Quilt Class.

Friday proved to be a great day. Long awaited and much prepared for by me. We were asked to get there early and be ready to start by 9.30 am ( instead of 10 or after when our group usually meets ). The building has separate rooms so as the class was only 6 of us (in the end ) we were all able to fit in the smaller side room away from the general meeting.

Jill our Tutor for the class, had made a quilt we admired during a Show and Tell, she called Blue Illusions,( in one of my photos ) which she had made from a book she had "40 Fabulous Quick Cut Quilts ," by Evelyn Sloppy. That's how she came to be taking us for the class. She was pleased there was just 6 of us as it made an intimate friendly little group for the day. 2 chose her colours of blues and browns, one chose greens and blues another pinks and greens ( in photo ), another reds and fawns/ golds and I chose as you already know, purples and icky greens. We laughed that there were 5 Bernina sewing machines ( all different models ) and one Brother - that is not the norm..... usually within our group there is a huge range of different machines, so maybe this quilt was one that appealed to a certain personality type? ( glad we didn't all decide on the same colour ways ! ) There was nothing difficult about this quilt. The things it depends on are careful pressing, straight cutting and organisation. ( Nothing new there )The basis really is 4 strips sewn together( purple/ green , purple /green ), pressed towards the purple; trimmed very carefully down to 8.5 across the ends. 2 sets of the 4 strips are placed face to face, marked diagonally sewn on either side of the line then cut. And from there just continue cutting and resewing to new parts. In one photo you can see my 4 components that then form a larger block. We had cut enough strips to make many large blocks. I have completed 4 big ones so far. Once the big blocks are sewn together secondary patterns emerge.( At one stage someone sewed the parts together incorrectly and they still looked great - so this pattern is adaptable and could be changed for a different result! )

We sewed for far too long really, but this day coincided with our Midnight Madness session.I think about 40 ladies stayed and enjoyed yummy Pizza dinner ( see photo ) (we couldn't finish it all) then kept on sewing. I eventually sewed a wrong piece and realised it was time to stop. Some others in the other room working on hand work or their own machine projects were still working when I left ( about 10 pm ) - but some had only arrived after 5 pm. I don't think I remember ever sewing that many hours in one day!

Now at home I am just continuing on and off making more blocks at my own pace. I love being able to organise my piles of strips and leave it all readyso when I have a little time, I work on it. SO FAR I am very, very pleased with it - But I so loved those fabrics I was bound to like it!

As always I was taking the photos so am not any of them - but you can see my quilt blocks and I will continue to report my progress.