My wonderfully fun class on Monday.....

I absolutely LOVED my class with Gyleen Fitzgerald on Monday. (Click HERE for her website.) She gave a lecture first at our guild meeting on her newest book.....Quilts: Unfinished Stories with New Endings (which you can see on her website). She had ALL the quilts from the book there to show us and to describe how she finished them for the book. (She had acquired them in various stages of completion and some went back to the 1920's). It was a fun and fascinating talk. She sure keeps everyone's attention. This first photo is one of the quilts....the front of it.......and then the back....Gyleen does backs that can actually be used as fronts.......and each one is terrific.I took several photos of quilts but overshot my flash on some of them......and wish I hadn't as some of them were better shots than these previous two. Next is a photo of 3 of us who made blocks for the quilt by which we are standing. It is a quilt Gyleen has featured in one of her tiny books (In This House) as well as she has a pattern for it. In the photo (left to right) are me, Kaye (click here for her blog), another gal from guild named Pat (no blog) and Gyleen. My block, in case you were wanting to know, is in the 3rd row from the top...2nd block from the left...a yellow house with a cat in the window.
Below, Gyleen is holding a top made from the blocks from the free Block of the Month she designed that may be found on her website. It is based on tiles.......pretty crisp-looking. I may decide to make these, because we all know I don't have enough projects already in progress. hahahahaHA I didn't think to ask Gyleen if the fabrics in this are any of her hand-dyes...as she does beautiful hand-dyes (on top of being a writer, designer, teacher AND holding down a fulltime job as some kind of engineer, I believe). I wish I could bottle her energy...that's for sure!
The last photo (below) shows my project from class........no borders yet. It's Gyleen's Batik Star Tesselation pattern.....REALLY a fun pattern once you get the hang of it....and easy, too (again, once you understand how to do it). I am NOT one to do lots of colors...I usually pick one safe colorway and everything is pretty much "matchy-matchy" but I trusted Gyleen and took chances with this and like it a lot so far....although I will be the first to admit it is really WILD. (Nothing like a scrappy batik to look wild, I guess.) I will show it again once I get the border fabric chosen and done (and I am going to spill a couple of stars out into the border the way she showed us to do it). As I have told you before, if you ever get the chance to hear her speak or take a class from her, go DO it. (I think she may be at the Houston show teaching this year...unless that was last year and time has just flown by!!! LOL) Check out her website, too (at the link above). If you take a class from her, she provides support to you via telephone and email until you are done with the project, so you are not left dangling with unanswered questions...which is terrific. I am currently picking her brain about borders for this piece! Gyleen...if you are reading this, thanks for being such a super quilt designer and teacher (and lecturer).