Taking a New Class

As you know I love Craftsy classes!

I have signed up to quite a few, all different aspects of quilting!

Over the weekend I signed up for Pattern Free Quilting with Joe Cunningham.

I have watched Joe's class through and it is really great!

Joe has a really relaxed manner and a sense of humour that comes across throughout the class. I love seeing how he put together his designs and the thought process that goes into his designs. He teaches lots of different techniques and chats about his personal inspiration.

I can't wait to try out some of the techniques soon!

The advantage of taking a class with Craftsy is that I can dip in and out of classes when I have 5 minutes spare and pick an choose which bits of the class I want to watch. There is a great online community there too, which is full of information about quilting and inspiration from other quilters! Perfect for time poor quilters like me!

Weekend Sales

This weekend is a mega sale weekend in the States - I watched a really disturbing video of shoppers in in the US beating each other up trying to get to phones....

For quilters and fabric addicts it is a brilliant weekend to go shopping!

This morning I found some great sales that will last until Monday evening:

The wonderful Fabricworm have a fabulous 30% off their sale section, and their sale section has some amazing fabric!

There is some amazing fabric in this section and with the 30% off it all becomes even more appealing!

I really want the Chicopee, some Amy butler and Monaluna if you fancy treating me...







It's not just fabric shops that are having a sale, Craftsy is offering classes at a huge reduction:

It is a great way to try out a class, I have 5 classes on the go from the fabulous Leah Day, Angela Walters and Elizabeth Hartman. It is like having them in my studio talking me through the work I am doing, which is a bargain at $19.99!

I know these sales are across the pond, but there are some bargains here too...

M is for make has a fabulous sale on! A whooping 20% off everything using the code 'BlackFriday' after the paypal checkout. I have to say I took advantage of it and bought some Liberty fabrics that I have been swooning over for ages....

The fabulous Justine from Simply Solids has a sale too!

Use the code 'turkey' and you get 15% off everything... I am slowly building a stock of Kona solids so I might just have to add to it this weekend....

Go look, you know you want to!

Perfecting the Design...

Last week I finished a quilt top for a special birthday present.

It is gorgeous, but huge!

I have taken the Craftsy course by Angela Walters about Quilting Negative Spaces and she suggested breaking large quilts down into sections to quilt. To be honest I was a bit sceptical about that working - I mean if I quilt certain areas and then move on to another surely the layers will bunch up?

So I sat down with the gorgeous quilt and pondered a design... and I decided that the size of it does mean I have to work in sections, so what to do?

I had already decided to do a sun ray pattern in the octagons, a swirl in the middle and wavy lines radiating out, but the negative spaces had been a bit more of a mystery...

I tried a hoop design and turned over the quilt to discover a great big crease... plus the design just didn't look right in the space... seam ripper was found...

Then I tried a large single swirl... again it didn't look right and I got a crease....I hate that bloody seam ripper...

Finally I took a break and decided on a line design in one section and swirls in another... Now I am happy!

 

 

The Tula Pink design suits the sun ray design in lilac thread.

 

 

 

The corners of the octagon have lines rediating out.

 

 

Sun ray in progress on the next octagon.

I had drawn everything out, but when the ideas were actually transferred to the quilt, they looked wrong... so I am machine quilting the biggest quilt yet in sections, taking care to get it as perfect as I can...


I am late with my gift already, but I am hoping the work and effort I have put into it will make up for the lateness!



Seeing Pebbles!

A couple of weeks ago I posted about Craftsy and the courses that they offer. I bought the Negative Spaces course by Angela Walters.

When I wrote the post I had managed to watch the videos, but not mactually managed to try out her techniques. At first I had worried about using the techniques on a home machine - Angela uses a free motion quilt machine - but her tips for transferring the skills to home machines were spot on!

The course focuses initially on planning. You need to practice with a pen the designs you want to put into the negative spaces on the quilt:

I opted to try out the pebbles on my the elephant quilt I am making. I purposely included lots of negative space to quilt. Angela is very reassuring about using free motion techniques on the negative spaces. Matching the thread to the quilt top means you can focus on adding texture to the quilt, without having to worry about perfection!

My thread is very similar to the top, but darker than the backing fabric so you can see the progress I have made on the quilt:

Using my lovely quilting gloves and Aurifil thread the quilt is coming together brilliantly!

I also had a go at swirls for a mat for my sewing machine:

I still have a couple more classes to take - each one is between 15 and 25 minutes long so there is plenty of into and ideas to digest!

Taking an Online Class

A little while ago, Alison from Pollyanna Patchwork wrote a blog post about the crafting website Craftsy.

It is an amazing resource of classes for all sorts of crafts, including patchwork and quilting.  The site is very clean and easy to navigate, with loads of opportunities to learn something new.

There are plenty of patchwork classes for beginners to experienced quilters, so I was really excited to find it! But money over the summer is always really tight - higher childcare costs and no private lessons....

So I had to wait until I could have a go! Luckily the site offered a free class to try out. The class is Creative Quilt Backs by Elizabeth Hartman. I tried out the course and I was really impressed, the class is broken down into sections that are easy to navigate, you can ask questions as you go and you can upload images of your work so Elizabeth can give you feedback!

I have been slowly saving my pennies, because the class I really wanted to take is Angela Walters called Machine Quilting Negative Spaces. I have been a fan of Angela for quite a long time - she is really approachable on Twitter and her blog is fantastic.

So far I have managed to watch the first 4 sections of the class, each around 20 minutes. It has been fantastic. She gives you so much information, support and ideas. The class is really well filmed and clear.

The best thing so far is that Angela is really reassuring that it doesn't need to be perfect - it is your design and the aim isn't to be perfect quilters but to add texture and design to spaces of colour. That makes me happy, since my machine quilting is no where near perfect!

I am so impressed with the class and really glad I bought it. So if your considering a Craftsy Class I say go for it!