Last week I had the privilege of visiting with the Keystone Quilters of Quakertown, PA. What a cute little town. It was the second time I was able to show off our new All Scrapped Out! templates and they were very well received. The ladies enjoyed the CWQ trunk show and were anxious to get to work on their scrappy creations at the next day's workshop. They arrived on Tuesday morning inspired to throw the rules out the window and play in all the piles of scraps.
The ladies got set up and started immediately. I was lucky that so many of them chose to work on different projects so all the quilts looked so different coming together. A few even worked on two or three different projects on the same day… just to get an idea of how everything could come together.
One of the members has been collecting all the castoff scraps from all her guild members… and delighted in breaking completely out of the box and making Scrap Crazy blocks. I like how excited she got that she found so many already pieced strip set scraps to start her project with. I LOVE all the colors. “I just can't see anything thrown away and gone to waste”, she said many times… and I agree… what lovely blocks.
Following good piecing practice… you stitch a few strip sets and get up to cut a few. Never sit for too long… especially with this type of marathon sewing.
As expected, some of the members had small scraps, some strips and some have large chunks of leftovers. All can work in the All Scrapped Out! method. This member had the most beautiful batiks…
… and she was cutting them using one of our new templates from All Scrapped Out! Acrylic templates are available in a variety of shapes and sizes and make cutting around your scraps even easier for perfect piecing.
Here is another template used to cut some beautiful 60˚ triangle blocks. I can't wait to see what she makes with the pieces.
As the day the goes on… blocks start to go up on the design wall and quilts begin to emerge. Some were up before lunch… and there are always a few overachievers that go home with a whole quilt top complete… or at least the blocks completed.
Of course there is always at least one student that defies all the patterns and instruction and vows to design their own one-of-a-kind quilt. This time there were two… and one belonged to host Janet Bergman of The Quilted Horse. Janet decided that thread spools were all different sizes and should not be uniform… so that's how she pieced hers. I can't wait to see what it looks like when it's complete. It's gonna be a lot of math… but I am delighted that she dared to be different.
Here is a nice little host of hexagons. I watched this quilt come together as well… and this quilter added bright greens and grays… and made it look bright and modern. She also had the best socks of all the quilters there that day.
Just in case you were wondering if the girls had any fun… I took this picture. That's the best part about All Scrapped Out!… all skill levels and all types of quilters can get together and have a great time at this workshop… and make some really spectacular quilts.
Eventually blocks and quilts begin to emerge… and decisions about color can be made… or ignored if you so choose. I like the bright green in this block. It reminds me of witches and candy corn.
Here are some great scrappy blocks for Scrappy Strings. Some of the best quilts are stitched with reckless abandon.
Here someone has pieced a scrappy fall colored pyramid quilt. I love that she used scraps for her backgrounds as well.
Another example of a fall colored quilt is this one… from Scraps to Squares. Fall colors make the best quilts in my opinion… but I am a Fall baby (almost Halloween) so I might be biased.
In all the workshops I have taught in the last few years… I have had many students branch out on their own to make something completely unique, some have challenged themselves to make a quilt that I showed as a preview and didn't even have a pattern for… but none have ever tried the Delectable Diamonds. I was so completely thrilled when one of the students decided to use the 45˚ Diamond ruler and make this quilt. What a wonderful choice of jewel tones. I love the teal and purple… and she had most of the quilt blocks completed before she left the building. I love it… and truly can't wait until I get to see a photo of the completed quilt.
Here is one of our quilt achievers. This quilt top was completed when this quilter left the workshop. Another Fall fabrics pyramid wall hanging. Beautiful.
As you can see… this method is simple and fun and I never tire of spending the day with a bunch of ladies laughing and sharing my passion for scraps. I hope they were all inspired by the freedoms All Scrapped Out! can allow… and I hope they were incredibly inspired by their own creativity. They are a talented bunch of ladies. All I did was guild them on their journey remind them of what they could accomplish… and wear a cute t-shirt.
Check out the next post where I show one quilters journey with her least favorite color.
~Happy Quilting