WIP Wednesday - Zen Chic Workshop

Just finished quilting my Lost in London bed quilt for Make Modern, here’s a sneak peek!

Binding this baby tonight for photographing at the weekend.  Baby is probably not the right term for this 84” x 84” quilt!  (Biggest quilt I’ve made!)  So glad to be coming to the end of deadline projects,  I feel the need to play for a bit now!

Image courtesy of Limerick Quilt Centre Facebook Page

Speaking of playing with fabric, I got to attend a course this past weekend at the Limerick Quilt Centre with Brigitte Heitland of Zen Chic. 

Brigitte designs fabric for Moda and gave a wonderful 2 day workshop on a very playful pattern technique and curved piecing.  On day 1 we made our own versions of this quilt: 

Using jelly roll strips and some bondaweb we stuck rectangular strips to our background fabric, placing them to overlap in places and pull the eye to certain spots on the quilt.  Starting with random and then being more deliberate in terms of colour and direction, this was lots of fun.

Everyone had different ideas and Brigitte worked with us all to tell a story with our strips.  Some had the ocean or a wind blown quilt.  Not sure what I had! I used art gallery grey print as my background instead of solids and used an old jelly roll of Valerie Wells Karavan for my rectangles.  I managed to get them all ironed down though not all sewn in place.  WIP!

I was in the purple corner for the day!  I might be a bit obsessed with purple, trying to find just the right shade is quite tricky!  Though in the shop there is lots of choice.

Anyone passing by Limerick should definitely drop in for a look.  I went home with 5 spools of YLI thread to add to my collection in addition to extra backing fabric!

 

We were treated to a trunk show of gorgeous quilts and quilting.  There were some themes in Brigitte’s quilts that were different to what I had come across before.  Brigitte likes to quilt the background to recede and leave the coloured prints or solids quilted in the ditch only so they stand up from the quilt.  Using monofilament thread to applique and travel stitching along the length of the prints to move from place to place with the all over designs.

To get that puffiness Brigitte likes to use polyester batting and advised us no to be afraid of it, battings have improved in recent years and to give it a go!



Another characteristic of Brigitte’s quilts are the beautiful backs, incorporating leftovers from the fronts in unusual ways.  And then there’s the quilting!  Love the numbers hidden in this one!



The second pattern we were making involves curves!  This is the OHO quilt.  I love the outer border, so densely quilted with different sized circles.



And a feather in the middle of the O’s!  Again with the prints left un-quilted.



The materials list called for background yardage in white with a layer cake.  I originally chose Moda Bella Porcelain for the background and Mimosa for the layer cake but changed my mind after the first block.  One handy thing about making a quilt in a quilt shop is you can change your mind!

Anne at my table bought her fabric on the day and chose the most gorgeous Kona Charcoal and when I put Mimosa up against it it just popped!  I cut 4 more background pieces out of porcelain and kept thinking that charcoal is really lovely!  Once you get something in your mind like that you just have to go with it.  Eventually I gave in and bought the charcoal!

I can use my white another day – I have a project in mind for it already.

So using lots of pins for the first few I found it slow going but not too difficult and managed to get 4 blocks made on the day.  This one could be a while in the making!

It was a great workshop - thank you ladies and to Limerick Quilt Centre for bringing Brigitte to visit!

Linking up to

Free Motion Quilting with Mary Palmer

This weekend, I attended my first quilting class!  Mary Palmer was giving a class at the Limerick Quilt Centre on Free Motion quilting.  It was great fun!  We saw lots of inspirational work at the beginning of the day.  Mary had brought a huge pile of quilts for Show and Tell and talked us through the design process and quilting choices.  They were all so different and some were quilted on a teeny tiny scale!

 
Mary helped us set up our machines, ensure tension looked good (something I struggle with on my own at home!), gave us lots of tips and introduced us to FMQ designs like loops, hearts and flowers and out of the 12 panels most of us got 7 done.  These are my squares:

 





We were sent home with the instructions to practice, practice, practice!  From the few quilts I free motion quilted and my previous practice sessions at home I’ve been working on a much larger scale.
  

Figure of 8 is probably my new favourite design, though I wobble on starts and stops!  I have now added waves to my skill set too.

For our practice panels we were working in a space 8” square.  I found the smaller scale gave me much more confidence with FMQ and  I am determined to practice more and get spirals nailed down next.  After all, I have 5 blank squares left to fill up!

I can highly recommend this Free Motion Quilting Class, Mary was lovely and her quilts were fantastic as learning tools and inspiration.  We all had great fun, chatting the day away while practising what we were taught and the day flew by!

We were advised to use what we learned on a small project like a cushion.  Don't think I'll have a problem with that one!