Sunday, June 24, 2012

Mount Tam Quilt Guild

On Saturday, 6/16,  I was on top of a hill in San Rafael at the Mt. Tam Quilt Guild.  The views were lovely which can't be said for the 100 degree temperature!  But we persevered to have some fun and produce some great tile quilt blocks.

I didn't get photos for all the blocks for various reasons but here are a few.  The first two are fantastic Starry Orange Peel blocks.



 And here are some equally fantastic Lotus blocks.



The following two blocks, one Lotus and one Starry Orange Peel were made by two students who sat next to each other and just happened to bring the same focus fabric to work with.  Notice the big red and blue flower in each block.

 

 This student finished her block because she brought her machine and used machine applique technique rather than the needle-turn hand applique that I teach.  She, as did the student above, chose not to include the four corner pieces of the block which allows the circles to "float" on the background fabric. I love the Kaffe Fassett stripes.


And this student went to town and designed four blocks which will become place mats.  She used a different pattern from the Lotus quilt.  A table runner is in the plans also.


And this student designed her own block.  Between the center and the corner pieces, she plans to use the antique method of making tile quilts by appliqueing randomly-shaped pieces of fabric and leaving "grout" around each piece.  This is not the method that Carol and I use to make Tile Quilt blocks so it will be interesting to see how this works.  She was inspired by my lecture on antique Tile Quilts on Monday evening and the antique tile quilt that I showed.
 

There was another student who designed her own block after a watercolor painting she had done of Iris.  It was not far enough along to photograph but I'm sure will be fantastic when finished.  

 All in all a great day but some time in the afternoon when the heat was getting pretty oppressive (the church hall where we were was not air conditioned) and someone announced that they were leaving to go swimming, it must have sounded like a good idea as the class started to dwindle!