Out of the Box with Judy Irish

I recently had the opportunity to take a really great workshop from Judy Irish. She's an amazingly creative quiltmaker and a long-arm quilter extrordinaire. Namedrop alert...she quilts for Kaffe Fassett and Liza Prior Lucy for all of their books! Kaffe and Liza are the top of my fabric craziness pyramid and I LOVE their work. I have done several of their quilts and I have a serious fabric addiction when it comes to anything "Kaffe."

It was more like a triple workshop since Judy managed to teach three different workshops at the same time! Woven quilts/collage, her lonestar method and free motion quilting. She also did a trunk show and shared many of her beautiful quilts. We also got the chance to pump her for lots of good Kaffe insider-stories. His new autobiography "Dreaming in Colour" is on my Christmas list!

I chose to focus on the woven quilts, something I had never done before and it turned out to be great fun. Really a stretch for me since I would never venture to consider myself an art-quilter, by any means. Here was my end result with the collage and free motion quilting completed.

Here's the woven piece before starting the collage layer.

It was really a very fun and surpisingly do-able technique. My head is already swimming with ideas for others. Maybe more valuable than the techniques learned, was the encouragement to stretch and create and to have fun while doing it. Thank you Judy!

Happy stitching,

Tonya