Colorwash at Home & Answers

 

 

I've finished sewing the binding and the hanging sleeve on my colorwash quilt and I hung it up in my living room.

 

 Each square is 2" and it is 20 squares across and 20 down so it is about 40" square with 400 pieces. There are about 382 unique fabrics.

If you ever have the opportunity to take Wanda Hansen's colorwash class I urge you to do it. It's a terrific class that teaches you how to use color in your quilts.

I have a lot of artwork hanging in my house. From my spot on the couch I can see into the dining room and my mom's painting on the far wall. I did the watercolors that hang above the archway, and I made the quilts on the wall and on the table.

You can see Millie in the lower right. Last week marked the 16th anniversary of her "Gotcha Day." 

Oh, I have had a couple of questions...

 

1. Yes I -always- work on the angled drafting table. Always. Everything. This blog started in July 2008, and I know there are tons of pictures of my drafting table in use.

 

2. Yes, the bulldog clips are used as weights. They are tied to string which is pinned to the top of my design wall. I have several and use them as plumb lines to keep my blocks straight when designing a quilt. I also use a laser level for keeping things perfectly horizontal.

 

3. I will update the Zebra tutorial with pictures and a design layout for the Yellow Ribbons quilt and i have also created an outline page for it in case anybody wants to color it as they work out a design (thank you Cathy.) Anybody who has bought a zebra tutorial can contact me for an updated version when it is ready. I am sewing the binding on the Firebird quilt, and want to include finished pictures of that in the update, so it won't be ready for a week or two.

 

4. Many glass companies sell and cut plexiglass, and there are custom quilting template makers on the internet. You can get your own templates made. Just think carefully about what you want. If you want a hole to hang your template, you'll have to ask for it.

5. I don't use any kind of sticky ANYTHING on the underside of my templates, ever. Any adhesive gets stickier over time and is harder to remove. The chemicals needed to remove sticky residue are very bad if they get on your skin, and into your body. Plus the edges of tape lift and get caught on fabric and drag the fabric where I don't want it to go. Really, I've thought about all this stuff.

6. I can contour draw left handed, but I don't trust my non-dominant hand with a sharp rotary cutter in it. I keep a box of band-aids in my studio for a reason.

7. I find that teaching in-person is good because you can clarify something if a student gets confused. You can go off on tangents. You can see if your students really "get it." I don't think the type of tools you use matters one way or the other. I have written eight tutorials, and these are harder. You have to be very careful about your language, you have to be very clear about your process, it has to make sense and you have to be consistent. Writing directions is very hard and few people do it well. I work very very very hard (and I have a crack team of proofreaders and testers who help me) to get it right. I've sold hundreds of tutorials, and nobody gives me grief because they can't understand what I am saying. But I don't think a tool is better for "live" or "written" or "video" learning. A tool is a tool.

8. I've said it before, and it bears saying again. Do What Works For You.