Wacky Bird Class With Suzanne Marshall

I was lucky enough to be able to take a class with Suzanne Marshall.  She has a quilt that is in the top 100 quilts of this century and she is an amazing hand appliquier (is that a word??)  She has a unique way of doing applique called take away applique.  When you do it this way all the pieces are on the straight of grain and placement is easy because you trace your entire applique on  lined notebook paper.  If you ever get the opportunity to take a class from her you should do it. Here are 2 of the quilts she brought with her.

This one was one that she hung in the teacher area. It is called Long Ago and Far Away.

This was Suzanne showing us how to do the applique. It is such an interesting and easy way to do needle turn applique.

I chose some modern fabrics for my Wacky Bird. Everyone else chose fabrics that looked like her original birds. We stitched from 9-4:30 with an hour for lunch and this is how far I got on my bird. This is me with Suzanne and me.

She also showed us a very unique way to make bias stems too. Cutting a bias triangle from a square. You determine how wide you want your bias and fold it over twice and press. Then. you lift up next to the fold and baste and cut the bias strip off. It was a fast easy way to make bias. I need to find out how to join the strips though! She developed this technique herself! Very interesting.

That took up my entire Friday but it was a really fun day. Then on Saturday I worked on my back for Jacquie's quilt. Then I ran some errands. Oh we also let Batman go yesterday too. He flew up on the roof and then went into a tree. Farewell Batman!! Have a wonderful life.

I did a little cleaning and came across some things I will be selling. I used to do a lot of counted cross stitch and I found some old leaflets that I know I will not do any longer, so I will show those to you tomorrow. I am hoping to have some more fabrics up for sale this week too. Now off to work on my two old Thimbleberries projects that I got back from Liz and to fix the one block that was bad in my tree top. I hope you are having a great weekend! ~XOP~