Israel Quilter’s Association

A few weeks ago, I became a member of the Israel Quilter’s Association.  I’m so glad that I did. The association runs bi-yearly workshops to learn new techniques for creating different types of quilts. Last week I went to one of those workshops.

They had lots of different classes going on. I wish that I could have attended more of them. I only had one day that I could go, and I went to an all day workshop to learn how to piece, paint and quilt the lovely tulips that you see here.

The teacher, Chantal Guillermet, was brought in from France. She is an expert textile designer, who dyes her own fabric. Her work is absolutely incredible.

Not only did I learn new techniques, I met quilters from all over Israel. I live in a bit of a bubble out in boonies. There are not really a whole lot of quilters in Eli. As a matter of fact, there is only one other person in my community that I know that quilts, but she is way too busy to make a quilting coffee clutch, so I’ve been a bit on my own.

Most of what I know about quilting, I’ve learned on the internet. It was so nice to meet other people in the flesh that enjoy my passion. One of the people that I met was Cindy Richard. We shared in Chantal’s class. Cindy makes real art. You should definitely visit her site if you want to be impressed.

Cindy is also the only retailer in Israel of HandiQuilter. HandiQuilter is an amazing line of quilting machines. They are sewing machines that are designed by quilters and made for quilters. I’m going to have to get me one of those. I have been very frustrated by the free motion quilting that I’ve been doing on my Singer sewing machine. To have a stand alone, long arm sewing machine is a dream.

I have never painted on fabric before. It was a really cool to know that I can incorporate this technique in my quilts. The part the is painted is the tulips and the leaves. We created stencils and then painted over with sponge rollers and acrylic paint to create the flowers and stems. The background was made by piecing together different pieces of fabric and the whole thing was free motion quilted to add detail. I want to make a quilted plata/blech cover as a gift for my cousin. I’m totally going to use this technique for that. I’ll keep you posted on how that goes.

I can’t wait until next time. I wonder what new things I’ll learn!