MVQ

Anne Lainhart – Lecture and Workshop

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Anne Lainhart is well known for her bargello classes.  After hearing her lecture on color families you can see why.  She has an innate sense of color.   Her color board is absolutely fabulous.  It is a wonderful way to illustrate the complexities of color families.  Yet at the same time make them so simple.

The various ways that Anne mixes and matches her color families result in stunning quilts.  She tries something just to see if it works.  And for her it generally does.  At least in my opinion it does.   For instance, her multi-color family bargello, most quilters would have never thought to mix the colors in the way she did, but it works.

Anne also works with border prints.  She created a Card Trick block using fussy cut border prints.  It is simply stunning!  It gives you a whole new perspective on border prints.

Click here for Slide Show of Anne’s Work.

Workshop

The workshop was to create a Kaleidoscopic purse.  Anne also brought kits for ornaments and note cards.  I thought it would be a fun class but I didn’t expect to learn so much.  Like when not to press.  I know we are taught to cut – sew – then press.  But there is a point in which you want to press your kaleidoscope,  that is when all 6 or 8 pieces are sewn together and not before.  That way you don’t accidentally stretch any of your pieces.   Who would have thought of that.  Not me,  that’s for sure.  I got caught going ahead of the teacher and pressing my pieces.   That’s me, miss smarty pants.  Seems I don’t know everything after all.

Anyway,  Anne’s kaleidoscopes are not your average stack and wack.  You need to make sure your print has symmetry to it.  She demonstrated a few tricks on cutting your border prints using that symmetry.  And how to match up the prints before you sew the pieces together.  She uses pins, lots of pins.  But if you really want to make sure your prints line up you need to pin – pin – pin.   She also demonstrated how to pin the final seam together while matching the print and the center seams.  This takes practice to get it right.   Mine came out ok but next time I will do better.

In the workshop we got information on cutting and folding note cards.  The best way to insert a loop to hang an ornament from.  And how best to attach purse handles.  You would think this to be all self explanatory but Anne has a few tricks that make you say “Now why didn’t I think of that?”

I am going to keep my eye out for some neat border prints.  I’m also going to keep my eye out for more classes taught by Anne.

Thanks for the great class Anne.

Your humble student,

Cathy H


Click Here for a slide show of more workshop photos.

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Robbi Joy Eklow Workshop

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Robbi Joy Eklow
Robbi Joy Eklow

This was a fun and very informative workshop.  Robbi Joy is an excellent teacher.  She is a wealth of information.  I enjoyed the workshop immensely.   I never thought I would enjoy fusible applique, but I did.  Some of the other patterns available are just to fussy.  Robbi’s don’t have all those itty bitty pieces that some have.

Robbie starts everyone off making a cup.  She uses the cup pattern as a technique teaching tool.

Our Tes Cups
Our Tea Cups

She explained

  • the use of various fusibles
  • the concept of dimension within the pattern design
  • using the fabric color and pattern as a secondary design
  • how her pattern’s are numbered
  • her techniques of tracing the pattern
  • the use of the arrows as placement guides
  • how to match intersecting pieces
  • how to assemble the various pieces once you have them cut

Once everyone had made a tea cup, we were given the choice of nine different patterns to make.  Quite a few of us chose the floral/gear designs.  I found it difficult to choose from the pattern’s available.  They were all interesting, with different levels of difficulty.  The more intersections you had to match the more difficult it was to be accurate.  The class included one pattern, any extras we paid for.  I ended up with 5 patterns.  It was just to difficult to choose.  One of the patterns I purchased was a guitar pattern.  I want to make it for my nephew.

Judy Hillner's Vases
Judy Hillner's Vases
Rosemary Bray's still life in progress.
Rosemary Bray's still life in progress.
Carrie Zizza's Flower
Carrie Zizza's Flower

For those who were interested,  she show us how she made her patterns with the use of Adobe Illustrator.  If you are so inclined, you can make your own patterns.   I want to try to make one of my dogs.

Everyone had a great time and came away with a new appreciation of  fusible applique.  I hope to complete my quilt by the next guild meeting.  I challenged everyone to do the same.  I got a lot of laughs, yeah right’s and dirty looks.  I’ll probably be the only one who doesn’t completed the quilt for the next meeting.  But we will see.  I know Judy Hillner probably has hers done already.

To see a slide show of all the pictures I took click here.

If you took the class and have pictures, e-mail them to me and I’ll post them to the flickr account.

See you at the next meeting.

Cathy Harnisch

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