I attended a workshop last week, hosted by the Des Moines Area Quilt Guild, and taught by one of our local art quilters, JoAnn Belling. She always has stunning quilts to show at our monthly meetings, not to mention the quilt shows where her work hangs…these first two photos are close-ups of some of her free-hand quilting she does on her domestic sewing machine. And, yes, I said FREE HAND quilting…

JoAnn has a fun sense of humor, a great eye for color and believes in efficient sewing (don’t pick up your ruler to cut if it doesn’t have to be exact, make all your cuts while the rotary cutter is in your hand instead of constantly setting it down and picking it back up, string piecing, etc.) She showed us a nifty way of making four flying geese at one time, which I loved! I know there are tutorials around the web for doing this, but if you’d like one I will add it to my to-do list to post one.

The workshop objective was to teach us a quick way to make her “Flying Geese in a Brave New World” block in the quilt, Alaskan Memories, shown above. She also encouraged us to see new patterns in the block, playing around with placement to make new block designs.

Here is my “rough draft” of the block, which looks much better from a distance (is that a bad sign?!):

I decided it needed some reworking when I got back home (Hopefully you’ll see a better finished version here soon!). Here is Anita’s block:

And Emma’s (notice how their flying geese, and Brave New World corners, are pointing opposite directions?), it totally changes the appearance of the block:

Lisa, at our sewing station…

Tonight, I’m heading off to a quilting retreat hosted by the quilt shop I work part-time for… Only one more hour of my workday left and then two+ days of sewing with good friends!