Work in Progress Wednesday: SewDown Workshops

On Wednesdays we share works in progress from COMQG members. Enjoy! Today we're featuring projects made during the Portland SewDown.

The four workshops at the SewDown were so great! See our next post for the recap of all the other happenings.

The 80 attendees were divided into four groups that rotated through the four workshop sessions. The three of us from Central Oregon were lucky enough to all be in the same group for the workshops.

Up first on Saturday we had the Improv Round Robin with Sherri Lynn Wood. We each started with our own scrap bin. After some quiet reflection time and started our piece in silence so that we could focus on our inspiration. We then passed our started quilt and our scrap bins to another person in the class who had 15 minutes to add their part to our piece using our scraps. Sherri Lynn likened it to a conversation: what does this piece say to you, and how do you want to respond? We had time to pass our quilts 4 times, and most of us didn't see our quilts in progress until they were returned to us at the end of class.

Here we are with our finished pieces after we exchanged one more time at open sew that night. 

Saturday afternoon was a change of pace. We had a class with Heather Jones where we made her You and Me quilt. This quilt has a bold, modern design. It was really fun to see all the different color combinations from other people in the class. Heather will be teaching this same class at Quilter's Affair in July. We all sewed and sewed and sewed all afternoon and most completed a block from the quilt. There are four blocks in the quilt so we were quite productive!

Near the end of class we hung all the completed blocks on the classroom wall.

On Sunday morning we took the Shooting Star class from Lee Heinrich. The quilt is a modern mini quilt with a traditional block but pieced so that the final quilt has asymmetry and a fun, modern look. We learned two methods for sewing flying geese units, and used ombre fabric to get a great effect.

Lee's Shooting Star mini quilt.

Lee snapped this one of us with our finished products and posted it on Instagram. 

Finally on Sunday afternoon we had the Sidekick Sampler workshop with Julie Herman. We learned how to cut four different shapes from strips using the ruler. Then we used these shapes to create the block used in Julie's Night Sky Quilt. Julie will be teaching this class at Quilter's Affair in July. Valori Wells provided some fabric for us to practice piecing the blocks before we used the kit provided.

Julie demonstrated the shapes you can create using the Sidekick ruler.

Julie's samples. The mini on top is the kit we received in class, and her quilt samples underneath.

Kristin's block in progress.