Quilt Dancing with the Edinburgh MQG

Lockdown brought all sorts of challenges but also some new opportunities and one of these was the chance to take an online class with the amazing Irene Roderick along with my Edinburgh MQG buddies.

Irene lives in Austin Texas and starting offering her ‘Dancing with the Wall’ workshop as a Zoom course during lockdown. Our guild was straight on to this with Barbara organising two groups of six to run on concurrent nights during a week in June.  I have long admired Irene’s quilts at QuiltCon shows, and spent time staring at them trying to work out how on earth she puts them together, so I was really keen to join in.  As a teacher it’s also good to be a student once in a while and put yourself back in their shoes.

In the first class on Monday night she introduced us to her work and showed us a list of component parts that we could make and use. We were encouraged to use just 2 colours in this short version of her class, or 3 if we had to. Of course I ended up with 4 because I have issues with restraining myself!

Before the second class I had a wonderful time playing with improv piecing and trying out some new ideas that Irene had taught (including her amazing skinny strips!). This is how far I got…

On Wednesday night we all gathered together to view our work so far, and get advice on where to go next or what to change, from both Irene and the rest of the group.

I really enjoyed these sessions and feel I learnt as much from sharing and discussing everyone else’s work as my own.

We also had a WhatsApp group where we could share our progress and get advice. On seeing my WIP above Pam said I should call it ‘Ooops I dropped my Battenberg!’. This made me laugh so much I decided to keep it and the finished quilt is now known as my ‘Battenberg quilt’.

But first I had some more work to do following on from the comments in class. This was such absorbing work and I can totally see why Irene calles it ‘Quilt Dance’ as you really seem to be in a dance with your design wall as your partner. At the suggestion of Irene I even added in my version of a ‘virus’ in the top right hand corner to mark this weird time.

We had another class on Friday where we reviewed our progress, made more suggestions and discussed quilting.  I think I had my top finished (above left) a few days after the third class as I was very inspired and absolutely loving it!

I decided to use matchstick quilting with my walking foot and Aurifil 40wt thread in shade 2000. But I wanted to try something a little different so I left these random shapes free of quilting. They actually look like little pillows! I had an idea to add hand quilting to them and bring in even more shapes, but after the machine quilting I put this aside for a month or so. Irene had arranged for us to do a ‘show and tell’ session in mid August and of course I didn’t get back to this until just a few days before!

But let’s have a look at what some of my EMQG pals got up to while they were dancing with the wall. Prepare to have your socks knocked off!

One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces is by Cat Haggart and really just WOW!!  I was so impressed I even went and listened to the Ben Folds Five song this is named after (it’s very loud)! It just takes my breath away.

This incredible and technically crazy 3D creation is by Barbara. None of us were really sure she could pull off those flying geese in a circle but she totally did it! I love how sparse and architectural this is.

Juliet and Heather both managed to keep within the 2 colour limit and both knocked it out of the park with these stunning pieces. Juliet’s on the left is called ‘evolution’ and we all saw so much going on here from birthday cakes to fallopian tubes!

Heather (right) managed to get her piece so balanced (something I really struggled with). I love all the ‘lolly’ shapes (or popsicles as Irene called them!) and the combination of charcoal with that dusky pink is just perfect.

This is Irene’s (another Irene!) who had left her piece unfinished until a couple of days before ‘show and tell’ and then pulled this out of the bag, all quilted and finished! Like me Irene used pops of orange (orange is the answer!) including tiny applique circles. Just love that fresh green!

Not everyone had the time to finish their tops but these two from Mags on the left and Pam on the right are so exciting and show so much promise that I really hope they continue with them. I just love the Charles Rennie Mackintosh vibe of Mag’s piece and Pam has christened her work ‘Francesco the Pigeon’! She is very good with names!

 

Karen’s quilt looks so technically challenging that even Irene doubted she would manage it, but she did!  I just love those trails of tiny squares and the leaf shapes! We all saw musical instruments in this one.

Here is a close up of her fabulous matchstick quilting (left). I love the fact that so many of the class perservered, pushing through until they had achieved something and learning so much about ‘engineering’ (as Irene calls it) in the process.

Pauline didn’t have much time and was struggling but again just days before the show and tell dedline she created this striking  12 inch mini quilt out of her components.  She had originally intended it to be the other way up but then all she could see was a llama being decapitated so had turn it around (try out!)!!

One of the aims of this type of improv piecing is to create something that keeps your eye moving continually around the quilt rather than honing in on one area, I think I managed this with my piece. There are areas that I love and others I am still not so sure about but you have to stop somewhere and finish.

I would definitely like to try the process again some day soon, maybe I’ll even manage to stick to 2 colours!

And what about that extra quilting I was adding?

I used Aurifl 28wt in the same shade to add hand quilting to the spaces I’d left in the machine quilting. I used my scoring wheel to mark out the areas freehand first. It’s added extra layers of shapes on to the onto the empty space shapes on to the shapes made by the piecing!

I am so impressed by the quilts we all managed to make in this class and I am very thankful to Irene for her warm and generous tuition and for nurturing our progress so well. I wouldn’t hesitate to thoroughly recommend her workshop. Check out the hashtag Quilt Dance on instagram to see all the work she has inspired through her classes, and Irene herself is called Hixsonir on IG.

I have been talking to the organisers of the Scottish Quilting Show which is planned for next May with the hope of exhibiting all our quilts together there. I think they will make a beautiful and fascinating display and a representation of how us quilters spent part of this strange time of Covid.