Yes, that’s right! Edyta Sitar of Laundry Basket Quilts!!! One of the guilds to which I belong is the Music City Quilt Guild in Nashville (MCQG). Each year, MCQG brings in a nationally known teacher for 3 days of classes and lectures. This year, we have been anxiously awaiting Edyta's visit, and she is now here!!!
Yesterday, The Quilter's Path in Mt Juliet hosted a class with Edyta to learn all the techniques for making her wonderful quilt, Spool Quilt. This has always been one of my favorites of her quilts.
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| Edyta Sitar's Spool Quilt |
I took part in that class and learned SO much! What was the best thing I learned? That Edyta is a really warm, natural and funny person! She had us all charmed within five minutes of opening her mouth :*)
On a more practical level, I also learned a lot about choosing fabrics for a quilt. Unlike a lot of quilters, I am pretty comfortable with color and have no problem with choosing fabrics to get the colors I want for a quilt. However, color is not all there is to consider when choosing fabrics. Edyta stresses the value of also putting a lot of thought and care into your decisions regarding texture and design. She goes by a Rule of 5 - choose at least 1 large print, 1 medium print, 1 small print, 1 stripe (or plaid), and 1 dot fabric. This provides a nice range of texture and visual appeal to go along with the colors chosen. One look at Edyta's quilts makes it clear that she is an expert at choosing fabrics! Of course, she now designs most of the fabrics she uses.
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| 1" strips shared by doing a strip swap in class |
This is the pile of strips we all worked with once we did our strip swaps.
And these are the two spool blocks I managed to accomplish yesterday from the blue strips. Aren't they just the cutest things? =^..^= You can see that our kits contained lots of different textures, designs and colors to work with. Edyta is also well known for mixing fabric types, such as her use of both batiks and civil war fabrics in the same quilt.
Today, Edyta came to our Guild meeting at MCQG to give an absolutely wonderful talk and trunk show of her quilts! Talk about eye candy!!! She had over 80 quilts with her! We were all drooling so much, the ladies who cleaned up afterward had to use mops!!!
After the abbreviated morning meeting, she taught a class on her applique techniques. Since class slots were limited, I didn't sign up for that class, choosing instead to take her Eldon class tomorrow. I’m looking forward to more great fun with her then!!!
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| Edyta Sitar's Eldon |
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| Eldon block |
Following are some of the pictures of Edyta's quilts shown today. Not all of them, of course, because you’d never get the blog to upload! I can’t believe how prolific this girl is! But these were some of my favorites :*)
There were many more pictures but I was afraid of overloading the size of this post!
I did take a picture of me with Edyta today, but when I got home and loaded it - got a good look at it - oh my, what a horrible picture! I'll try to get a better one tomorrow at the Eldon class ;*)
Thursday and Friday, Edyta will be at The Quilter's Attic in Goodlettsville. She will teach a class on Thursday and then there will be a book signing on Friday morning. Stop by if you get a chance! I'm sure Fran and Edyta would be delighted to see you!!!
Gotta go now and get some sleep so I can be fresh and bright-eyed & bushy-tailed for tomorrow's class. Well, maybe fresh will have to do.... *wink*
Hugs & Blessings!
Teresa
=^..^=
