A Fun Class with Pat Pauly

I had a really fantastic opportunity last week. A friend was unable to attend a 2-day Pat Pauly class and gifted it to me. How wonderful! Pat is one of my favorite teachers and I knew this class about using skinny lines and settings would be fun, educational, and challenging. And I was right on all counts.

We started by learning how to make skinny lines. They’re lots of fun and easy to do.

Next, Pat taught us how to set in blocs and a variety of other shapes.

Soon, I had a hodgepodge of wonky blocks growing on my design wall

Pat encouraged us to slice into our shapes, insert new lines, put things back together off-kilter, etc. Plus, we used the same five fabrics everywhere, so there was a good amount of “cross pollination.”

She gave us some pointers about composition and mine slowly started turning into something other than “fruit salad.”

In the shot above you can see about what mine looked like at the end of the class. By then I couldn’t put it down! I was having too much fun putting this fabric puzzle together!

I worked on it fairly consistently for another couple of days. I did a lot of folding fabrics to audition ideas, plotting, and planning.

Eventually, I had to design little pieces to fill in various gaps.

Then, it all came together! This is the quilt top ready for the next step. Although the colors are a little more jarring than I usually select, I really like them. (All the fabrics are my hand dyes, except for the black ones.)

See the finished quilt, A Little Bit Tart.

Ellen Lindner