Ingrid Whitcher

I have been busy working on getting everything together for the GSQA (Gulf States Quilting Association) Seminar. I will be teaching 4 days of classes along with several other teachers. The Embellishment class that I will be doing starts with 3 fat quarters and a handful of special fabrics and embellishments.

The photos below follow my process for creating an interesting background to start the process.

Started with setting in 3 circles – it could be fused on. The piece was then cut in strips ranging from 1 3/4 inch to 3 inches.

The background fabric was shuffled around until I was happy with it. The contrasting grey fabric was cut into 1 1/4 inch strips and pieced in between the other strips.

The piece of fabric was cut at different angles across the top.

The pieces were once again shuffled and then pieced together again. Square up the piece at this time. This is the finished size of your quilt unless you want to add borders.

Add layers of netting, couch ribbon, felt wool roving, add special fabrics such as velvet and silk and then quilt through these layers having only the batting layered. You will add the backing fabrics and quilt through all the layers when you have the quilt top to your satisfaction.

The quilting must be completed before any embellishments are added. I also sew the binding on before adding any bead work so that I can have embellishments right up the the binding.

The kids all went back to school last week and I spent last week making sure everything got started on the right foot. This week I had a day (today) were I could finally sit at my sewing machine!! The summer has been very busy with teaching and I seemed to helping others get projects done, but never getting to my own pile. Today I took a sew-cation day!!! (Insert big smile!) I have been hard at work on my son’s frog quilt.

I will need to stop here for the day – carpool duties – but I sure had fun!

I am so proud of the students that I had this summer in my Beginning Sewing class. I really enjoyed getting to know these beautiful children. My daughter was such a great help to me – I would not have been able to handle the 5 students in each class without her help in running bobbins and helping them use the piecing guides.

Here are some of the quilts in progress as well as some of the completed quilts. Each week we introduced a new quilt block. They learned Four patch, Fence and Rails, Snowball, Half-square and a Hand-print applique block. They used a high-loft batting and tied the quilts.

These are one class’s pillowcases.

I have started doing a charity project in my area. A friend of mine (and her family) are house parents to a group of teen mothers. This house helps these young mothers in parenting skills and life lessons. It is my goal to make a quilt for each of the babies born and hopefully to make a lap sized quilt for each of the Mom’s when they graduate from the program. I will be posting pictures of the quilts before they are given away and maybe some stories. I am excited to be able to host sewing days at my house for ladies in my church who want to learn how to quilt as well as quilters from the area.

To see the pictures of the first quilts donated – visit the Hugs and Smiles tab.

While visiting the Knoxville AQS Quilt Show, I was amazed by a hand painted quilt. Since it was in a booth I was unable to take any photographs. While there, I ended up buying a jar of Dye-n-flow fabric paint made by Jacquard. I had used some of their other paints with marbling and had heard of this paint from a quilting friend but was never able to find it in the stores in our area. The Dye-n-flow paint is very runny and it just takes a little to paint in the areas. You use a semi-dry brush technique. It is better to do it too light and then come back and add more than to add a lot on the brush, because it will run. Here is a sample I have tried it on.

I LOVE finding new things to try at quilt shows!