My Day With Gwen!

I have to tell you about my wonderful, fantastic, over the top, most excellent day. I traveled to Marion, Indiana yesterday to take my 2 classes with Gwen Marston. She is a truly lovely lady, very funny and well spoken. I enjoyed my day immensely. My first class was a little flower pot quilt. This was a 3 hour class and by the end of that class we had listened to Gwen talk about little flower quilts. We had learned her methods of cutting her shapes directly from the fabric and had cut our own shapes from our chosen fabrics, we learned her methods for bias stems and made our own bias stems sharing one sewing machine between us and had designed our own quilt and had it laid out and it was ready to appliqué before we left. I couldn’t believe all that we accomplished in such a short time. Here is a picture of my bright little flower pot quilt.
The second class was on Liberated stars. They were a little more difficult then what I thought. Here is a picture of my samples. I need to work on the points areas. I think I am now ready to actually make some for a quilt top. They are a lot of fun.
I talked to her a bit about her Liberated Quilt book and she told me that AQS will not reprint it. She offered to do a Liberated Quilt book II and they were not interested in that either. So she said that her Collaborative Quilt book with Freddy Moran is her answer to a follow up to Liberated Quilting. She also said that she has seen and has a copy of Tonya’s “wonderful liberated letters”.
It was a very rewarding day. I have always worked in a primitive style with my appliqué and she promotes working that way. She said it distresses her to see all the pain people put into their appliqué quilts these days. They have made it so that perfection is what is most important and that when you look at the antique quilts the things you love most about them is the little imperfections that you find. Can you tell I am still on my “Gwenny high.” Too bad I have so much to do to get ready for this trip coming up that I won’t be able to sit at my machine for at least 3 weeks. In the meantime I have been doodling on my post it notes fast and furiously.