Layered Waves Workshop

I have enjoyed a lot of quilting activities in the last two days. On Thursday night, I met two friends from my bee for a Mexican dinner in Raleigh before we attended the Capital Quilters Guild meeting with Karen Eckmeier as guest speaker.

We had the largest Show-and-Tell that I can remember in my twenty-one years of guild membership. What talented quilters! Then, we presented Mike Dorman of Military Missions in Action with a check representing the proceeds of our Heritage Day quilt auction and raffle: a whopping twelve thousand dollars! I am so proud of our group for making this donation possible. MMIA exists to help disabled veterans make adjustments and renovations to their living space when they return home from the war. Every dollar goes to the actual cost of building materials and other necessities. And I can tell you, Mike Dorman is such a compelling personality that people seem to just go out of their way to help this worthy cause.

Finally it was time for our guest speaker, Karen Eckmeier of The Quilted Lizard. She is a pattern designer and quilt artist who gave a delightful slide show and trunk show of her quilts. You may be familiar with her Accidental Landscapes patterns. This photo is from her website.

Then, this morning, I got up at 6:30 AM, packed up Sweet Sue the Subaru, and headed to Raleigh for her Layered Waves workshop. I really, really, liked this technique. There is no drawing, no gluing, no stabilizer, just lots of fun cutting curves and top stitching them to each other. Loved it! Here is my creation, using hand-dyed, batik, and commercial print fabrics in teals, blues, purples, and some black and white prints to make it all "pop."

Not sure what this will become...maybe a jacket. Karen was wearing a layered waves jacket made from a sweatshirt...I loved it! Here she is holding up some of the class projects. She held each one in all four orientations to see how we liked each one. Sorry, some of these photos are a little out of focus.

I would say this piece goes to the head of the class...Susie had the over-under technique that looks like woven ribbons.

My friend Darlene from the Anything Art bee used a color palette similar to mine. This one was all blue...

This one used a theme print and then coordinated colors to go with it.

I like the colors in this piece, which remind me a western desert.

And Dorthy's fabrics had lots of movement and bright colors.

Karen showed us how to make the points, ripples, and crests.

Her own quilts were available to view for eye candy and inspiration.

I highly recommend Karen as a guest speaker and workshop instructor. Very pleasant, amusing, and genuinely nice!