Diane Gaudynski Seminar

My one real quilting experience this summer was that I was able to attend a 2-day seminar with Diane Gaudynski. For those of you who don't know her, here is her website. She does absolutely amazing, detailed machine quilting, all on her home sewing machine.

The seminar was excellent. I was able to borrow a Bernina with BSR from the shop where the seminar was held (one model up from the one I use). Diane brought in a number of her quilts to show us, and they are even more stunning in person then in books and on the web. She is a very encouraging teacher, and she introduced a number of motifs that could be used for background as well as helping us to work on our feathers. One of the most interesting things I learned was to use different colors of thread to give depth to your quilting. I think I am a convert now. I just wish I had easier access to quality thread! She also recommended using wool batting because you get the loft of trapunto without the work. I used it for the class samples and loved it.

Here is a picture of a sampler we worked on to practice the different designs. I have filled it out since, but this picture shows what I was able to do in class. And some close-ups of some of the practice squares. Diane teaches students to do what she calls echo feathers -- instead of backtracking on parts of the feather, you leave a small corridor between them. It was a new way for me to do them. Her lines are, of course, perfectly parallel. Mine are not!

In this picture you can see the feathers and the "folded towels" texture, as well as some small "pearls" to the right of one of the feathered area. All of this is done with minimal marking.












The next picture shows some clamshells and some pebbles to set off the feathers. Again, for the clamshells, I only needed to mark parallel lines!















And finally, one of my favorite backgrounds -- Tsunami. I love how this one looks, but it would take quite a lot of thread if done on a large part of a quilt, lol.

I also made a sample with feathers that uses different color threads in the background. That is for the next blog!