This is also a good time for me to jump in and remind everyone to support their local quilt shop. Yes, I succumb occasionally to shopping online — its good to support those folks too.  But too many neighborhood quilt stores are being hit awfully hard by the economy.  And where would we be if we couldn’t compare fabrics side-by-side or worst, not be able to feel their texture or see their quality.  Plus you get to meet a bunch of really great people and have the opportunity in most cases to get classes you’d never see anywhere else.

So back to my local shop.  It happens to be the Quilt Patch in Tecumseh and the class I took was called “Raw Edge Mosaic”. The instructor is Barb Cey and she makes the most awesome lifelike wallhangings. She has a couple of techniques. One is her landscape class.  I started to try to learn that but while I loved her art, I just didn’t fall in love with the process (I think I’m a little too analytical for it or something).  Her animals though — wow! Here’s one of hers:

Isn’t he just way too cute?  She also has started selling some of her patterns at the Quilt Patch.  You can call them for more information:  517-423-0043. Barb tells me she will someday have her own website but until then call the shop and they’ll help you. And yes, this guy is one of the patterns she sells!

And here’s what I’m working on.  This isn’t what Barb had for the class project (I admit, I’m a bit of a rogue), but it’s her technique 100%.  I couldn’t have even attempted this on my own.  This is my shih tzu, Berry. To create the “pattern” I took a photograph of him, pulled it into Photoshop Elements, posterized the photo to get better areas to outline and then took the pencil tool and drew in a lined pattern.   I think the pattern looks a lot like what you see when you get a paint-by-number, don’t you?

I printed the pattern out to be about 21″ x 27″ and then got to have lots of fun with fusible and batiks.

This is what I’ve got so far. I think it looks like him, don’t you? I still need to do the free-motion quilting but that is what Barb is going to cover on Tuesday.  Doesn’t this just make you want to take her class too?

Happy Quilting!

~Kathy