Curves, Wedges, & Wonky Log Cabins.
On January 31, 2015 I attended a Workshop hosted by RCQG taught by Maggie Vanderweit on Curves, Wedges, & and Wonky Log Cabins. It was an excellent workshop and I had a lot of fun.
Maggie's first demonstration on how to cut fabric to create a curve was worth the price of admission. I have avoided curves for a long time and to see how simple it really was made me excited to try it out. I got a bit crazy doing it with my first set of fabric and ended up making too many cuts and it did not turn out pleasing in the end. However, I ended up restraining myself for the next trial and put two pink "flames" into a blue background and got this:
for me this is reading as a sky with pink wispy clouds - will have to explore this a bit more in the future. I am thinking of appliquéing a flower in the lower right and quilting it with horizontal curves that mimic the pink "flame" shape.
The wedges portion of the day, was interesting, I have done work with wedges and triangles before and made interesting shapes with them. Arches and curved works to snake around, the technique for cutting curves was used to cut triangles and I can really see how this technique can be used to attach odd shapes together in the future (I used it to add the border to the wonky log cabins I did – see below). For some reason the wedges did not excite me as much as the curves and flames did or the wonky log cabins did.
The wonky log cabins was fun, wile Maggie did not think mine were wonky enough to start with, I really like how they turned out – I took 6 bold colours (of the rainbow – minus indigo) – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, and purple, and cut a rectangle of the same size of each colour. Then used that as the start of each log cabin, but did not repeat that starting colour in each of the blocks. I then joined them together with a black background fabric (using the technique we discussed in class). I think it looks like a stained glass window – thus I am calling it “Wonky Stained Glass”
The key to the technique that Maggie showed us was to keep the two fabrics you wish to join face up when you cut them. Then join fabric A to fabric B. You have to line them up as you sew, when you fold it open it lays flat. This seems so obvious to me know, but could not come up with it on my own. – Thanks Maggie.
