The Modern Wedge --workshop with Kathy Doughty

My friend, Debbie, and I had a wonderful day in Brantford last week at a workshop organized by the Red Red Bobbin quilt shop. I had read about the workshop on Nancy's blog a few months ago and immediately signed up and invited Debbie to join me. Kathy Doughty, of Material Obsession fame, has been travelling all over the US and made one stop in Canada to do three days of workshops at the Red Red Bobbin. Kathy's husband, John, joined her on her trip--he loves to travel and is a wonderful photographer, quilt holder, suitcase lugger and supporter of Kathy! He even helped some of the participants in with their machines, bags and bins of fabric! Here is a picture of Kathy talking about one of her quilts--that is John holding the quilt.

Kathy and John live in Australia and the twenty ladies taking the class were thrilled to see several of her quilts from her recent books--Adding Layers and Making Quilts. 

The theme of our workshop was the Modern Wedge and Kathy showed us several examples of what can be done with a wedge ruler and some imagination!

Fussy cutting the fabrics can lead to some fun circles!

This one is called vintage spin.

This one is made by sewing strips together before cutting the wedges.

This is an example of a pieced background for some appliqued circles made from wedges. (John the quilt holder's feet are at the bottom of the quilt!)

The circles can be layered on top of each other for a fun effect.

(Those are my feet this time...)

How about points at both ends of the wedges???

I started by sorting my fabrics into two piles--warm colours and cool colours.

I chose these two fabrics to start and cut out a few wedges and started playing on the design wall. Note how the red recedes and the green fabric comes forward!

My circle told me it wanted to go into a different direction.

Kathy suggested cutting out some shorter wedges in two darker fabrics so that that my next "worm" would recede more than the first one.

Then, two lighter colours in longer wedges were added...I like where this is going!  Kathy and I discussed background fabric ideas...She asked me if I have any dark fabrics in my stash???  Silly question, I told her!  I would like to try making a pieced background and will work on this over the summer so I can put this quilt into the London Friendship Quilters' Guild show this fall.

Debbie made several circles on her design wall and is well on her way to a beautiful quilt!

 

Thank you, Kathy, for a wonderful, fun and inspiring day!  We hope to see you again sometime.

I did some gardening on the weekend...