Inspiration from Yesterday's Class

I've been doing a lot of teaching locally this winter.  At least one workshop per week.  Yesterday I had another great day teaching for the Ottawa Valley Quilters Guild. The class was "Liberated Radial Piecing".  You cut and piece a radial design free-hand without measurements or rulers. Being without a ruler, especially if it is your first time, can be extremely liberating, but it can also be very anxiety-provoking. This class was up to the challenge!  Everyone took the concept and ran with it!

Kirstin, one of my students in the 6 day "Dye Happy" class I taught two years ago appeared at class with a most scrumptious assortment of hand-dyed, hand-patterned  fabrics. She has been using all the methods she learned in that class (flour paste resist, stitch resist, clamped and pole wrapped shibori). I was really happy and inspired to see this.

I think, most impressive, was her Mokume Shibori piece (below). This is a method of stitch resist shibori that is very labour intensive, requiring you to stitch rows of running stitches 1/4" apart across the entire piece of fabric. The rows of stitching are then pulled tight, and the fabric is placed in an immersion dye bath.  After the dyeing process, the stitching is removed to reveal the patterning. I had a lot of trouble getting this one to work for me. Please take the time to click on the photo below to see an enlargement.  It is IMHO just absolutely gorgeous! 

The next time I teach this class it will be under the name "Dyeing to Quilt", and it takes place at the Haliburton School of the Arts the week of October 21-25, 2013. The link to the class and registration information is here. We decided to put the word "quilt" in the title to ensure quilters would find it in the course list.

Mara's liberated radial design was coming along nicely, and I really love the hint of green in it.

Sue's was coming along nicely by the end of the day as well.  Colours reminiscent of the Southwest!

In the last couple of weeks I've dyed A LOT of fabric to fill out my stash better. The cotton portion of the store came with me for this workshop in case anyone needed a certain colour (they did!).