Merrimack Valley Quilters

Robbi Joy Eklow Workshop

Posted on May 24, 2009 Updated on May 24, 2009

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.

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.

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