Elizabeth Hartman Workshops

Last weekend I had the great pleasure of taking two six-hour workshops from Elizabeth Hartman of Oh Fransson. She was a great teacher and the weekend was a ton of fun.

The first class was based on her fox and hedgehog patterns. Here is the finished pillow top I made:

Fancy Fox was very easy to make and easy to chain piece. Also he can be made with jelly rolls! I have a jelly roll that's been lying around for years now so it may turn into a fancy fox quilt soon...

Hazel  hedgehog was a bit harder. I know she's cute, but look at all the pieces it took to make her!

I don't see myself making a full hazel hedgehog quilt anytime soon.

Here's Elizabeth teaching:

She also did a trunk show, which I only got horrible photos of. The coolest part was she actually passed around the quilts for us to feel and see up close!

This was my favorite quilt, from patchwork city. Every piece was chosen with thought and care. It has so many fun "Easter Eggs" when you see the blocks up close!

My second workshop was on this very quilt, Patchwork City. The class really focused on this ides of fussy cutting and choosing your fabrics very carefully and thoughtfully. We also learned to intentionally add a little discord. It was fun!

We each started with a "focal fabric" and built our design out from there. Here is my stack of fabrics. My focal fabric is actually kind of hidden in this pic. We also all brought scraps to share which was really fun. Since you can use really teeny tiny pieces for this quilt, you could find one cool element on some tiny strip of fabric and incorporate it into your blocks.

Here are my first two blocks. I really agonized and stressed over the first one but by the second one I had relaxed a bit. The first block is on the right. It's funny, my intentional discord was supposed to be that bright teal second from the bottom. Blends in pretty well, huh? On the second block, on the left, I tossed in that magenta piece, which definitely adds some pop!

Here are all three of my finished blocks. Can you tell which is the focal fabric?

This was originally supposed to be a pillow, but I had so much fun with it that I think I'm going to keep going and eventually make a quilt. In part because when I did my fabric pull, I had a TON of fabrics in this colorway. Might as well use them up!

One of the best parts of the class was getting inspiration from everyone else. Check it out:

The focal fabric here was the teepees. I love the burnt orange colors she pulled in!

These ones came out so clean and coordinated! Lovely!

If I recall, the focal fabric here was actually the peacock. But boy do those eyes pop out at you!

This one has such fun and cheerful colors and fabrics.

I love the fussy cutting for the window in the top block here:

I really thought these did a great job of pulling out the colors from the focal fabric. This would have been tough for me but she nailed it!

That's all for now! Today I am working hard on prepping for my class. I am practicing my speech and making step-throughs. My quilty friends agreed to be guinea pigs for me in two weeks, so we will see what they think of the dry run. I know I can rely on them for good feedback.