Denyse Schmidt Workshop

I had the amazing opportunity to see Denyse Schmidt (dsquilts.com) give a talk this past Friday night to the LA Modern Quilt Guild.  She spoke about how she came to quilting and how she goes about designing her quilts.  She showed us photos of so many of the quilts that she's designed and even some of the things she looks to for inspiration.  I was so glad that I went.
 I was also fortunate enough to take one of the Improvisational Patchwork workshops that she held over the weekend.  It was almost 5 straight hours of sewing and I loved it.  We each made 6 quilt blocks.  For the first two blocks we had to reach into paper bags without peaking and take fabric scraps and sew them together.  It was hard for me not to have control over what fabric I was using and what my improv block should look like.  They call it improv for a reason, I kept reminding myself.  Plus, we moved so fast I really didn't have time to second guess my work.  In the end I was able to just sew and that felt really good.

 In the second half of the class we used the provided scraps but also got to add in one of our own fabrics.  I brought this matryoshka doll fabric that I've been holding on to for a while.

These are the four blocks I made with the scraps and my fabric.

 I'm pretty happy with how they turned out.  I really like all of the little pops of blue and my bottom right block with the red fabric on the diagonal.  I'm not sure what I'm going to do with them yet, but I was encouraged by my friend to keep them out and use them for something.  We'll see what I come up with.

  This was a once in a lifetime opportunity for me and I was so glad I was able to do it.  Denyse was really nice and even signed my copy of her book and let me take a picture with her.  It was a great weekend!