Thursday, January 27, 2011

Another class and workshop

I can't remember which of these came first but both were classes I did while finishing Grandma's quilt.  Both were taken last year and tons of fun.

I'll start with the quilt shop class. 
While at FNF (Friday Night Finishers) I see a really fun quilt hanging.  The design was quite modern and the class would be coming up soon.  Since attending FNF at Quilts Plus I had been wanting to take some classes.  The always have amazing quilts hanging up.  For some reason this one seemed like a good one to start with.  The pattern is Town Square and very modern and clean.  It matches the way we live much better than my first quilt.  So I decide to make it and it could hang downstairs.  At FNF T. and I go out to the shop for fabric for the class.  I find this really great purple floral piece.  We go find some great batiks that really match this focus fabric.  I go to class with these great fabrics, which are really all quite medium tones.  The pattern is very clear about having a light, a medium and a dark.  If you look at the pattern you can see the light serves as a great background to the medium and the dark, letting those squares really pop.  The instructor was great and taught us to make the quilt using strip piecing, which was different the pattern directions.  It was amazing how quick it went together.  By the end of the 2 or maybe 3 hour class I had nearly all the 12 blocks complete.  Once home I was able to finish the unfinished block very quickly.  Looking over the size I decided I only needed 6 of the block to hang the quilt where I thought it would look best.  I gave the other 6 blocks to my sister.  

Now to the workshop.  
It was another wonderful guild workshop this time by Debbie Bowles.  I know this happened in October 2009 because it was the same month as the guild's quilt show.  So with that I really think this was the second of these two quilt tops.  We did her pattern Eureka, which you can find on her website.  It was a fun class, not nearly as packed as the 1st workshop I attended.  Debbie Bowles was really nice and had some great tips on curved piecing.  At lunch since the class was small we all sat around one large circle table and ate and chatted together.  The fabric I used was Chasing Rainbows by Robert Kaufman.  This fabric was probably the first bit of fabric I brought after getting the ones for the first quilt top.  I loved these fabric.  While taking the workshop, nearly everyone else was using very soft colors and I had these bold, dark ones,I felt like I was making the darkest, ugliest quilt ever.  Once everything was put together I started loving the fabric again.  

Now both of these tops still need borders.  With the town square quilt I really thought I would use the floral fabric but now that doesn't seem like a good choice.  The eureka quilt I finally did pick out fabric for it and it's more chasing rainbows fabric.  Hopefully soon I'll be able to post these quilts as finished quilts and not just tops but for now it's fun to look back at 2 classes that happened just a little over 1 year ago. 

2 comments:

  1. I really like the Town Square pattern... and the fabrics you selected. I love batiks!

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  2. Thanks for coming back and checking out my blog. I really love the town square pattern as well. The colors match the living room so much better than I thought they would.

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