Bordered Diamonds Kate's View

Kate is a staffer here and you can meet her in the shop on Thursdays and Fridays.  She went along to the Saturday Kaffe and Brandon Workshop.  I wanted to show you how her quilt developed over the day.  I also asked her for some "quotes" about the experience.  Hope you all find this interesting.

The start. Kate had a rust covered flannel to work on. It proved to a little too close in colour to some of her diamonds. Watch as the quilt builds. The rest of the comments are from Kate.

"Martha Negley's green and purple grape fabric was my starting point.  The fabric I loved.  I chose all my fabrics to work with this one."

"Kaffe said don't over think fabric placement, just get the diamonds up on the design wall."

"Kaffe had a look at my first layout, and suggested some changes to even out the colour distribution."



"My first borders were high contrast and dark.  Watch what happens to them later on."

"Whoops they're gone."

"Each diamond with its border needed to work on their own, but I wanted good contrast between each diamond set."

"Then Brandon offered his perspective: which was different from Kaffe's.  Brandon seemed less tolerant of contrast in the quilt."

Brandon emphasised: "Take time to stand back from your work and see what's happening."

"The end result.  Quite different from my green and purple, high contrast preconceived ideas of what this quilt would be.  The workshop gave me confidence to trust my own colour sense.  I would happily do another workshop with Kaffe and Brandon."

Melinda

Customer Quilts and Sue Ross Classes

Just a quick post as the PC is needed for 'business' reasons today!

A show and tell of some of the quilts that have flown in and out of the shop in recent weeks.

These are just two of Vanessa's beautiful reproduction quilts.  Her version of Karen Cunningham's Bumblebee is absolutely stunning and done in pink and brown instead of blue and brown.  Most of the fabrics in her quilt came from the shelves of Quiltsmith. 
Her elongated hexagon quilt has been her portable travelling project and is nearly finished.  It is just devine.

We had our first Sue Ross class for 2011 last Sunday and here is the progress Sue has made on her absolutely stunning broderie perse quilt. A fantastic way to utilise Philip Jacobs fabrics. We have vacancies still available in this class if you would like to enjoy Sue's unique talent of using different fabrics and colours.

Judy dropped by today to collect her black, red and white quilt from the quilter. Stunning and a beautifully well made quilt (quote from the machine quilter). It is a wedding gift, very generous.

Shirley is here today working away on her Phebe applique centre, almost done with just the berries and leaves to go around the outside on the vine.  Beautiful job Shirley.

Kate is doing a great job at catching up with the civil war blocks.  Here is her Richmond block.

Her Texas Tears block.

And lastly her Kansas Troubles block.

Now, get ready, put on your sunglasses, Gypsy Bandana landed in the shop last week.  It is beautiful and rich and has great potential.  Kate is loading it onto the website as I type.

Bye for now.
Lindy

WOW The KAFFE, BRANDON AND KIM Show

What an exciting week we have had in Sydney.  Colours exploded, minds whirled and great, possibly magnificent quilts were hatched.  The three way collaboration between Quiltsmith, Cottage Quiltworks and Material Obsession worked a treat in bringing three of the big names in quilting to Sydney. 

We played and played and played with fabrics for three days in a row, and then on Sunday, were transported by Kaffe's lecture on how he began his career and where he finds his inspiration.  I think everyone rushed home very eager to try something new. 

I have a heap of photos of the workshop, some are on this post.  I will be posting a number of times showing you different aspects of what happened in the workshops.  The photos below gives you an idea of the disorganised, inspirational mess that was the Kaffe workshop, it was just wonderful.

I cannot put names to the quilts as we had too many to keep track of, so thank you to all the workshop participants for creating these beautiful splashes of colour.  What never ceases to amaze me is just how one, reasonably simple block quilt, can be reinvented with different colours. 

The two quilts taught at the workshops were Bordered Diamonds from Kaffe's Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts book: and Kim Mclean's Flower Garden pattern. Both of these are available at Quiltsmith. Here is a small selection.

I will look at Kim's workshop in detail in my next post.

For something a little different look what flew into the shop while the Workshop was on.  Dominique II from Sentimental Studios.  Yum Yum.

Back to our Civil War Quilt blocks for this week.

Janet's Richmond Block.

My Kansas Troubles Block (yes I'm now officially behind).

Sandra's Log Cabin Block.

See you soon.

Melinda

First Karen Class for 2011

We were all eager to start our Karen journey for this year.  The heat was bad, say no more, some left early, some soldiered on, we all received our first Folk Art Baskets applique blocks, together with the first blocks from Hidcote Garden (which is gorgeous). 

Here is Lenore with her finished 'baskets' centre.

We all know this is Lyn's finished centre because of the beautiful blues she loves to use.

And Beverly brought in her, almost finished Irish Circles, last years quilt.  Beautiful job Bev! One more border to go...

We also snuck a picture of Karen reeaally enjoying her new diet of 'rabbit food'.  Look at the joy in her eyes!  (Although that could just have been the heat..)

We also had the first Anne Sommerlad class for the year.  Deborah managed to get the border on her traditional oriental strippy hexagon quilt.  Great work Deborah, and for perservering in the heat to get it finished.  You weren't going home without that border on.   

Verna brought back Lea's cute green and pink quilt she has made for a friend's daughter.  Pretty hearts and daisies continuous design quilted by Verna.  Well done Lea.

More antique quilts...apologies if there are repeats.

LJ

A couple of beautiful wholecloths.

A bit out of focus but love that black background..think this is Kates??

A little bit of repair work done on this one.

Lastly, this is Melinda's Welsh wholecloth quilt she brought back from her trip to the UK last year.

The Heat is On

Summer has now officially arrived, a bit later than usual for Sydney, but boy is it making up for it now. 

We have one more Summer School class to go, and normal classes are starting tomorrow with Linda Butcher. Here is a photo of her new quilt, what a fabulous medallion quilt.  I think I need to find some yellow spot material.

This is How Catherine Butterworth's Summer School Log Cabin class looked.  This is Catherine's quilt.

And here are two student's palettes.  We wait to see their finished quilt.  Catherine will run this class again later in the year.

 Then we had the class shot.

Next was Lisa Walton' Beneath the Surface Summer School Workshop, we had a full house and new skills were learned by many.  Lisa is our own local star quilter, she won the Jewel Pearce Patterson Scholarship for Quilting Teachers from the International Quilt Association in Houston, USA in 2010.

Lisa teaches  all around the world, so we decided it was time she taught us, at her closest patchwork shop to home.  She is very creative, and a caring and sharing teacher.  We warmly welcome her to Quiltsmith's gang of teachers.

Here are some shots from the class.  We are moving into art quilts with Lisa.

Aren't they clever.

We have booked Lisa's next Workshop, on Saturday and Sunday 9 & 10 April.  She will be teaching her Party Time Quilt, shown below.  Please ring the shop if you would like to book in.

Here are more Civil War Blocks.

Kate's joined in our challenge here is her North Star Block.

Then we have Janet's and my Texas Tears blocks.

Then Marj has her Texas Tears and Kansas Trouble blocks.  She wins, mine is still in pieces.

Did I say it's hot, It was 39 outside at lunchtime.  How we keep Marj cool.

Melinda