Class Day with Karen Combs

After all my whining about packing up the stuff for quilt class I can honestly say now that I am glad that I did it...take the class not all the whining.

The class was with Karen Combs and it was on Patchwork Illusions. We did a dimensional box shape. This isn't the type of piecing I usually do I know, but sometimes when you go outside your comfort zone you learn techniques that help with your regular fabric or piecing styles. This class definitely did that for me.

First, to get the illusion there are some specific ways of selecting fabric. There is the obvious - light, medium and dark. The one that was real challenge for me was to make them similar in texture. Yikes. I am a high texture scrapquilter....you want me to put fabrics that are similar in the same block! My brain cells were screaming heresy! But ya know for this method - she knows what she is talking about!

I am thinking that this approach may also work in applique (we are the guild that "forces you to applique." inside joke there!) Like my piecework when I applique I tend to use a lot of different patterns - like 20-30 different greens for leaves. I really work on keeping them varied. I wonder what would happen if I used her approach on the leaves - less vaiation texture but still lots of color variation. It could give the piece more depth. I may play with that on my next applique.

Susan also had some original (at least we hadn't heard them before!) techniques for working with the bias and the parallelograms. She works at a good pace and allows gossip and snack time without losing control of the class. The big bonus on this class - the quilts using this block look very difficult but after the class you find yourself saying "so that is the illusion - this isn't very hard at all!"

So it was a creative shot in the arm and a fun low stress day playing with blocks. I may make a half dozen more of the blocks to make a wallhanging or something...stay tuned. (by the way my the purple and pink on the lower right of the design board is my block...I finished two blocks in class - whooo hooo!)

And for those curious folks out there...I ended up making a Peach Brandy Poundcake and picked up some fresh strawberries for dessert. It was a good thing too. As you get older it is more difficult to flirt your way out of a speeding ticket (not that I would ever have tried that!) but I have found a new method of sweettalking our men in blue. Drive around with a home made cake in the front seat of the car...I'm sure he told dispatch it was just some little old lady with a handicapped plate so he didn't ticket her. I hope he just made sure to brush the crumbs off the uniform so there wasn't any evidence!