Getting Ready

I have spent the last 4 weeks or so prepping my supplies and step outs for my classes at MAQ. You can find the website for this quilt retreat at www.MAQonline.org.      It takes place at Mt St Marys College near Gettysburg, PA. 

After submitting my class proposals back in October of 2014, it has been a long time since I worked on these specific projects.  To me, that means a long time and a lot of forgetting. The classes start on July 10 th. My first class is a silk lone star, but none of my students are doing it in silk! 

                         

I made this lone star out of dupioni silk using a Quiltsmart foundation and that is how I am teaching it. I guess making a lone star is daunting enough that my students decided that working in silk would be just too much. By choosing cotton, they can pick their own color palette. So , to refresh my memory and make some step outs to demo the technique, I also chose cotton. I decided to use some of the bright batiks that I bought in Bali. I chose 7 different ones. 

After making 4 sections using The Quiltsmart foundation, the challenge was finding a background fabric from my stash that showed off the star. It also was necessary that I had a big enough piece of it, 1 1/4 yd to be exact. I really did not want to go out and buy fabric. Here's a little sneak peak of why I didn't want to go buy any more fabric. 

I hung the 4 diamond sections and the various fabric choices on my design wall to audition the various background fabrics. Here's a sampling, unedited. 

I wasn't thrilled with any of the batiks. I kind of liked this last yellow batik, but it wasn't quite right. 

I kept hunting through my stash looking for a large enough piece of fabric and I found this low volume white fabric with a small turquoise star. I think I bought it in Holland. 

It was perfect. 

It's going to be a great class. 

There's still room  and room in lot of other classes. So if you find yourself with a free weekend and an itch to be creative, check it out.