Creative Sewers: Sisters Recap Part II

Sisters is a great place to teach. Not only do the students enjoy learning, but as I mentioned in a previous post, the whole community seems to get in on the action. When you arrive at the high school, where the classes are, you are greeted by a contingency of high school students who help you bring your supplies and machines inside in grocery carts. The kids are around all day helping with various and sundry things. You get the feeling that everyone wants to be a part of Quilter's Affair.

And, I love teaching. There's nothing like sharing what you enjoy most with others. One thing I enjoy most is cutting big old motifs out of the center of a piece of fabric and then creating a collage to make something new. I do this with free-motion quilting. That's exactly what we did with my first project, The Container Garden Pillow. The original is a 24" x 24" pillow which I'm not going to show you because it's in my upcoming book, and I need to leave a little to the imagination, you know what I mean? But here are some pillows in progress and almost finished pillow fronts made by my students. My goal here was to make collage addicts of all of the ladies, get them comfortable with free-motion quilting, and so that, like me, they have big pieces of fabric with holes in the middle because there was a Had-to-be-Had Motif there. I have tons of pieces like this. It's a sign of a true love for fabric.

The first four are in the process of creating compositions...

In this photo she is ready to start free-motion quilting...

And here she has started her quilting... notice the quilters gloves? They make free-motion much much easier.

Here her motifs are all pinned on and she's ready to start her quilting.

And this lady decided that rather than cut out motifs she would just cut the fabric in the shape of flowers. I loved this idea.

I try to give students the freedom to make their projects into what they want them to be, and this next one is a great example of someone who did just that. She based this one on a vase she had in her home.

And this is the back of a finished pillow front... the white is the bobbin thread. Don't you love how you can see what was on the front? Sorry for the blur... but you get the idea. We were all very excited over this one.

And here is a fully quilted front. I just Looooove all that Kaffe fabric!

In the end most of the ladies (there were 16, I think) got their pillow fronts quilted. I then sent them all home with instructions on how to finish their pillows. I'm dying to see how they all end up! So, if you are reading this... be sure to send me your photos!