I am now designing projects I call Potluck Appliqué because they're a great group project.
An example:
1. Several quilters each contribute a fat quarter of color coordinated batik.
2. Cut each fat quarter a special way, making...
4. Add fusible web to the piece which will be cut apart.
Then attach a diagram of the design pieces, tightly nested.
Here is the design we did at our last retreat.
5. Sit around a table with the other five quilters. Pass your piece to someone else and cut all the Number 1 pieces from the fabric passed to you.
6. Keep passing the diagrams around, cutting off the Number
2 pieces, then the Number 3 pieces, the Number 4 pieces and finally the
Number 5 pieces.
You end up with 6 different fabrics, your own background
piece and shapes of 5 other fabrics.
7. Assemble your pieces to make a design. Here are the 6 ways one set of pieces was assembled. Notice that designs could be horizontal or vertical and shapes could extend into the borders. The bright yellow fabric shows how a particular fabric is used in a different position in each design.
Press the shapes into place.
8. Add wide outer borders.
9. Finish the edges of the shapes with Hot
Ribbon and add as much embellishment as you wish. Part of the embellishment
has been done on the top left design.
At our last retreat, three different sets of fabric were used. Here's a picture of one student finishing the edges of her shapes with Hot Ribbon.
My next book will probably be a collection of different
Potluck Appliqué designs. I am also preparing a magazine article
on the subject.
If you have suggestions for designs, please contact me.
Also let me know if your guild or group would like to
sponsor a Potluck Appliqué workshop.
Sample workshops
The Lighthouse Quilters class in Crescent City, California, October 14, 2003 will make Hydrangea designs. Take a look at that one.
Threads That Bind in Coos Bay will be doing a Fish design (above) on October 15.
On NOvember 12, the Clamshell Quilters in Waterford, Connecticut will have a choice of the Fish project, the Hydrangea, the Chicken project below, and any others I work up between now and then.
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Page copyright by Anita Hallock. Updated September 2003