The first MMQG workshop was held on Saturday 5 April and what a day it was. Leslie Keating from Maze and Vale first showed us how to make simple hand carved stamps and very quickly the girls were up and running with their own creations.
The designs that evolved were amazing and included knitting wool and needles, rascally rabbits, cute cats, themes from nature and striking geometrical patterns. There were lots of colour and fabric options for using the designs and the morning sped by.
After a short break, Leslie took participants through her free form patchwork design principles and provided lots of gorgeous fabric as inspiration as well as the opportunity to use the fabric created in the morning session – after a quick setting of the fabric ink using an iron. Leslie’s technique is sometimes called impromptu piecing because there is no quilt pattern or plan. Sounds a bit scary for some! But it’s easy – just join similar sized squares or rectangles together in pairs then press and join your pieces in pairs again… and so on … and so on. This builds up the quilt top at a lightning pace and is very freeing – as there are not rules! It’s a great way to highlight fabrics and let them be the main design feature. Participants had a fabulous time letting go of preconceived ideas and just sewed up a storm!
For more info and photos see Leslie’s blog
and the MMQG Flickr group