Workshops with Shannon Brinkley

Menagerie Workshop

This workshop was held at Creative Sewing Center in San Antonio.  Participants came with their projects in different stages of the process.  Everyone left happy with what they learned and what they created using Shannon's Scrappy Bits Applique technique. Shannon Brinkley is a wonderful teacher.  No stress at all (except what we put on ourselves). I'm not sure anyone got totally done, so everyone has homework.  But hopefully folks got far enough along that they'll be able to finish before the March meeting and can bring their projects to Sew-n-Tell. Shannon made us promise to share photos of our finished projects.  Here's our works-in-progress.  Speaking for myself, this was a lot more fun than I expected. 

Friday's Photos:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Around the World Workshop

This workshop was held at Edna's Awesome Sewing Cottage. Big thanks to Edna Guerra for opening her cottage and home to our members for this workshop.  Her hospitality can't be beat.  No one finished their projects at this workshop either.  Rumor has it no one even fired up their sewing machines.  This was a much larger and more complex project that involved many tiny scrappy bits.  But hopefully the participants will bring their projects (at whatever stage they're at) to the March meeting for Sew-n-Tell so we can send our workshop photos to Shannon.

Saturday's Photos:

Scrappy Bits Applique by Shannon Brinkley

At our February meeting, we were lucky enough to have Shannon Brinkley as our presenter. Shannon told us how she got into sewing and quilting, right up to when she published her book last year and started doing workshops.  She has a great blog and puts out a newsletter.  She also let us know she's starting fabric designing, so look for her at Quilt Market 2015 in Houston.  She had a volunteer (thanks Kristen) work on a heart collage for us  (perfect for February) to show how easy her raw edge applique process is.  She went through the whole process and showed us some of her quilts.  Shannon really made the process seem very easy.  She had her book Scrappy Bits Applique and other patterns/animal templates for sale at the meeting and sells them on her blog.  Shannon started out as a teacher and you can tell she was good at it.  But how great for us that she moved into quilting and brought this unique, fun and easy technique to the quilt world.  It seems Shannon's motto is do what you like.  And many liked her way of making quilts.

In addition to the guild presentation Shannon held a Menagerie workshop on Friday and a World Map workshop on Saturday.  Pictures from those events will be in a separate blog post.

Texty Trapunto Class by Jen Eskridge

The San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild recently hosted a Texty Trapunto workshop!  It was taught by me, Jen.  I'm the owner of ReannaLily Designs Sewing & Quilting Pattern Company and an advertising sponsor of the SAMQG.

Big thanks to Danielle who is the Workshops Committee chair.  She organized the class location, registration and, in this case, the re-schedule date due to weather.

The class was held at Sew It Fabulous in Boerne, TX, in January 2015.  If you missed the class, the shop owner, Tish, is having me out to teach it again on February 28th, 2015.  Contact the shop for more details.

We had a total of 14 students.  Sew It Fabulous was so nice to host us and let us keep a tab as we shopped & stitched.

The Trapunto method was going along very smoothly. Cutting and cutting.  Prepping and prepping.

Then we got into the stitching.  Stitching and Stitching and free motion quilting and quilting.

We had ladies use the Ampersand stencil.  We had ladies bring their own chubby fonts for tracing and we had one industrious stitcher draft her own letter.  It was quite an assortment of projects.

The class even saw a few folks finish the whole trapunto, raised-text block.  The last step is to dissolve the water soluble thread.

I hope to see the blocks at the next quilt meeting.  You guys did an amazing job!  And now, just think of all the fun quilted projects where  you can add shapes and letters.

Thanks again for letting me share the Texty Trapunto technique.