*** I'VE BEEN MADE AWARE THAT THE LINK TO JOE'S CLASS IS BROKEN. I APOLOGIZE AND AM IN THE PROCESS OF FIXING IT. THANKS!***
I love that you own purchased Craftsy classes forever. Obviously, so you can refer back to them, but also because sometimes you register for a course and discover the timing isn't quite right to work on a class project. PATTERN FREE QUILTMAKING with Joe Cunningham was released a couple years ago and I was so intrigued I signed up right away. It was great to watch the lessons but I never got around to delving deeper into the idea of improv quilting or pattern free design. I took other classes, made many quilts, and really improved my piecing skills and knowledge. Now that I'm a confident quilt MAKER I feel ready to be a confident quilt CREATOR. The Down the Fox Hole improv quilt I shared a couple days ago is my first attempt at designing my own pattern free project and I think I'm smitten with the improvisational process. What did I do next? Buy books, of course, (but more on that in a later post) and check my Craftsy classroom for relevant instructional lessons. Enter Joe the Quilter.
Joe is the perfect teacher for this topic. He's a free-spirited, wacky kind of guy (and I mean that in the most complimentary way) and his style of presentation reflects that. He shares four 'techniques' for beginning the pattern free process but they provide a very loose guideline where any and all desired changes can be made along the way. Basically, he is tricking us into starting. His outlines for making the different types of quilts are jumping off points meant to awaken the improv bug in us. The construction is relaxed and the actual finished projects are unknown at the start of the exercise. I love that this class gives me a way to begin and fresh ideas to expand upon.
Of course, there is no right or wrong when it comes to creating one's own quilt and Joe's Lesson 6, Managing Your Crazy, is a great reminder that you can take what you've learned from a traditional quilting history and make it modern. That means not just figuratively, but also physically taking a previous, perhaps dated, quilt top and reconfiguring it to become something completely modern and different. There is even an exercise Lesson called The Wheel of Pattern where you follow 3 or more 'suggestions' to create an improv quilt step by step. For instance "add two triangles" or "insert a strip" are the ideas to follow and you do those things with the fabrics and units you have. It's a really fun idea and makes the process random yet structured, especially helpful if you have a rule-following personality like I do!
I really like Joe and I've followed up on his website to learn more about him. Some students asked about finishing the edges of the quilts and Joe uses a 'facing' instead of a traditional binding. I wanted to give it a try since I'm out of fabric for my Fox Hole quilt and will still need to finish the edges. My scrap of thread play fabric was the perfect way to experiment with the technique and now it is finished (and saved from the scrap bucket). I didn't fuss too much with it and I just glued down the back instead of hand-stitching, but I certainly got a feel for how the procedure would work and how it might look. It's an invisible finish that lends to the infinity of the quilt top but I'm still not sure if that's how I'll proceed on the actual quilt. Here's the video Joe put together to explain how to use a facing to finish a quilt. Don't forget to check out his CRAFTSY CLASS if you'd like to get started with improvisational, PATTERN FREE, quiltmaking.
I think I might want to take his class... I just wanted to let you know that your links to his class in this post are broken.
Posted by: Maureen | March 24, 2017 at 10:44 AM