January, 2022
One of my personal themes for 2021 was “do it or drop it”, so I was particularly mindful of Works in Progress. At the same time, I had the chance to start a lot of new things, and learn a lot of new techniques from teachers I have never had access to before (yes, a COVID silver-ish lining).
Several months a go I took a class in curved piecing from Carolina Oneto, and left with a pieced square that was my first experience with this modern adaptation of English Paper Piecing. At the same time, it was a chance to experiment with transparency – something I’ve done a lot with paint, not so much with fabric.
After the class I got a little ambitious and finished another 11 squares (rectangles, actually), then puzzled a little over what to do with them. Finally, just before the end of the year, the setting strategy fell into place. I ran out of time and batting to get the quilting and binding done before the end of the year, but the batting is arriving this week, so hopefully the momentum will carry me forward.
August, 2021
I love living in Chicago, but I do miss my Atlanta quilting community. Several years ago, a small neighborhood bee I was part of decided to try an experiment, combining a book club with our quilting challenge. To keep it manageable we picked a 12 x 12 format. This is a little piece I made after we read a book called The Other Typist by Suzanne Rindell.
12 x 12 was a popular size for a number of challenge groups, and every year a local organization called the Southeastern Fiber Arts Association held a 12 x 12 pinup show for all fiber artists. The book club quilt challenge didn’t go on for very long, but SEFAA’s 12 x 12 pinup show has persisted, even going virtual during Covid.
June, 2021
I recently spent a delightful afternoon taking a class from Carolina Oneto (#carolina_oneto) learning this modern version of the English Paper Piecing technique applied to creating tranparent effects. I’ve worked with transparencies with paper and fiber, but this was my first time in fabric, and also my first time with EPP. I’d mostly seen it used with hexie projects, which impress me but don’t tempt me to try.
Carolina is from Chile, living now in Brazil, and the students were from around the world. Just one of the silver linings to the pandemic – putting teachers like her within reach of students around the world. I’m so grateful so many of them made the effort to amp up their on-line presence.
