Class with "Mrs. Mel" -- all the details!

We had such a fun time in class with Melody last week. After a little confusion first thing in the morning about which day it was and what class we were taking, we got to dive into a stack of her absolutely yummy rainbow hand-dyed fabric. Good thing the class was small -- that was a little frenzied! Here are my picks, laid out in all their glory:

We started by fusing Wonder Under to each piece of fabric, covering it completely, then peeling off the release paper. According to Melody, this allows us to cut shapes freely, and the fabric won't fray because we're not picking at the edge of the paper.

Then we cut a long strip, and subcut into segments, keeping them carefully in order so there would be a progression of color in the chevron units. I'll show you my mom's chevrons, since I failed to photograph mine!



Next we made our own new fabric, by cutting strips of fabric two, then cutting them into skinnier pieces with fancy rotary blades and curvy shapes. We shared strips at this point, and fused them into new sections. You can see mom's finished results in the above picture, but here are a couple of process photos:



From there we cut squares into quarters and made these quarter square units:



Cut more strips, and then the real fun begins! All the leftover odds and ends, as well as any other ideas, became fair game as we tackled the most free-form and artistic section. Here's mine:



Then to decide how to put the pieces together... You've seen mine (although I just realized I posted it upside down the other day -- I'm going to try to fix that!). so I'll show you a couple of the ones made by others in class:



Aren't they all fantastic? I wish I had pics of some of the other quilts... hopefully Melody will post the ones she took so you can enjoy them, too! All in all, it was a fun and freeing class. There wasn't too much thinking about the process -- until the third panel, at least for me -- and we got to play with the lovely fabrics and enjoy learning something new.

PS -- click the photos for bigger sizes, or visit my Flickr album for a few more notes...

Merry Melody

Just a quick note -- and a little brag ;)
My mom and are at World Quilt International in New Hampshire this weekend, and took a class with Melody Johnson today. She's a founding member of the Chicago School of Fusing, so this class project didn't even require a sewing machine! Pictured above is my finished quilt top. I'm not sure of the size -- it's in the neighborhood of 20" high by maybe 25" wide. This shot was taken on the floor of our hotel room; it's now fused to batting and ready for some hand embroidery before adding backing and machine quilting.

Pictured below is my mom's finished top -- she's more comfortable with a less abstract approach, so creating the flower in her top panel made a theme for the piece and she's excited about finishing it. She claims it'll hang only in the cats' room, but even so, *I'll* get to enjoy it!


More on the class -- and the show -- later.

EDITED: To rotate the picture of my quilt top, since I posted it upside down last week...