May's meeting and workshop featured modern quilter and designer Michelle Wilke. May 12th was a rainy Friday night, but our meeting was full of color and inspiration!
Michelle not only shared her beautiful modern quilts along with the design inspiration for each, but introduced us to the idea of finding design inspiration all around us.
She let us in on some of her design tools such as Design Seeds for pre-selected sparks and palettes, Play Crafts Palette Tool for creating a palette from your image, and Quilt Canvas, an online quilt design program.
Fractions |
On Saturday, May 13th, twenty of our members came back for more and experienced a hands-on quilt design workshop. We got a closer look at Michelle's quilts including this one, that features Ultra Wavy Quilting, a technique tutorial from Better Off Thread. We also loved the way Michelle often matches the binding color to her piecing. (Tutorial can be found at A Quilter's Table)
Altitudinal Ecosystem |
Michelle's "Sunday Best" quilt is beautiful and she shared the story of how she improv pieced each of the blocks every Sunday as a way of distressing from the week.
Sunday Best |
Rails |
Even the quilt backs were beautiful...
Negative Crosswalk (back) |
Michelle walked us through a series of design exercises, that stretched us out of our comfort zones, but then surprised us with what we were able to create.
Marilyn Hagopian, Garen Sherwood, Madeline Faner, Pat Davies |
Cheryl Brickey |
We designed on our own, and then shared our designs in small groups, with several people later sharing to the whole group.
Nicole McClelland and Susan Rink |
Advice was readily available!
Jen Mosser and Michelle Wilke |
Michelle's Bee Block inspired by road signs |
Many of us were fascinated by Michelle's journal where she documents all of her quilt designs, including fabric swatches and measurements.
We may have all started out a bit uncomfortable with the idea of quilt design, but everyone walked away with a smile - pretty proud of what they'd learned and accomplished. Michelle did a wonderful job teaching us that modern quilt design is really not too scary!
Michelle also administers the Facebook group Quilt Design a Day, a good place to continue the design challenge!
Thank you, Michelle, for coming to Greenville!!!
Next Month
Our June meeting is right around the corner.....where we are having a mini trunk show featuring two of our GMQG members and their quilting journey. Come join us on Saturday, June 10th from 1:00pm - 3:00pm at:
2310 East North Street, Suite A
Greenville, SC 29607
864-235-5031