As if the other classes, Quilter's the Musical, the Gee's Bend lecture and the Quilt Show itself weren't enough, I found out that Mary Lou Weidman was coming to Bend on Friday to teach a two day workshop. I signed up immediately. I've got all Mary Lou's books and have admired her story quilts for ages. By Friday I was flagging a bit, but still had a good time working on a free pieced house as a foundation for a quilt that will be sort of like this.
As with all these story quilts, each one will be unique, but you get the idea. Above Mary Lou was telling the class about other ideas for story quilts. I love this French lady with all sorts of memories of her trip to France.
We spent lots of time looking closely at the class sample. There are so many things to notice, ways to make appliqued people and objects. We pored over Mary Lou's embellishments too.
I never did get photos of other participant's work. I was so busy creating my house which you can see in the background here. I also made a bunch of free pieced trees to go around it.
The class continued on Sunday and I was even more tired, but got pretty far on this one. The class was a shortened version of the 5 day workshop that Mary Lou does at Asilomar for the Empty Spools seminars. I think I would've rather done it that way, but I'm glad I got to participate so close to home.
And now I've got a good base to get going on. This is a memory quilt of our summers spent at Squam Lake, NH. We had friends who had a cabin on the lake which had been in the family for about 100 years. We'd go most summers for the past 20 years and spend a few days with our friends. The kids have such wonderful memories of that time. Last year the property had to be sold and it seems a good time to create a memory quilt about it. There will be a lake, dock and boat, free pieced shoo fly blocks around the outside and a whole lot of applique. A very long term project I think!