Workshops and Lectures offered

Applique - Keeping it Real in the 21^st Century

Explore the possibilities of adding applique to enhance a pieced quilt top and borders. See how many applications there are for mixing pieced blocks with applique blocks. Applique does not have to be needle turned. Have you ever tried fusing a design, rough edge applique, or the very versatile freezer paper methods? Have you seen the quick and easy way of making templates using large Avery labels? Do you know the correct needles and thread to use when hand or machine stitching applique? All of these topics will be presented in this one hour lecture. This lecture will also include at least two dozen applique quilts guaranteed to inspire even the most die-hard applique haters.

In this lecture I usually bring two dozen scrap quilts and end the lecture with a trunk showing of the quilts in my book Colorful Quilts - A Journey Through Fabric. We discuss the use of multiple fabric combinations, stash builders, how to make scrap quilts with 75 or more fabrics and the products available to help quick-piece any quilt project.

There are so many new bright fabrics, but what can we make with them? This lecture explores the many possibilities of not only using bright fabrics in unusual settings, but ventures into working with wool, black and white fabrics, vertical settings, row quilts, and flannel quilts. Let's do the Cajun "two step", throw some beads, and laissez les bon temps rouler (let the good times roll) as we explore the wonderful world of bright fabrics and their many uses. This will be a trunk showing of brightly colored quilts and more. Many of the quilts shown are in my book Colorful Quilts - A Journey Through Fabric.

This lecture covers the many aspects of block exchanges: how to make them successful, the pitfalls to avoid, the reasons for doing an exchange, which blocks work well, and which blocks don't. I will show Round-Robin quilts, row quilts, uneven grid quilts, cutting bee quilts, a "keep it yourself and work on it yourself" Round-Robin quilt, friendship quilts, and quilts that would be perfect for an exchange.

I teach all of the quilts featured in these image galleries: