IQF - Part 2

Yes, I know it's taken me a while to get to writing my second update about the quilt festival in Houston. But my delay doesn't indicate in any way a lack of interest or enjoyment. Life gets busy sometimes...

Today I thought I'd write about the second class that I took while I was in Houston. This class was with instructor Melinda Bula, to make a new daisy project based on the techniques and style of her book, Cutting Garden Quilts. I'd purchased the book a while back because I thought her flowers were amazing, and I probably could have made the quilt on my own without taking the class. But you know how it is: sometimes you need a class to give yourself the opportunity to set aside time to actually work on something.

I love the cover quilt on the book. It's a coneflower. And as many of you know, that's my absolute favorite flower. Unfortunately, her one-day workshop for that quilt was already filled, so I "settled" for the daisy class. After 6 hours of class time, here's how far I got.



And here's the finished project:


As you can see, I am nowhere close to being finished. And I was probably one of the people who got the most done. It's not a difficult technique, but it is time-consuming. You have to trace the patterns onto Steam a Seam 2 (her preference), fuse that to your fabric, cut out your pieces, and then position them on your background. I'll admit that I wasn't too exacting about the process and if I went off the lines when tracing or cutting, so be it. It's organic, right? (Some people were simply unable to break from the need to draw exactly on the line and cut exactly on the line, which is why their progress was much slower).

She had a beautiful grouping of her quilts there for us to see. Here's that cover one that I said I really loved (I bought a fabric kit so I can make it myself).



More images are available on my Picasa album.

What did I think of the class? My major complaint is that there weren't enough irons for a class based on fusing, and those that were provided were absolutely crummy. The Teacher's Pet for the class was able to secure additional irons for the afternoon, but it's amazing to me that the IQF staff people didn't understand that a fusing class would require more than 2 irons for 22 people! Given that this was the first time Melinda had taught this pattern (it'll be published soon), we were the guinea pigs for it and we did find a few minor errors. Hopefully she'll be able to take that feedback and incorporate it into her published product. I think it must have been a difficult class to teach because people worked a very different paces and she attempted to allow those who work quickly to continue to move along, rather than waiting for others to catch up. But I think that led to her forgetting to point out some important details along the way because she had to repeat herself to different people at different points in time and she probably couldn't remember whom she'd told what.

Overall, it was an enjoyable day spent looking at pretty quilts and making progress toward one that I'd had on my to-do list for some time.