Asheville Quilt Guild Workshop

I taught one of my favorite workshops to the Asheville Quilt Guild this week; it is such a fun workshop as you see so many different pieces and directions from students. It was a design workshop using a base fabric, creating nature type motifs for that layer, and painting a sheer layer to place on top using more design elements. You get a great feeling of depth to the piece. There is a lot more to it but this is the starting point.

 The workshop was full and we had a huge, well lit room for working, this is only half the room, the other half had as many tables and people. It was a teacher's dream for teaching.

 I went around snapping pictures and unfortunately wasn't able to get everyones. Their piece wasn't up to the point of being photographed, or design elements were still being placed. Each piece was so individual and interesting, beautiful, restful - the list goes on to describe the works of this very talented group of ladies. This first piece did not have the sheer layer as yet. It was to represent a forest floor with leaves laying where they fall.  It was lovely and I can't wait to see it finished.

 This gal only had the bottom layer finished when I snapped the picture.  Before she left, the sheer layer was ready to place on top. The "weed" like imagery in the background was done with silkscreen - another skill learned in the workshop.  This was the start of a beautiful piece and I remember her telling me, she had only been quilting for a year. I think we have a star in the making.

 Betty created this piece which was her design. She wanted to use lunes and cattails. The sheer is already in place and you can see the dimension it creates. Some of the cattails are on top and some beneath the sheer. She plans to go and add more elements in the foreground along the bottom. It's wonderful!

 I absolutely loved this piece. The mushrooms were hand painted after being silk screened on - what a clever idea. The dragonfly was a screen also.

 The sheer layer add more dimension and the mushroom screened on organza was also painted.

 This piece started with a very lively background which worked beautifully in the design. The tree and "brush" was screened on the background and more design elements added to the organza in front. The butterfly (which still needs to be cut out) was one she also hand painted before coming to class.

 We all fell in love with the background fabric in this piece - it's a Hoffman and I looked it up on line, still available but finding the store that carries it is another issue. The fabric was placed with stripes going vertical to give the illusion of trees - how clever is that. The elements on the organza really made the piece pop.

This was Peggy's piece. She worked with squares  and silk screen and smaller squares in the upper right corner to balance it out.  She also screened lots of Hydrangeas onto the background which show through and are very effective.

This was Chris's piece - she started with a medium value batik as the background and screened a tree off to the side. She added ferns to the background and still in the process of added more to the organza. ..another great piece.

I have to say, my one regret is not being able to photograph all of them - there were twice as many as you see here and all so unique.  I promise my ladies if they send me a picture, I will put it on my blog. I am so proud of this wonderfully talented group and want some bragging rights for them. This workshop is a delight to teach, I come home on such a high after seeing the art people are able to create.