A Modern Quilt Workshop

Cheryl Arkison, co author of Sunday Morning Quilts was presenting a couple of workshops in St. Mary's this past week. One of my friends lives about 15 minutes away from the workshop venue so I asked if she would put me up for a couple of nights and return email said "sure". So I signed up for the Values workshop. I don't think I will ever get to be an Improv quilter. We were to bring a stack of 6 1/2" squares to the workshop. Of course I dug into my blue scrap stash and went to town. And further of course I was the only participant who went monochromatic but that's OK. We sorted our squares and used one of those Smart phones to take a picture and then turn it into gray scale. people shared their phones which was nice. And others explained to phone owners how to do this on their phones. Then we paired things up made a whole lot of half square triangles. Cheryl demonstrated (very fluidly) how to make several different arrangements using the half square triangles we had made. My first tentative design is on my design wall behind us. I want to do an asymmetric design with this but the design wall was not big enough. I have a ton of half square triangles ready to use and hope to get to this over the winter one of those days when the wind is howling and we don't even want to look out the window.
The other thing to mention was the age of the workshop participants. About half of them were young enough I could have been their Mom and the other half was my vintage. This tells me that the quilting bug has bitten and the next generation is ready to take it on. I was very happy to see that. I thoroughly enjoyed my day. It is fun to spend time playing with like minded people and to NOT be in charge. I could just sew and play. It was a great day! I understand some plans are in the wind to get Cheryl back to southern Ontario in the future. I for one would be looking forward to that. Piecefully, Joanne