QuiltCon East 2017 Workshops - Part 3

This is the last of my official QuiltCon posts, but very likely not the last time I talk about QuiltCon. There was just too much good stuff going on there to be "out of sight; out of mind."

On the opening day of QuiltCon, right after the Awards Ceremony, I headed to my first workshop, "Playing With Solids," with Tara Faughnan. This is her Bars Quilt used to learn about color.

I appreciated Tara's lesson which wasn't about the color wheel, but choosing colors based on what looks good together.

We learned about bright versus toned-down, complementary, analogous, monochromatic, and mutable. And bridge colors, used to fill the gap between colors that don't look good together. And all that "look good" stuff... turns out that most of it is personal preference. 

As we starting cutting swatches and putting them together on our lesson hand-out, it became pretty apparent that the 34 five-inch wide strips I'd brought along were too bright. There were no darker colors to tone down so much intensity.

Still, our tables of fabrics looked beautiful. And I left with the absolute certainty that I needed to buy darks for my stash. I've now done that!

These are two quilts that Tara had in the show. You can see that she's been playing with fabric-folding that gives her quilts texture. 

This is her entry in the 2016 Kona Color-of-the-Year Challenge. The color was Highlight.

Two days later I took my morning class with Lee Monroe who is MayChapell on Instagram. Her workshop was "Understanding the Rainbow."

I not only enjoyed her workshop, but also got a kick out of sewing on a new Bernina. It was the QE770, and boy-o, is it nice! Got a spare $4,500 laying around? 

In the workshop, Lee told us all about the color wheel. She provided fabric prints from piles of sorted colors and showed us examples of primary, secondary, and tertiary colors, and talked about hue, value, intensity and the like. Some of it was review for me, but still good to hear again. 

Then Lee invited us to choose 20 colors from those fabric piles to make a Dresden color wheel of our choosing. I enjoyed seeing the students getting into it. 

Everyone wanted Lee's approval of their choices before moving to the sewing machines.

My preference for brights seemed to work okay.

Lee and me

Following QuiltCon, and several other travel stops (more to come about those!) Di and I spent a couple evenings together in my sewing room. She worked on her hand-pieced Traveling Triangles, and I made some progress on both my workshop pieces before she returned home to Australia.

Here are both my workshop projects in their current states. The Bars quilt top is finished at 62" X 77". It turned out brighter than Tara's because I can't manage (yet) to use many darks in a quilt. On purpose, there's no brown whatsoever! Ochre is the closest I can come to brown.

My Dresden color wheel needs to be hand appliquéd to the background. The Dresden itself measures 22" across.

My plan is to complete both by our April 10 Central Florida MQG meeting, to give a "Lessons Learned at QuiltCon" review of my workshops. 

You may have notice through all my QuiltCon posts that I haven't mentioned vendors. There are two reasons for that: 

1) Not all the big name sponsors were selling their products at the show.

2) Therefore, I couldn't buy what that I was looking for.

I intentionally looked for Robert Kaufman Kona at the show. Not one vendor was selling it! I ended up buying a few pieces of Michael Miller Cotton Couture, and Paintbrush Studio Painter's Palette. 

But let me say that I really do appreciate the big sponsors! There's no doubt that they contribute enormously to the success of the whole event, not the least of which is in the classroom, where some sponsors provide machines for everyone to use. That Bernina QE770 I happily sewed on would have seen me trading in my Bernina QE440 on the spot if I'd brought it along! 

It's just that featured sponsors present only to educate... like Aurifil, Clover, Creative Grid, Northcott Fabrics, Cotton and Steel Fabric, and others. They're fabulous about sharing information, hosting games and giveaways, but quilters aren't always able to find at the show the products being promoted! Doesn't it make more sense that a manufacturer would ensure that one of their retail vendors attending the show would stock the items they're promoting?

Of course I could find vendors selling Aurifil, and Cotton and Steel fabrics. But I couldn't find a small package of the mini Wonder Clips being promoted by Clover, nor a ruler featured by Creative Grid. Of course, I can still get those items elsewhere.  

So if this is the only thing I can think of to be critical about - not being able to spend my money when I want to! Ha!- then you know that QuiltCon truly was a great show. Two more are scheduled: 

QuiltCon West, February 22-25, 2018 in Pasadena, California

QuiltCon East, February 21-24, 2019 in Nashville, Tennessee

Will you be at either of them? Linda