An Evening With Poppyprint
On the Friday we enjoyed a fun informative talk on inspiration. It was a great event as it wove a narrative of Krista's own quilty journey with an educational slant on how to challenge ourselves in our creativity.
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| A cornucopia of exquisite quiltiness. |
Her travelling trunk of quilts is no mere cabin baggage, it's like there was a proper old school shipping trunk hidden away somewhere full of phenomenal quilty goodness!
The talk itself was very well attended and we've had great feedback from those that joined the guild for the night. Your desultory author was so engrossed she didn't take enough pictures to do the event justice!
Krista's style, or rather styles, is an intriguing spectrum of extreme improv and well planned precision that makes you stare open jawed at the discipline involved in the construction.
Your sporadic blogger can give you a taste of the content but better still if you have an opportunity to join Krista for a class or lecture - do it!
My personal favourite, as a fan of improv, were the speed dating quilts. Krista's technique of limiting time and colour and forcing the owner of the rotary cutter to go at it with abandon is fantastic. For some, this is a real challenge. Is it the same as stripping down all convention and diving in - I need to stop with the verbose prose I'm making it sound like skinny dipping. Maybe it is of sorts?
We also heard about the piano key method, which is an awesome mix of improv and structure. It reminds me of French gardens - wildness tamed by crisp box hedge edges.
Moving along the precision scale we get to one of Krista's most iconic patterns, the square peg round hole. Can you believe that these 2 quilts are the same pattern? Nope neither can I. But they are!
A Workshop on Precision
I'm not sure how many of us thought the Square Peg Round Hole workshop would be a doddle? It's just a log cabin after all.... Bahahaha! Nonsense. We started with a 1/4 inch seam tune up.
Have you ever tested your cutting, seams and pressing in one strip of squares? Your author hadn't - quite an eye opener! Turns out my tatty much abused ruler, my slashed cutting mat, my blunt rotary cutter and my even blunter needle may be holding me back?!
So once we were all comfortable that we had rectified any of the above sins or atleast knew how to compensate, we were off!
Some looking a bit worried that the quilt police are real!
The heads went down, the concentration was sky high. A fairly exhausting time. Cutting...
Piecing... Trimming...
Until we all had a couple of blocks!
I wish I'd nicked off with the lot! Don't they look great together.
All in all we had a great time. A genuine feeling that we came away with new tips and skills to improve our precision. Thank you Krista for such an enjoyable weekend.
