Asilomar 2018

I went to Asilomar again a few weeks ago, to attend Empty Spools Seminars.  This time my teacher was Louisa Smith, and her class was called Strips and Curves.  So, of course, our class was known as the strippers!  Oh, what a fun class, having nothing to do with stripping!!

In preparing for the class, I first chose a focus fabric, which is the large floral Kaffe Fassett in the foreground of the first photo below.  Then I pulled as many fabrics as I could find in my stash that even remotely went with that fabric.  Those are swatches that I've glued onto a piece of paper next to the focus fabric.  At the last minute I also threw in a set of 1/2 yard cuts of turquoise fabrics that I found.  Really glad that I did.  

Our class instructions (before we arrived at class) said to cut one or two 1 1/2" strips from each fabric.  So here are all my strips, plus the turquoise ones I cut later, during class.

Louisa then played with my fabric strips.  She grouped all the purples together, the aquas, etc.  She also took into consideration hue, making a pleasing "array" of the strips, so they all flowed nicely together.  I pieced all of these strips together, the result of which was a new "fabric" consisting of one-inch (finished) strips.  You can see in the photo below how nicely the turquoise/aqua strips play together and show up the tiny bits of that color in my focus fabric.

I have to say, sewing all of these strips together was not a piece of cake!!  Each seam had to be pressed open, so the new "fabric" would lie flatter than it would with seams pressed to one side.  

A couple years ago I made for myself a "gizmo" to help with pressing seams open.

Here it is.  I don't even know what the tool is called, but I know a quilting tool exists which is shaped like this.  At the time, I needed one NOW!  Living in the boonies as I do, I decided that I could make one; it's fairly simple.  

This tool is like a wooden dowel that has been sliced in half length-wise.  So I went to my local hardware store/lumbar yard and asked if they had any half-round molding, which is what this shape is called.  No, they didn't, but they did have quarter-rounds.  So I bought a strip of that, and they cut it into two equal lengths for me, about 17 inches long.  

 This photo shows the end of the thingy, and you can see that there are two quarter circles, which I glued together with wood glue.  

Then I covered the whole length with a strip of batting, then a piece of muslin, which I glued on top of the batting.  When it's lying flat side down, there is a nice curved surface on top.  That is a big help when pressing seams open, because the seam line lies on top of the "hill" and is very easily pressed open. I needed this when I was making Disappearing Four Patch blocks.  Those have a lot of intersecting seams, so it's a good idea to press them open.  

Flat side (bottom) of the pressing tool.

Anyway, I knew I would be pressing seams open, so I wanted to take my pressing tool to Asilomar with me.  I thought of it in the middle of the night. . .  You know the story:  completely forgotten!  (BTW, I've since decided that in the middle of the night I should send myself an email if I have an idea about something.  I don't have paper and pen beside my bed, but I do have my phone charging.)

So I forgot to take the pressing tool with me.  That would have helped a lot, but I managed to get things pressed flat.  

Louisa Smith has created a set of curved cutting templates.  We proceeded to create blocks by cutting pieces of our focus fabric, pieces of our strata (sewn together strips), and pieces of some of the accompanying fabrics.  In the photo below you can see the large piece of focus fabric making the curve in the top left of the block.  Then I used one of the templates and cut a piece of my strata to put next to the focus fabric.  I used the turquoise part of the strata, so there would be nice contrast between the two pieces.  The "spikey" piece made up of bright pink and turquoise fabrics, the next curved arc, was paper pieced.  Louisa has also designed paper piecing diagrams as another way to combine fabrics.  And the small flowered piece in the lower right of the block is one of the fabrics from the strata.

The rest of the week's class was devoted to putting together pieces like this.  Although it sounds simple, it can be very tricky to find the right template to use when cutting the next piece of fabric.  As anyone who has done curved piecing and/or drunkard's path blocks knows, those two fabric edges do not look like they will fit together.  But they do!  

We used our design walls, and moved pieces here and there, trying to find the best arrangement of blocks.  Below is a photo of my design wall during the process.

Here is my group of 20 blocks which I ended up with.  They are not sewn together in this photo.  Some of the individual blocks are not even sewn together into the blocks.  I used many, many pins to secure the blocks to my piece of white fabric piece (which covers the design board), in order to transport them home with some sort of order!  I also took a lot of photos before I left.  I rotated the photos to decide which configuration looked best to me.  

Now I'm working on sewing together the pieces of my blocks, then I'll sew the blocks together.

This has been (is being) a very fun thing to do.  I learned a lot from this class.  Louisa Smith is a great teacher, and I recommend taking a class from her if you ever get the chance.