Indian Orange Peel Class (Part 1)

I organized an Indian Orange Peel class for 18 of my quilting friends. The class was taught by Heather Stewart. We met today at a local church hall and had a glorious day of colour theory, fabric fondling and a tiny bit of sewing including some paper piecing.

Using colour wheels, we all had to sort our fabrics into 12 colour groupings, lightest to darkest in each colour group. We then divided our groups into warm and cool colours. Very few of us had enough fabrics so we were all given permission from Heather to so some stash enhancement! Heather came around and helped us to figure out what colours should be on our shopping lists.

Here are my fabrics:

We had a wonderful organized pot luck lunch with homemade soups, buns, fruit, apple crisp, cookies and brownies. Snacks, coffee, tea, juice and hot chocolate were available all day. I didn't take any pictures of the food but be assured that it was all delicious!

After lunch, we each sewed a warm and a cool coloured 4 patch using Heather's pin free method.

After a paper piecing lesson, we each worked on one arc for one of the blocks in our quilts. Two of us finished our arcs and the rest made a good start at theirs.

Each block in this quilt has 4 paper pieced arcs and a 4-patch in it. There are 25 blocks in the quilt so that means I have to make 100 arcs and 25 4-patches before our next class in March 2011 where we will learn how to put it all together and how to do the border (more paper piecing). In order to get this done on time, I have to make about 8 arcs and 2 4-patches a week until our next class. Yikes! 

Here is a close up of a few blocks in Heather's quilt:

And here is Heather's completed quilt:

We have all decided to share our fabrics so that we don't go broke purchasing fabrics for our quilts. We will all get together sometime after Christmas to trade fabric, sew and provide moral support to each other as we work on this quilt. Heather told us she spent about 500 hours from start to finish on her quilt. I don't think I will make more than one Indian Orange Peel quilt!

The pattern for this quilt was designed by Karen Stone.