Quiltmaker Class

I’m taking a short class on being a Quiltmaker.  It’s all hand-sewing, and we pick out fabrics from his (yes, it’s being taught by a man, which is interesting unto itself) big bins of “Found” fabric, freehand cut into rectangles and sew them together without really any pattern.  He wants us to use fabrics with lots of different weights and textures.  And this isn’t standard quilting weight cotton folks!  It’s a lot of vintage, rummage-sale sort of fabric, so lots of random polyesters and things.  No machines, no patterns.  Very much outside of the comfort zone so to speak, and quite interesting so far.  We are also reading a book (A Way of Working) that is vaguely philosophy applied to craft.  It’s from the 1970s, and I have to admit to not being drawn in as of yet.  It’s got that 1970s way of speaking about it which I find off-putting.  But we’ll see.  I’m not going to judge when I’ve just started it!  (Well, maybe a little bit, LOL.)

Here’s my little swatch of the fabrics that I chose to use so far:

Fabric Swatches

And my little bit of a start.  Hand-sewing is much easier than I thought it would be.  Well, I shouldn’t say that.  I love to hand-sew, but it’s usually felt or little stuffies or embroidery.  I’ve never sewn seams like this.  My stitches aren’t gorgeous, I will admit, but even after just these few pieces, they are already improving.

My imperfect stitches

Progress as of 3/20/2010

Christmas Gifts – Kids’ Drawings Placemats Preview

Drawing placemats

I am in the process of writing up a tutorial for how to make these super-cute placemats that I made for Grandma and Grandpa for Christmas. It’s just taking me a bit longer than normal because I need to go back and look through my notes on how I edited the drawings in my Paint Shop program. I’m a huge novice on using programs like Paint Shop so it’s not easy to write up what I did since it was a bit trial/error. However, if you’re already skilled that way, then you will probably find it easy to recreate these!

They were a big hit with Grandma and Grandpa.  I only made four though, and when we were visiting them last month, I decided that they needed two more.  So I’m going to work on those as part of my tutorial-writing process.  More to come!

WIP – Sparks Baby Quilt in Red/Aqua

Fabric for quilt

I am making the Sparks Baby Quilt for a friend.  Handmade by Alissa has the free pattern on her blog and I love how it creates the random squares.  I can’t wait to see how it turns out!

I have this vision of a red and aqua quilt, so I’ve been collecting fabric for awhile.  I still don’t seem to have enough though.  Hmm….dilemmas.  I’m going to use Kona in Snow for the sashing.

The first square