Workshop with Karla Alexander

This past weekend, I had the pleasure of attending a workshop with Karla Alexander of Saginaw Street Quilt Company.  The workshop was sponsored by my guild, which does a wonderful job of scheduling creative instructors and inspirational classes.

Karla is an exceptional instructor.  She had great visuals and samples prepared, and she showed us lots of examples of what she was describing.  She knows that we quilters are "visual creatures".

I loved looking at all the samples she brought- and the many full sized quilts that are pictured in her books.  They look great in the books, but they're SOOO much prettier in person!

This one is called, "Argyle".  It's one of the quilts I chose to make.  It was a 2 day workshop, focusing on different techniques each of the days.  We were able to select a different quilt each day.

What amazed me is that we had a large list of options for each of the days.  Karla was able to guide us each through our choices- keeping us all straight and remaining calm- keeping us all on task. 

For the Saturday class, I chose to work on "Funky Curvy Rail".  I selected a variety of green and black prints. 

Karla taught us how to use free form cuts, or use one of her new rulers to cut waves, then stack and shuffle our "decks" of pieces.  This gave us a good shuffling of colors for our scrappy quilts.

She also taught us how to sew the curves without a million pins!  This was a big deal for me.  I'm the original "pin queen".  Do you see the little piece of foam tape beside the strips I'm stitching?  It was used as a guide to keep our seams at 1/4 inch while feeding the curved pieces through.  Worked like a charm!

Here's my progress so far.  Fun, huh?!?

On Sunday, I opted to work on "Argyle".  This is sooooo pretty!  I just love how this quilt is turning out!  And the curves are NOT difficult the way Karla taught us to work with them.

Obviously, we were all working with a lot of different pieces.  Everyone has their own methods of keeping things straight.  I was struck by the organization of one of my fellow guild members.  Isn't she amazing?  She has everything all lined up... all neat and tidy.....

And then there was my pile.






I want to share some photos of friends' quilts.  They were all gorgeous!

Thanks for an educational, inspirational, and FUN weekend, Karla!  Now, to finish my quilts!