Last week I participated in a one-day workshop by Sandy Turner Woods in Spokane, WA on “Birds in the Air.” I wanted an opportunity to meet some quilters in the area and thought a small workshop would be a better venue than the larger quilt club meeting. It turned out to be a perfectly wonderful day.
I come from a varied fiber arts background rather than a focus on traditional quilting. So, the title of the workshop, “Birds in the Air,” sounded interesting as did the description but I never really appreciated that “Birds in the Air” is a traditional quilt block. That wasn’t really a problem as I had used the block in some quilts I made a number of years ago and liked it quite a bit – just never associated the name.
Sandy was a great teacher. She explained early on that her objective was to teach a technique for creating the blocks and had no expectations that we would complete a quilt top by the end of the day. That certainly took a lot of pressure off of us.
Sandy Turner
We spent a good deal of time in the morning discussing each other’s choice of fabrics and then cutting our own fabrics. In the afternoon we stitched some blocks and played with arrangements.
Playing with block arrangements
Finally, Sandy went through some of quilts that she has made over the years. We had been asked to bring a large to medium pictorial fabric along with an accent fabric. Sandy used her own quilts to demonstrate the wide range of possible ways to design a quilt using pictorial fabric and “Birds in the Air” blocks. She has really perfected her method over the years.
All in all it was a fun day and I came away with the start of a quilt, a higher comfort level with the “Birds in the Air” block, and an enjoyable day with some friendly Spokane quilters.
Blocks from the class on my design wall waiting for me to sew more.
If you have the opportunity to take a class with Sandy, I would highly recommend it. You can find more info on her work on her website. She is teaching a number of upcoming workshops in C’oeur D’Alene at Bear Paw Quilting.
Linking to NinaMarie’s Off the Wall Friday.
