Sew Sunday with Violet Craft

Last weekend I took the Violet Craft Broken Herringbone class along with over a dozen other members of the South Sound Modern Quilt Guild.  It was sew much fun!  Every one of the ladies chose different fabrics, yet each quilt turned out amazing.  I'm inspired to make several more quilts using this pattern along with the UnBroken Herringbone pattern.

Violet Craft with her Unbroken Herringbone quilt.

Violet Craft is a fabric designer for Michael Miller.  She designs quilt patterns using inspiration from her very own fabric designs.

Violet Craft with her Broken Herringbone quilt.

Plus, she is cute as a button!   The pattern is not extremely difficult, but the tips and tricks Violet gave us made the process so much easier.  Plus, she gave us hands-on design help with each stage of our quilt making.  That was worth more than the price of the class!

Here I am getting started.  The fabric you see here was the inspiration for all the fabrics I chose.  This is the wrong side, of course, but what I love is the pale aqua print in the background and the pops of pink, red and lavender in the flowers.  We came to class prepared with all our strips cut and each patterned piece sewn to a 1.5" strip.

 The next step was to sew sets of 2 together, then we laid them out on the floor and checked for design.  See those ruby slippers in the picture below?  Yep, those are Violets shoes as she helped me move strips around for the best possible flow.

From there I started sewing all my strips together and a pattern emerged.  Below is my quilt on one of the tables ready for its trim.  I could have left it like this for the unbroken herringbone, but I didn't.  ;)

Now came the truly hard part.  Cutting off those sides and flipping them, then lining them up again for the most eye-pleasing arrangement.  This is where I left class.

Most of the participants in the class finished their quilt top that day.  Those of us who didn't got at least this far, I think.  I had to leave about an hour before class was finished.  We had one member who was working on a double herringbone quilt.  I can't wait to see her finish.

It was so much fun to see the deer head trend with touches of gold in fabric.  I've seen it all over the place on cards.  It had me tempted to take this paper piecing class from her.

At the end of class Violet did a show and share.  It was wonderful to see some of her creations up close and personal.  We also learned the back story behind her new fabric line being released later this year.

If you would like to see more pictures from the class, including what the otehr guild members were working on, be sure to follow the South Sound Modern Quilt Guild blog.  I'll be working on that post next and hopefully have it up on the blog for you tomorrow.