Sewing On Air Art Quilt Technique. . .

On Wednesday, we held our monthly art quilt workshop.  This month's technique was "Sewing On Air" by Nancy Green as featured in the October/November 2012 issue of "Quilting Arts Magazine."

Following along with the instructions, this is my quilt base.  I fused fabric to fabric using Mistyfuse and quilted all over.

The circles were left unquilted as my sewing on air will be done within one of the circles.

The center of the circle was cut out.  

The circle is then heavily zigzag stitched.  Heavily means going around the circle four times with a free-motion zigzag stitch (my favorite :). The fun begins as the needle is placed to the back of the circle and straight-stitched across its diameter at a medium speed.  Once across, the fabric was turned 180 degrees and gone across again.  I did this three times, always with free-motion stitching.  The three lines of sewing were then zigzagged over with my machine set at 2.5 width.  And, whalaa, there is a strong cord-like thread line running through my circle.

This was an easy technique, much more so than I realized it would be.  Come join us next month and see what other new technique we will learn.

Blessings,

Karri

Teaching an Abstract Quilt Class. . .

This past Wednesday I taught how to create this abstract quilt in my monthly Itsy Bitsy Quilt Club class.  The end result is to allow a quilter to design and create their own art quilt. 

My students agreed to be guinea pigs in my preparation for teaching this technique at a Texas guild next month.  Here are their projects in the works.  This student is putting the finishing touches on her threadplay.

The colors in this quilt make me think of a scarecrow.

This one has a fall feel, and

this student was the quickest and is appliqueing the final element to the quilt center.

Teaching a method of art quilting such as this is a little more intense for me as a teacher.  I really have to have my act together and be sure I know what I'm talking about as my students are being asked to look at quilting from a more abstract point of view than they may otherwise be used to.  Try different art quilting techniques if you really want to stretch and twist your brain.

Blessings,
Karri