“Blooming Sheers” at Meissner’s

 

I had a grand time last week in my “Blooming Sheers” class at Meissner Sewing in Folsom. Every single student remarked at how fun they had. I am always thinking about great free motion quilting classes, what would that look like? I think this is a winner.

One of my class samples for “Blooming Sheers”:

Even the debris in the classroom was vibrant and pretty!

I wasn’t sure if my students were going to be able to source colorful sheers or printed sheers, so I brought some of my stash along and I’m glad I did. Everyone appreciated the extra inventory for their creations.

I am always on the look out for great accessories or notions. Joyce brought in a Tula Pink model BERNINA, which is so dog gone cute anyway, and then carried her machine and notions in these. Gotta love how everything coordinated!

There were several newer or brand new free motion quilters, and that was no barrier to the process. The vibe of this project is Bohemian, casual, fun. The end of class time came and no one was ready to go home!

Sue used a blue background and a variegated thread even though I asked for a white background and black thread, I did not think either of those choices would work. Um, teacher was wrong:

Molly has her blooms planned and will be able to go home and just quilt:

Do you see how the word “you” unexpectedly appeared on the 4th grass from the left? Cool!

Joyce did a fabulous job creating a daffodil and iris. I never would have thought to make purple and blue stems, but hey, why not?

Jean is a first time free motion quilter and just went for it!

She used a fabric that had a metallic fleck to it, another fabric that I thought would be troublesome. But once again, teacher was wrong! I like the sparkly background it created for the flowers (not sure you can tell from the photo, but the background glistened):

Patti used a bubble background which I thought looked great, and I love the layering of textures in her flower:

Clarice used a lot of color and I adore her whimsical creation on the far right.

Kerrie chose to focus on getting flowers down and will fill in the grasses later. We learned from her flower’s center choices that the center of the flower has more impact than expected.

I had a blast, as did my students. This is not a buttoned-up, let’s-all-make-the-same-thing kind of class. Some did not do/bring what I asked and seriously, I LOVE that.  If you know what you like, go for it! I feel like each person went their own way and that is what I wanted for them. I will definitely be promoting this class in the future. I do have some thinking to do about making sure everyone has a good inventory of sheers to work with. I think I will kit this in the future. Hmmmmm.

I’ll be teaching at Empty Spools teaching next week. I am going to try to get a blog post done ahead of time that highlights quilts from my home guild’s recent show. I rarely prep a post ahead, but I want to show the beauty of my home guild’s show in next week’s post. Wish me luck at Empty Spools!

I’ll be posting at:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday.