Cypress River Quilt Retreat

Had a great weekend with quilting friends, old and new, at Cypress River this weekend. The Tiger Hills Arts Association put on three great classes.

Saturday Geesje Baron taught Sashiko Embroidery, which is a style of Japanese embroidery that was originally done by Japanese women to mend their husbands' fisherman overalls. It is traditionally done with white thread on blue fabric. These mending stitches became quite competitive among the women and amazing patterns evolved. In this class quilters learned a few patterned stitches using a thick upper thread and a regular weight (similar colour to the fabric) lower thread. The resulting look shows the top thread and not the bottom thread thus it looks like hand embroidery.  Tricky!

Sunday Annette Young taught "Big Blooms" which had the quilters plan their own quilt design using a large print fabric combined with a few coordinating fabrics. They cut their large print fabrics to suit the design and inserted strips of the coordinating fabric. Each quilt was unique and emphasized the large print fabric. Nicely done!

Coreen Zerr taught a two day course on Saturday and Sunday called "In Living Colour". Coreen grew up in the Baldur area and travels to Cypress River from Nanimo BC to visit her mother. We are lucky to tap into her skills every spring for the past 6 years. Every time I take a course from her I learn new techniques and tips. She is amazing!

For this workshop we could either use a flower pattern of Coreen's (lily, clematis, rose, or brown eyed Susan) or bring a picture of our own. I chose to bring a photo of Don's from our Belize trip. The first step was to make our pattern then we cut out our fabric pieces and machine appliquéd them on our background fabric.

Sashiko Class:

Bev showing her Sashiko sample.

Cynthia with her sample.  (Sorry so blurry)

Doreen's sample is to become a bag for her grand daughter.


Big Blooms Class:

Beth using her pizza fabric.  Yummy!

Annette using oriental fabric with a variety of coordinating fabrics.


UFO (Unfinished Objects) Class:

Marj finished two projects and began another.

In Living Colour Class:

Coreen showing Sheryl how to create a pattern of her own sunflower picture.

Coreen showing how she creates a clear template from her pattern.

Here is Coreen showing the next step using her lily pattern as a sample.

Putting registration marks on the freezer paper pattern before cutting it up,
so that we can figure out how the pieces go back together again.
The freezer paper is cut on the dark marker lines and then ironed on to fabric.  The fabric is cut out with a 1/4 inch seam allowance and then the extra 1/4" is turned under using glue stick!!   It really works!!!

Coreen showing how to iron the freezer paper onto the fabric, cut the fabric and then turn the edge down.

Here is my Belize flower pattern.

Notice the registration marks:
* pieces are numbered for easy rebuilding after pattern is cut apart
* green highlighter indicates an edge that needs to be turned
* yellow highlighter indicates an unturned edge
* blue pencil crayon indicates joining for sides of pieces
* orange pencil crayon X indicates joining points of pieces

Here you can see my turned applique representation of the Belize flower picture off to the right.

Now I need to think about thread painting and quilting stitches.  Lots of fun!!