feet up

Just finished teaching a Spontaneous Strip Piecing workshop for a guild in NJ that I used to belong to about 20 years ago. Strip piecing? Huh? ME? Well, it certainly was a change - and a rather refreshing one, if I do say so. The ten workshop participants all wanted to get away from using traditional patterns, so they came to free themselves from that box. They brought their scraps, their leftover strips and blocks, their UFOs. and started slashing away and resewing. What fun -- and they all amazed themselves with what they could do once they threw away their rulers and played.

Here is Pru, sewing strips.
And her piece, still in process. By the time class was over, she was talking about slashing the black border and inserting some strips at angles...and who knows what else?
We put up a temporary design wall and one of the best parts of the day was auditioning fabrics to pull the blocks together. Leslie started with a pile of leftover yellow and black blocks and went from there. Everybody had an opinion and it really got the energy going. This is not the final piece, by any means. It got even better before class ended.
Sally came with a pile of homespuns - what could be more traditional than those? Look at the result!!
And Kit, who is delighted with her piece, still wants to add a few more touches.
Everybody went home with something in the works and were heading for the rest of their stashes to see what they could use to finish their quilts. What a day!

Heading over to my dinner host's for - what else - a martini and a home-cooked meal. Hooray!