Two-Day Class with Frances Holliday Alford

I was lucky enough to take a two-day quilting class with Frances Holliday Alford.  Her intensely embellished quilts are magical and mesmerizing and overwhelming.  These pictures simply do not do them justice!

Class began with a brief meditation and then Frances and her sisters introduced us to the materials we'd be working with: yantras, tarot, numerology, feng shui, and more!

As you can probably guess from the photos above, I pulled "the Hermit" card.  It was fascinating to see the differences in how the Hermit is portrayed in different tarot decks, and even described differently in the various tarot books.  After gathering our personalized materials (images, cards, numbers, etc.) Frances (in purple in the photo below) gave us a brief demo of how she wrote about these elements on her quilt base layer and then sewed elements on top of the text.

Here is my quilt base layer all written out:

I then started to add elements on top of that base layer.

I chose to allow a lot of the base layer to show through.  It's totally personal preference.

Over time the quilt evolved with stitching and coloring into something new.

After day one, I took my quilt home to wash it -- so that it would shrink up and the raw edges would get all ravel-y.  I had used alcohol ink markers to color my fabric and they faded quite a bit in the wash.  

When I got to class on day two, I wasn't sure which fabric to use for binding, so I auditioned a few of them:

In the end, I decided that I liked them ALL and so I pieced together a binding made up of many fabrics! 

I also started to add embellishments, like sequins and beads...

..and some big fat embroidery stitches!

One of the many things that I love about taking in-person classes (I will never stop going to in-person classes!) is the sharing and community.  Especially in a two-day class.  I met lots of super talented, super interesting women and we all got to share something that we love to do!  If you scroll down, you'll see that everyone's pieces turned out spectacularly different!

I haven't quite finished my quilt for this class, but I'll be sure to share as soon as I do!

Hope you enjoyed coming to class with me!  Thanks for stopping by!