I had a wonderful time at Quilt Camp this week, two full days of nothing but quilting. Here are my creations, in various stages of progress (perfect for WIP Friday, eh?).
First is the chicken. This is the "Frieda Fryer" pattern from Laura Wasilowski's Poultry in Motion series. I made this in Laura's woodcut class. You can see the black outlining around the chicken? That's like woodcut lines. I quite like this method, maybe because I love woodcuts.
I'm still working on what to put on as a border around the chicken, then I need to quilt it and bind it. I tried a pastel stripey border yesterday, but it was just wrong. So now I have some dark blue and an idea involving multiple suns--an otherworldly chicken?
Chickapoo was from my class on Wednesday, my first class. There are lots of very experienced quilters in this camp, and since I've been quilting for only about a year, and have finished only one quilt, I was feeling a little tentative. But Laura explained the process very clearly, and it's a no-sew technique so it goes very fast. Still, I didn't feel confident enough about making my own design to do in this class. A lot of the other campers were not so afflicted, and after approximately 5 seconds of thought, they headed off, clipping away, creating quilt masterpieces straight out of their heads. I'm still impressed.
By the second day, I was a little more confident. I took another class from Laura. I've since realized that most people take classes from different people, but actually this teacher-repeat worked well for me. We learned a different facet of fusible quilts, color chipping. You cut small pieces of fabric and layer them to create a picture. Each piece is kind of like a color dab from a paintbrush. Here's what I made:
I sketched it out the night before--still not quick enough to do it right there in class. But I'm so happy that I actually made something myself, not copied or from a pattern. In class we auditioned several background colors, and bright orange seemed to be the most vibrant. I'm not an orange person, but I do think it works here. Surprisingly (to me), fuchsia also worked, but was more subdued. I'm going to finish this one like a traditional quilt, with a sewn border and all that.
Some more pictures from my first day.
Our teacher, Laura Wasilowski. She's quite the entertainer: singing, dancing, and teaching too! She has a business, Artfabrik selling patterns, quilts, and hand-dyed fabrics and threads. She brought lots of her hand-dyed fabrics, and those were what we used for the quilts. They're absolutely beautiful! I may have to sneak into her class on Saturday to buy some more.
Here are the woodcut quilt samples for my first class. Laura made all of these, and explained the techniques for each so we could choose one type to make. She had patterns for the chicken ones, which is why I chose that.
These are my very focussed classmates, all working on their masterpieces:
My sweet table-mate, Dawn, and her amazing creation. A beach scene. All freehand, straight from her head, no pattern. Isn't it beautiful?
And one last picture. If you're wandering around in an unfamiliar building, looking for your classroom, how do you know you're in the right place? If you're at quilt camp, this is how you know--ironing boards lining the whole hallway!