Quiltcon Workshops

I’m still giddy! I just spent the  day at a Denyse Schmidt workshop on improvisational piecing. See those bags? Full of scraps … pick one without looking, and add it to your block. Only 1 rule – you can’t put anything back. Don’t like the color? or pattern? or size? Too bad … you’ve got to go with the flow. Trim and repeat until you’ve run out of time. What a wonderfully freeing and fun way to play with color and pattern.

These are the blocks the class made in the morning. In the afternoon we did more of the same, but this time we were allowed to use a favourite fabric that we brought from home. We also picked (blind) a solid that we were allowed to use as we wished in our block construction.

This is my result for the afternoon – I used the Pat Bravo floral from home and got a burgundy shot cotton as my solid. I was able to finish 6 blocks. I found it to be a very liberating and organic way to build a block. I’m determined to play with this more at home.

The other workshop I was able to attend at Quiltcon was a color workshop with Weeks Ringle (from Modern Quilt Studio). Weeks and her husband Bill started making modern quilts together in the 1990′s. In the workshop Weeks explained value, hue and saturation. She has do some color exercises based on paintings from the old masters, and then a fabric “smack-down” with a partner. She also had a number of  their meticulously planned and executed quilts and explained the color choices behind them.

Two completely different approaches to colour and quilt design … one analytical and structured (Weeks Ringle), the other organic and improvisational (Denyse Shmidt). I learned a lot from both of these very talented quiltmakers!