Quiltmaking Classroom
Welcome to the Quiltmaking classroom. We’re probably best known for our quilts which have been exhibited all over the world and featured in numerous books and magazines. We love stitch and the format that a quilt offers, there’s so much exciting potential to work with!
Quiltmaking is a huge topic – piecing, appliqué, machine stitching, hand techniques, quilt construction, design, and that’s before we’ve even talked about cross over techniques such as embroidery, surface decoration techniques and fabric dyeing and painting. Phew!
To try to guide you through this exciting maze of creativity, we’ve divided the workshops into six main categories. Please explore and don’t forget how one technique and process often works beautifully with another. Lots of our quilts layer process and method and we’d encourage you to work that way too.
Or browse everything...
So you’ve been working in your sketchbook and are really happy with the pages, but how can you translate that to fabric? In this two-part workshop Linda will show you how she creates a painterly study of poppies in her sketchbook then takes those pages as inspiration to create a quilted panel.
Scrap quilts are a lot of fun to make and so satisfying, but it’s not just a case of anything goes. See how Linda’s carefully working with value to organise her fabric placement in a Rail Fence quilt and experimenting with different layouts.
Discover how Linda chooses a fabric colour palette for a summer table runner inspired by a collection of hand painted ceramics. Follow our lead and be inspired by your tableware to make a perfectly coordinating quilted table runner. She uses stitch and flip technique in a quilt as you go method of piecing. This is an ideal project for making use of many coloured scraps.
If you’ve tried any of the quick piecing techniques that we’ve featured on DMTV, then it’s likely you’ll have quilt tops that need quilting! Fear not, Linda has some ideas to help you quilt the piecing and those tricky empty spaces in blocks. Join her to discover how she chooses the quilting designs for her strippy patchworks. She uses hand techniques to stitch a cushion front and then creates a completely different look with machine quilting to enhance a beautiful hand painted garland in the on point squares of a little quilt.
Slice up your scraps and use them with quick piecing methods to make beautiful quilt tops. This is a great stash buster and will quickly make a dent in your fabric pile!
Don’t lose your stitched samples! Keep them safe and organised in your sketchbook. In this class Laura will show you how to add your stitched samples successfully into your sketchbook and build a lovely reference of technique.
Decorate any book with a crazy embroidered bookwrap.
Inspired by watercolour and pen drawings in Linda’s sketchbook, Laura demonstrates how you can take a successful sketchbook page and translate it into stitched textiles. From Linda’s lilac painting she creates a free appliqué with machine stitching.
A range of simple folded inserts can add such interest to art quilts. Every seam is an opportunity to add something extra! In this workshop Linda will show you some of her favourite choices for adding pops of colour and texture including prairie points and faux piping.
Applying what you know about design to your quilting can help achieve great results. Join Laura to see how you can add shapes to your quilting pattern by clever use of line and filling patterns. Follow her methods to discover ways of suggesting shape and pattern within your overall quilting design.
Some detailed subject matter can be daunting to draw from scratch. In this workshop Linda will show you how it’s possible to use a subtle stamped shape as the base for your drawing. Take all the guesswork out of getting the shapes right and instead enjoy creating a design and drawing the details. Then building on the sketchbook work that Linda did using stamps and drawing, she demonstrates how it’s easily possible to translate those ideas to fabric to make a stitched piece.
Inspired by the stitch and repair notion of Boro and other textile traditions from around the world, Linda is constructing a textile using scraps and lots of hand stitching. To make the process her own, she’s chosen to needle-felt the fabrics making a strong fabric that’s a pleasure to stitch. In the second video see how she turns that fabric into a stylish and practical tote bag.
Presenting small textile works can be tricky. How can you show off the things you’ve made to their best advantage? Luckily there are quite a few options you can consider. Join Laura today to see some of the presentation methods she loves to use and discover some of the pros and cons.
Put a twist on traditional crazy patchwork with this mini cushion worked in a sheer and semi sheer fabrics. Embellish with hand worked embroidery stitches and add beads.
There’s much inspiration to be found in architectural sources. In this three part workshop join Linda to see how she worked from windows, grilles and other architectural features from a nearby church to create pages in her sketchbook filled with pattern and design information before interpreting the ideas into a stencilled and printed design on fabric.
Take inspiration from traditional patchwork designs to make a quilt with Laura. Instead of piecing the design, we’ll bring some contemporary style by hand printing the design to fabric before adding machine quilting to complete the project.
Laura has made many poppy quilts. Join her in this video to find out more about the final design decisions in the making of two which use digital print, drawing and lots of stitch.
Learn how to add a decorative beaded edge to your bindings. This beautiful finishing touch is ideal for quilts, cushions, brooches and bags!
Don’t throw away those precious scraps, make them into beautiful embroidered brooches instead. They are quick to make and are perfect as gifts.
Inspiration is all around us, but we love to look to some of our favourite paintings to help guide our choices when selecting colours for our textile work. In this class Linda will show you how a colour scheme can be established by studying paintings and how she’s begun to select fabrics and embark on a new pieced quilt.
Learn about the different templates for English paper piecing and how you can easily make your own.
We love working with English Paper Piecing. Is it a technique that you’d like to know more about? In this article Linda answers lots of commonly asked questions.
English paper piecing can be quite a slow and time consuming process. Using smaller sections of EPP as part of a larger quilt is an idea full of potential. Combining techniques into a successful piece of work is one of our favourite challenges. Join Linda as she demonstrates how she’s mixed English paper piecing, painted fusible web and free machine quilting in a single small quilt.
Sometimes asking yourself the question ‘what if?’ as you work is the best way to come up with new ideas. In this workshop Laura will show you what happened when she did just that. See how she’s explored alternative methods for creating the Drunkard’s Path block and how this in turn resulted in the development of the technique into an exciting design with lots of potential for a quilt.
Join Laura for a workshop of experimental piecing. She’ll work with a digitally printed panel and explore options for cutting, rearranging and piecing it back together. It’s time to forget being precious about your fabric and get out that rotary cutter and ask ‘what if?’!
Laura demonstrates step-by-step how you can sketch designs for quilting your next project. See how to work directly on photos of you quilt, create a colour palette and draw your design ideas. This workshop uses Procreate which is a paid-for app available on the App Store, an iPad and stylus such as a Pencil.
So you created a design on your iPad, but what next? Join Laura in this workshop to see how to get your designs off the screen and into your work. She’ll show you how she’s interpreted her design inspired by Hawaiian appliqué in a variety of techniques.
Inspired by paper-cut Hawaiian appliqué designs Laura will show you how to use the Procreate app on your iPad to create digitally designed versions and audition your fabrics.
See how Laura’s finished bookwrap for the Summer Stitch Along turned out!
Learn a fast and easy method to design for your quilts using strip piecing inspired by Seminole Patchwork. Laura will show you how to work directly with your fabrics for the design process so you can be sure ideas in your sketchbook pages will translate well to your quilts.
It’s the final week of the Summer Stitch Along. It’s time to finish off the bookwrap, bind the edges and get it fitted onto your book!
Quilt the pieced area of your bookwrap using embellishments with either tufts or beads!
Discover the story behind Linda’s quilt Paintbox II. She’ll talk in detail about her thread choices and thought process when quilting the piece.
Laura’s starting hand quilting her book wrap, take a look at the threads she’s chosen and how the stitching is looking so far.
Laura’s moved on to the printing stage of the project. In this post see how she’s made her print block and blended her printing with the appliqué.
This week let’s do some stitching – we challenge you to quilt or embroider your bookwrap with two stitches of your choice.
See how Laura’s approached the appliqué stage of her bookwrap for the Stitch-Along.
Choose a shape and work it three ways! This week on the Stitch-Along we’ll be using English Paper Piecing, Applique and Print. Today, it’s time for the English Paper Piecing, so grab your thimble and let’s begin!
Linda’s freehand quilting a recent drawing on fabric made using Derwent Inktense pencils.
Choose a shape and work it three ways! This week on the Stitch-Along we’ll be using English Paper Piecing, Applique and Print. Today, it’s time for the English Paper Piecing, so grab your thimble and let’s begin!
Choose a shape and work it three ways! This week on the Stitch-Along we’ll be using English Paper Piecing, Applique and Print. Today, it’s time for the English Paper Piecing, so grab your thimble and let’s begin!
Join us for our free Summer Stitch-Along to make a fantastic bookwrap. Let’s get started with sorting some fabrics for the bookwrap. We’ve intended this project to be a scrap buster and we hope you’ll be able to source everything you need from your stash.
Join us for our free Summer Stitch-Along to make a fantastic bookwrap. It’s week two and Linda shows you her starting point and colour choices for her bookwrap.
Join us for our free Summer Stitch-Along to make a fantastic bookwrap. It’s week two and it’s time to establish a colour scheme for your project. See how we’ve started to find a collection of colours that work and follow our steps to do the same with your own inspirational source.
Join us for our free Summer Stitch-Along to make a fantastic bookwrap. It’s week one, time to choose the book you’ll be making your wrap cover for, take some measurements and make a pattern.
Video Workshop – Take a look through a selection of Laura’s quilts which feature portraits and see how she’s tackled the tricky issue of quilting faces. Laura will share her tips for success and ideas to think about when deciding how to quilt a face.
Video Workshop – Respond to your painted fabric and add stitch to enhance the colour and add texture to the surface. Linda will work with hand embroidery onto her Inktense painted cotton fabric, but you’ll find this approach can work on top of other painted fabrics or printed designs.
Are you looking for new ideas to help with your quilting? Knowing how to quilt a piece can be one of the hardest parts of a project. In this workshop Laura will demonstrate a creative technique for quilting your work that introduces texture and colour by cleverly combining free motion quilting with reverse appliqué.
Join Laura as she samples layering of process in the studio, experimenting with new ideas to colour thread after stitching with it. She’ll work with digitally stitched embroidery, but the technique can be used with any satin stitch.
Join Linda in the studio to see how she’s interpreting recent pages in her sketchbook with a new small quilted panel. She’s using simple piecing together with sponge printing and of course, quilting.
Join Linda in the studio as she talks about the changes and finishing touches to her quilt Wolf Moon.
Read here to discover how Linda has started a quilt using scraps and a screen print she ‘found’ in her studio. A totally unplanned piece out of the blue.
See how Laura sews up the Broken Dishes piecing into cushion covers with a pompom trim.
Join Linda in the studio today as she chats about the motivation behind her new quilt Wolf Moon, and works on it live on camera to add paint to the surface.
Grids can provide you with an excellent basis for your quilting. Linda will show you how to quilt grids with a walking foot and shares her tips for success with this method. Next, with that grid in place, you’ll see how you can work within it using freehand quilting to add beautiful patterns.
Laura’s piecing her indigo fabrics with white to make Broken Dishes blocks.
Laura demonstrates how to use bonded appliqué as the logical technique to translate sketchbook collage ideas into a quilt. See how fast and easy this method is for creating your next appliqué quilt.
Learn how to foil shapes on fabric. In this workshop Linda will show you two fast and easy methods to add some metallic gleam to your fabric. See her samples and also how she’s used the techniques in her quilts.
So often we create beautiful fabrics and then think about how to quilt them. In this workshop Laura turns that on its head and adds colour after the quilting is done. Join her to see how you can accentuate the fabulous texture of your stitching with paint.
Learn how to combine hand painting with your quilting (either digitally stitched or free motion) as an exciting way to introduce colour and pattern to your quilts.
We love to layer techniques in our art quilts and that means stitch too! Combining machine, digital and hand quilting can work beautifully in a single piece. In this workshop Laura shares some examples to illustrate her tips for success when layering stitch techniques.
In this workshop Laura shows you how to explore different design ideas for piecing based on hexagonal grids. She’ll show you how to draw them using good old graph paper and a pen, but also with your iPad.
Have you got a quilt top ready for quilting but you aren’t sure where to start? Join Linda to see how she works on a recent piece to add texture and stitched and painted motifs to a simple pieced art quilt. Linda’s quilt features mono prints, linoblock prints and rubbings all brought together by stitch and paint.
Join Linda and Laura in the studio as they discuss Linda’s newest quilt tops which are put together from scraps from the stash and hear them chat about how to quilt them.
Linda explores the eternal appeal of circles set in a square for her latest quilt top. See how she uses a range of techniques including appliqué and stencilling.
Work along with Linda to make a fabric art diary. During the project she’ll demonstrate a wide variety of techniques you can use to record daily events and inspiration including stamping, stencilling, appliqué and drawing.
See how one of Laura’s samples from the recent Bonded Appliqué video workshop turned out.
Laura demonstrates different ways to deal with the raw edges of bonded appliqué that quilt the project at the same time, using both invisible thread and regular sewing thread.
The tessellating shapes of mosaic patchwork pose questions when it comes to finishing the edges of your project. Join Linda today to see how to draft shapes to complete your project and some the design ideas you might consider.
Up-cycle quilted fabric to make beautiful vase wraps and wall pockets. These easy to create items make perfect gifts.
Be inspired by graphic sketchbook drawing and achieve something similar with your quilting! Join Laura to see how to use just thread to create your design and replicate that pen-drawn look on fabric to make a small stitched panel. She’ll provide you with a pattern or you can use your own sketchbook page as a reference.
Discover how to sew geometric designs with English paper piecing. Laura guides you through the simple steps for this satisfying method of patchwork that works beautifully for piecing even small shapes with accuracy.
Join Linda to use stencilling techniques on fabric to create a beautiful floral wall quilt. She’ll show you how to use paint sticks such as Markal to stencil your design to fabric for a painterly effect. Next she’ll talk you through how to approach the stitching to add detail and interest. There are two workshops in this collection.
Learn how to create a circular opening that can be cleverly sewn into a patchwork project, think funky porthole that enables layering of colour with glimpses through to underneath layers, or a circular feature that can be added to a garment as a decorative or functional pocket. There is lots of creative potential with this fun method. There are three workshops in this collection.
Whether you’re new to patchwork or an avid piecer, we think you’ll find these three fast methods are essential. Learn how to quickly and efficiently sew some of the most useful blocks in patchwork and you’ll speed up your quiltmaking time no end! In this archive collection of three video workshops we’ll show you how to fast piece Half Square Triangles, Flying Geese and Tumbling Blocks with our favourite machine sewn methods.
In this archive collection of 2 video workshops join Laura to design and piece and quilt your own millefiore or mosaic patchwork. This project is beautifully intricate, but surprisingly easy to design and sew following Laura’s simple steps.
Work with Laura to create a Drunkard’s Path design using faux piecing. She’ll show you how to use your own hand dyed fabrics (maybe you dyed some using her Exchange Dyeing video workshop), but you can use any of your favourite fabrics from commercial cottons to hand painted cloth.
In this archive collection of 3 videos Linda demonstrates a wide variety of creative techniques using stencilling to produce beautiful and unique designs. She describes her favourite products and explains every step of the process to make a really attractive wallhanging. Finally she explains the hows and whys of completing the work with machine quilting. Linda proves that you can achieve lots of very different results using just one stencil. All of the techniques she includes could be used in many different projects.
In this collection of four videos you’ll discover some of the techniques Linda and Laura use to introduce fascinating texture, colour and pattern to their quilts. You’ll see how they use basic utility stitches on their sewing machines in innovative and unpredictable ways and how hand worked embroidery stitches can be used to bring exciting, painterly colour effects to an art quilt. Forget free motion machine quilting and simple running stitches for a while – this is an unmissable collection of creative ideas that will increase your repertoire of art quilting techniques!
Work along with Linda to sew a traditional Attic Window patchwork quilt with a twist! Add your own applique shapes, quilt and add details with acrylic painting. Along the way, take a look at her quilt Precious Things.
Don’t bin those greetings cards. Re-purpose them for English paper piecing.
Sort your fabric stash and get through those scraps!
Discover Kantha style quilting and make a beautiful decorative item for your home.
I’ve finished quilting my Fast Flying Geese and made them into a cushion.
We just love hand dyed fabrics, there’s no better way to create just the colours and colour combinations that we want for our work. In this video collection we’ll show you how to dye your own fabrics and then use them in painterly appliqué and patchwork projects.
Linda looks to the traditional textiles of the Banjara for inspiration. Join her to look at some examples and to study the colours, techniques and patterns of these decorative and heavily stitched cloths. Using them as inspiration, Linda demonstrates how you can start your own stitched cloth in the Banjara style.
In Archive 3 you’ll find a lively mix of some of the very first shows we taped for DMTV. Ranging from discharge printing, through altered books and free motion quilting, there’s lots to inspire.
Work along with Linda in this two-part workshop to create a fabric collage seascape.
I love to quilt by hand and have finally got a grip on using a hoop and a thimble. I don’t think there are any rules, this is just what works for me. For this quilt I’m using cotton poplin front and back. That’s perhaps not the best choice, poplin has a high thread count so it’s not the easiest …
A quick guide to how we hang our wall quilts.