have a focus or something they return to again and again. I think I like it because that's not me.

Peg took up the gauntlet from the many (6?) guilds she belongs to and completed the challenges with flair - sometimes challenging the challengers with unusual shapes and other rule bending. For each challenge she set herself a personal challenge to learn and practice some new technique. This is way cool in my book. I also loved how she collected fabric, embellishments, sayings and doo-dads that related to the quilt she was working on.

I love Peg's sense of color - "Lime green in my go-to neutral", and her technique for stretching small pieces of fabric by slashing and inserting another fabric.

So, here is what I'm taking away from Peg's presentation - challenge yourself to learn and try new things, dont be afraid to "break the rules" and embellishments sometimes make the quilt.
 Keep up the Curiosity!