Saturday 26 April 2008

Curved flying geese workshop

On Thursday 15 happy people gathered at the hall for a day workshop with Pat Deacon. Pat had already wowed us with her fabulous quilts and we were ready to find out how she managed to piece such complicated geometric shapes and sweeping curves and still have a quilt which hangs flat at the end of it all! (I'm sure I'm not the only one who has done some fancy piecing, only to end up with one of Madonna's bra cups, instead of the quilt block I had been expecting!)

Here is Pat, all ready to start us off. She was an excellent teacher, breaking all the work down into easily achievable steps and being very encouraging and inspirational all day.

She started us off with a mini workshop on foundation piecing curved shapes. We each drew a small teardrop shape and used her fantastic no-fail freezer paper foundation method for making it in fabric. That was the easy bit!

Next we had to draw our own patterns onto freezer paper (a choice of an easy one and a harder one), cut them into parts and then piece them.

Pat gave us some useful workshop advice. No matter what fabric you take to a workshop, the person sitting next to you has much nicer colours than you, and is producing better work. But remember, she is also thinking the same about you! It certainly is interesting looking at people's colour choices - all of which were fabulous.

Here is June proudly showing her first pieced goose, and her choice of fabrics - black and white! This is going to be stunning, especially if she follows her plan of adding a few red accents.

The first few geese were a bit tricky, but everyone persevered (although several people were glad they had brought their unpickers!) and gradually it all became much easier.


And then, as we became more confident, mistakes crept in. Jill was not the only person to carefully sew another goose, flip, press and then cut it right off! Some people thought it might make a design feature, but no, after a good laugh, off it came.

By the time four o'clock came, we were all well on the way to finishing our pieces.

Pat showed us a way of putting the parts together using 'invisible' tape, which certainly eliminates the distortion which pins can sometimes introduce.

The only question now is, will they actually sew together to make a flat block, or will it be another pop star's undergarment?

1 comment:

Sew Create It - Jane said...

Another great post about the group. I particularly like the perplexed look on Nik's face!! :o)