Hey Everyone, welcome back to Stash Blasting Wednesday.

This morning at breakfast Michael was looking at the stats for my blog and I was at 499 posts since the blog started a couple of years ago. At first I only blogged once a week for Technique Tuesday or if there was something interesting and then 2013 rolled around. We all know what happened in 2013 – a double dog dare to blog everyday which I have to say I succeeded in doing this challenge.

Now today I am writing post #500 – quite a milestone I have to say. Thanks so much for being a part of it all.

Last week I selected fabrics for a workshop I was going to on the weekend with Pat Pauly. We had a blast and I learned many things that I am sure to add to my techniques repertoire and use in future quilts. Pat is a great instructor who jam packs a lot into her classes keeping it light and fun.

Class #1 – Cutting Up the Pretties

Day 1

For this class I took a whole palette of fabrics that matched a poppy print that I have had in the cupboard for years. I thought I had made a great choice until we started to do the exercises.

The first set of exercises was to sew fabrics together in a curve, make a portrait and do some shifting. Here are my examples.

Results of exercise #1

The second set of exercises was to create with paper which I didn’t really like – much prefer fabric. No photos of these as they just didn’t turn out well enough to be photographed.

The last set of exercises was to create little 4 x 6 cards with random pieces of fabric using the techniques from the first exercise  we did. It was a lot like making a collage but with fabric. Here are the results.

Four little designs on note cards

Then I had to pick one of the little cards and create it larger. I chose the bottom right design from the photo above and here is the result in larger. This piece is about 8 x 12 inches.

Larger version of my design choice

For all of these exercises I used fabric from Pat’s scrap bag but in hindsight I think next time I would use the fabrics that I had in mind rather than random ones.

Day 2

The next day it was time to make the design even larger – 24 x 36 inches and plug in the fabrics we brought. So I started working with that poppy fabric – a pretty dull palette compared to what I am use to working with.  I attempted to place fabric into all the areas of the design I picked the first day of class.

The fabrics I brought for the class laid out on the design wall

I just wasn’t happy with it so I pulled it all down and started over with much brighter, bolder and vibrant fabrics. Now that I see it again here in the photo it isn’t that bad and I do have an idea of what I could do with these fabrics. A project for the winter.

I started by putting the black & white stripe-like fabric – almost a herringbone – in the centre and working out from it trying to follow the colour palette of my little piece. Good thing I had brought 2 other baskets of fabrics with me.

Working around the main stripe-like fabric

Adding and auditioning a few more fabrics.

Auditioning a few more fabrics

After much tweaking I settled on these fabrics. Now the black & white print in the top right will change as this was on loan from another student as a place holder.

Final auditions

Once the fabric decisions were made it was then time to make the areas or sections even more interesting by building new fabrics with several fabrics. A rather time consuming process but lots of fun to see what is created by sewing and shifting and adding fabrics to the mix. This will be part of the bright yellow section which wasn’t near that bright in my little piece.

A piece of fabric created with 3 different fabrics

So much fun and so many possibilities.

I’ll leave you with that for today and bring you the second class next week which worked with the strip sets that I made prior to class.

Happy Quilting!