Tag: Class

Reflections on Pamela’s Class

I know I overloaded myself with photos posted to Artquiltmaker blog on Saturday after the class with Pamela, so I must have overloaded you all as well. This post is about focus and reflection on the class.


Here is my first draft, so to speak. I had looked at my previous effort, from the first class with Pamela, before this class and had an idea that doing a related quilt would be a good idea. I was also looking at Collaborative Quilting by Freddy Moran and Gwen Marston last week, which made me think about houses. The sun and the flowers are in common, I think.

One thing I realized is that I have not been working with scale much lately. The Pineapple, the various square pieces including Thoughts on Dots did not require me to work with scale in any meaningful way. I did pay attention to dots were in the various prints I used for Thoughts on Dots. I didn’t have to worry about scale overall in terms of the elements of the quilt. So, this piece made me stretch. When Pamela came around to help me the first time, scale was what we focused on. I needed larger flowers and larger rays of the sun.

Final piece (sans quilting)

It wasn’t quite so easy as making some elements a little bigger, though, because I had the previous garden quilt (below) on my mind as well. Some of the intermediate “drafts” of this piece had many more flowers. You can see the various drafts in Saturday’s post.

I brought scraps per the directions, so I didn’t have a lot of choice of background. I had a lot of variety in fabrics, but not a lot of variety in size. My scraps are relatively small in general, so I put some darks in (per Pamela’s instructions) and really had trouble working with them, as I also mentioned. I have not been working with black and the checkerboard is interesting, but it doesn’t read as a cheerful fabric to me. I have gotten some feedback that it isn’t too dark, so I am considering it stretching and moving on.

Pamela’s technique of cutting directly into the fabric is a very freeing way to quilt, however, and I think it is good for me. Now that I have two of these garden type quilts, I might try to make two more and have a quartet. We’ll see.


I enjoyed her handstitching techniques with Perl Cotton as well. One of the things about this is that it doesn’t have to be perfect. The stitching adds to the charm, but I don’t think it looks like the fake folk art kind of look. I could be wrong, of course!

My 2006 Pamela piece. I am more excited about getting back to it now. I machine stitched some of it down, but plan to go back and work some more with the Perl Cotton on the flowers, especially.

I highly recommend Pamela’s classes. She is a quilt teacher, but she has been trained in art and knows about design principles. That is the focus of her class with fabric as the medium. She seems to truly want people to do good work. I am glad she directed me, in her gentle but firm way, to scale, because that is what I needed to work on.

A Day with Pamela

I made it to the Pamela Allen class at EBHQ.

This is all the stuff I took to class, except my sewing machine is not in the picture. (above). The pieces you see are pieces that I made in a previous class with her at Quilting Adventures.

Pamela’s work (below)



Tooth Fairy


Tooth Fairy (detail)


more Tooth Fairy detail


This is what it looks like when I work in a class. (above) What a mess!


My background for the House & Garden quilt. I really can’t help starting new projects in her class.


First draft


Pamela working on my piece


Lots of flowers and flying dots.


Not so many flowers and flying dots.


Not so many flowers and no flying dots.


Final composition. I like it, but I have to admit that I had a very hard time working with the darker colors (the black around the flowers and the blue/black checkerboard. All I could think of was that I wasn’t used to it. I haven’t been using much black lately and, as you know, have been trying to make cheerful quilts. This quilt-let seems a little dark to me.


Pamela working with Julie


Julie’s piece. I love the line up the left hand side.


Group Sampler project. We had 15 minutes to make our part of this piece.


Julie’s two fish. Can you find the second one?


My fish – with dots, of course!

I am tired and about to sign off, but I thought I would put up some photos for all of you to drool over while I go recover from a FAB day. More tomorrow.

Pineapple Class Review

The class was great.

I had enough dots, but could have used more.

The Pineapple Ruler is totally worth the money.

The above photo shows how to place the ruler to cut the pieces. No foundation.

Here are the blocks that I made:


This is how my one block looked after a couple of rows.

This is how my two blocks look now. I have two more rounds to go: I have to put some strips on the corners and one triangle on each corner then each block is done. I should have cut the strips in advance, so I would have had more sewing time, but I didn’t have the time, so the point is moot.


This is the teacher’s, Katrina Lampken, quilt. She did a nice job teaching. She a little background on the Pineapple block. She talked about different ways of making it and why she liked this method. Then we got started. She was able to answer all of the questions. She was really mild mannered, but go her point across. It was a great day.

These are some of the other student’s work:


Sue

Barbara from San Ramon (we were dot sisters)

Laura worked with gradations

Pineapple Homework cont’d

I worked, yesterday, on selecting fabrics for the Pineapple class, which takes place next Friday. These are the fabrics that I have selected so far. As I looked through my dot fabrics, I felt like some were missing, but couldn’t find any others, so I guess I just have the impression in my mind that there are never enough dots! I am pretty happy with the selection, but am still contemplating whether or not the dot sizes are too similar and whether the colors are too similar in value.

In this selection, I didn’t include any of the Fusions fabrics by Robert Kaufman, but am considering adding some to add a little motif size interest. Some of the colorways are very light, however, so if I do add them I need to take care. I don’t want the background to bleed into the foreground creating visual confusion. I can certainly bring them with me, so if I need them I will have them, but if not, no harm done. Opinions are welcome.


Ignore the checkerboard, as that is my ironing board cover!


The two pictures above are the same group, so you will see some overlap (e.g. the red).



Value too similar? I might have get rid of the red one in from the right as it seems to read as a solid.

Fabric Painting

After the CQFA Steering Committee meeting at KAM’s house, we did fabric painting. KAM organized the whole thing and it was a nice ending to the meeting.

This is my first attempt:
After my first attempt, we watched a five (or so) minute segment of Simply Quilts. It was good to watch after, because I wasn’t too influenced by the demonstrator.

Here is the piece that I finished after we watched the segment.

One thing I got out of the segment is that simple shapes seem to be better, so I worked on this one:

My final piece is the best one IMO.

It was GREAT not to have to do any organization for the project but to just start painting on fabric. KAM was so generous with her paint, fabric, etc. It was wonderful. As you may know, I am not a big fan of messy work. I did enjoy doing this project as I could just play and not worry about making a masterpiece.

I plan to try the presentor’s idea of doing some curved strip piecing through the middle of my piece. I don’t want to make these the center of a piece. I just don’t think they could stand up to the scrutiny.

DCM and I discussed not having enough time to just play and wreck fabric pieces. We are both having a hard time getting over the feeling that each piece we make must be perfect.

A topic for another day….