We went back for a little follow-up session last week and what an array of gorgeous works in progress! Mine, above, is not as far along as I would have liked and not nearly as complicated as the others. I do have a plan to finish this part as a quilt with no binding and stitch it to the top of another quilt made with Kaffe Fassett's grape shot cotton. This colorway of shot cotton is truly amazing. They are all wonderful, but this color just glows. This technique is one that Jean uses a lot and is featured in one of her newest books, Portraits from Nature. You can take a look at my previous post to see how I took this idea from a greeting card.
Here are some of the other works done by students in the class. This first one is amazing. All those stripes are pieced!
This one is being done by one of the Stitchin' Post employees and will be in their featured quilts at the Sisters Quilt Show this July. I love how she took that print fabric and separated out the colors just as Jean did in the example from the class.
This one is done in the dimensional nature that I want to do mine. Jean showed us how to hand sew the top quilt (here, the four patch block) to the back quilt so that it seems to be floating. The student had originally sewn the edges directly on to the backing, but it doesn't look good that way. To make it look like it's floating you would hand sew about 1/2 to 1 inch from the edge of the top quilt's backing to the under quilt. The appliqued sunflowers really add something to the composition.
I also attempted to define a colorway by using one of Kaffe's prints. I had thought about working on this, but I've just got too much going on right now. I hope to work this way sometime in the future.
Lastly, we were treated to a look at a shopping session that Jean was having with the representative of Westminster Fibers. Have you ever seen anything so luscious! These are the fabric samples for the Kaffe Fassett collection which includes other designers. These samples come in colorways with lovely names. I just wanted to take these home. Every colorway he brought out was more beautiful than the last. Jean is thinking about getting these samples when the distrubutor is done with them and hanging them in the store. I think that's a great idea because there's so much inspiration here.
Well, that's all for now, but how about next time I do a knitting update! After that I'll have a report on another class I'm doing with Jean Wells called Surface Design Play Day.