Sewing With Sharon

Sewing sessions with Sharon have resumed! Yeah! Thursday of last week and Wednesday of this week, we spent long days in the sewing room catching up with each other, and catching up on our stitching. Let's take a look at what Sharon has been making.

A week ago, she came in with the small start of a gorgeous floral quilt - not full size, but more in the wall-hanging or lap quilt range. She wanted to feature the wonderful center panel and then build other coordinating fabrics around it. These are all Laundry Basket fabrics by Edyta Sitar.

It soon became apparent that this would end up being quite a bit bigger than a lap quilt. She continued adding row upon row of varying widths until she had this. And since this picture was taken, she has added more. I will take a picture next week with it pressed and pretty on the bed. For now, these hastily-taken snapshots will have to do.

This week, Sharon said she was just playing in the Kaffe's - those bold, bright and happy fabrics of Kaffe Fassett.

These are 2-inch strips left over from previous projects, and she is turning them into 9-patch blocks.

The eventual quilt these will make is from the KF book called Quilts in America (2018); this one is called Kites. All the fabrics in this quilt have circles or dots, even the setting squares. Sharon says this is a very long-term project, but I can see this coming together faster than she might think. It will be gorgeous!

Typical for us: we make a plan to do something together. Our idea is to use our vast collections of Larkspur fabric, a pretty 3Sisters line from several years ago. She has a lot and I have a lot. We have dedicated June for making Larkspur quilts; we will use whatever patterns we want. I am thinking some sort of star for me. I put making a quilt with my Larkspur fabric on the goals list for 2020, so I will be happy to get a big item ticked off my list. I will post more on this plan in coming weeks.

Happy Quilting, Friends!

Extra Credit from Claudia and Denise

These two students of mine are becoming quite the accomplished seamstresses as evidenced by their recent productivity. Both have shared pictures or in-person projects and I think you will enjoy seeing them, too.

Claudia is an experimenter (is that a word?). She has no problem whatsoever with the philosophy of "just trying it to see what happens." This willingness to experiment has led to quite a few successful projects such as the one above. Not only did she use transfer material for the picture, but she superimposed the face onto a cartoon superhero, then appliqued it to a warm scarf for an employee's son.

Another thing I've noticed about Claudia is that she is a problem solver. At all the dog shows she attends, registration tables are set up. Doesn't every registration table need a nice long table runner? Claudia thought so, and so she made one! How nice!

This t-shirt quilt is a gift Claudia made to surprise her husband for Christmas. Every dog show they attend has a t-shirt, so of course they have way more shirts than they will wear. She selected several with great graphics or that represented a particularly memorable show and voila! A lovely quilt is the result. I stopped over at her house in the fall to give her a few tips for making this, and she went with it all on her own. What a great job!

Now brace yourself for this quilt from Denise. She admits "I like to sew lots of little pieces." Yes, I believe she does. This string quilt is a Laundry Basket Designs pattern by Edyta Sitar. Ohhh, myyyy...

Denise said that this was a long time in the making, and spent a good amount of time stuffed in a closet as a UFO. She hopes to have it quilted in time to enter it into a local quilt show this summer.

The three picture above are close-ups of some of the intricate detail of this quilt. Those small squares might just measure an inch. The result of "sewing little pieces" is absolutely magnificent, wouldn't you agree?

Bravo, Denise! This is a stunning creation! I can't wait to see it displayed in the quilt show!

So, haven't my students done well for themselves? I just can't believe all their accomplishments! Denise dabbled in quilting prior to my meeting her; Claudia was a brand-new beginner. We three have had quite a fun time sewing together.

Happy Quilting, Friends!