Workshop name: Improvisational Patchwork (Improv 101)
Skill level: all skill levels
Length: 3 hours or 6 hours

Workshop description: This workshop is geared to students who love the look of improvisational quilts, but find themselves unable to make one. Using a variation of the “paper bag” technique developed by Denyse Schmidt, students learn to let loose and stitch with abandon. Students learn to limit decision-making while continually piecing. They also learn to make decisions quickly, avoid falling in love with their answers, and accept change when it occurs. Students leave this class with perfectly imperfect quilt blocks and the confidence to stitch into the unknown.

Workshop name: Intermediate Improv: Crosses & Cabins
Skill level: Intermediate
Length: 3 hours or 6 hours

Workshop description: This class takes students who are already comfortable with piecing improvisationally, and teaches them three beautiful improv blocks: the improv cross, the log cabin, and the quartered log-cabin.

In addition to teaching these improv blocks, this class includes a module on color stories and color arrangements and a module on combining odd-sized and irregular improv blocks into a quilt top.

In the three-hour version of this class, students make one of each block. In the six-hour version of this class, after students have made one of each block, they are coached as they design their own quilt using one or more of those blocks and begin work on that quilt.

Workshop name: Intermediate Improv: “One at a Time Blocks”
Skill level: Intermediate
Length: 6 hours

Workshop description: This class takes students who are already comfortable with piecing improvisationally, and teaches them three more improv blocks: the flip-flop-strip-stripe, the rowed triangle, and the matched curve.  What do these blocks have in common?  They all need to be cut and pieced one at a time, as the quilt is built.  “One at a time” improv quilts represent a true union of the quiltmaker and their art, as each piece is handled individually.  These quilt blocks have more personality and soul than batch-made blocks.

Are you using your design wall to design? Or is it just a place you store blocks and scraps? I would rather be without my sewing machine than give up my design wall; come and learn how I think about and use my favorite tool. Participants in this class will learn to make blocks for an Arne quilt (pattern is provided in class); those blocks will be pooled and played with collectively as we explore the joy of the design wall.

Workshop name: Carefree Circles & Reverse Appliqué
Skill level: Confident Beginner to Intermediate
Length: 3 hours

Workshop Description:There are a lot of ways to make circles in a quilt. Come and learn my reverse appliqué method. Students tell me they find this method “fool proof” and have 100% success with it in class and at home!

My method can be used to make perfect circles or more irregular shapes (as in the picture). I developed this method when making my Painted Pebbles Quilt, which went on to win the ribbon for best appliqué at the American Quilter’s Society Modern Challenge in Des Moines, Iowa. In this class, I will also teach Dale Fleming’s 6-minute-circle technique and go over the pros-and-cons of this method vs. my reverse appliqué method.

Lecture name: Steal, Deviate, Mutate: Making Quilts Like an Artist
Skill level: all skill levels
Length: 60 to 90 minutes depending on your schedule; includes Q&A and showing some quilts.

Lecture description: In this lecture, I talk about how to be creative as we create quilts.  I relate my own journey as an artist, stumbling blocks and all, as I spell out key lessons and action items for quilters looking to hone their voice and find their courage.

Are you scared of the time, mess, or expense of fabric dye? Don’t be! Do you think hand-dyed fabric has to be mottled and jewel-toned? You’re wrong! It’s actually really cheap and easy to dye fabric for your next modern quilt. Come and see what Rossie (and you!) can do with 1 hour and 10 dollars of dye supplies.

Lecture name: Color Your Quilts with Prints!
Skill level: all skill levels
Length: 60 to 75 minutes depending on your schedule; includes Q&A and showing some quilts.

Lecture description: The use of patterned fabric is an important part of quilting.  I have read every book I can find on color theory for quilters and they include such false notions as ‘prints are the same as solids’ and ‘multicolor prints are inspiring, but they are limiting and not useful.’  As a lover of color and of printed fabric, I’m here to sing the praises of multicolor prints.  Using patterned fabric is more personal, more individual, more situational. It tells a richer, more human story.  Additionally, using prints is an important part of quilting history and distinguishes it from sculpture, painting, and graphic design. 

In this lecture, I will talk about my love of printed fabric, then walk you through the ‘color theory of printed fabric’ I have developed in my studio.  The emphasis is on choices quilters can make, not vocabulary.  Quilters will leave the lecture with a series of prompts that they can use when working on their next quilt!