A Chorus Line class at Quilt Market

Last year for my mom's birthday, I "gave" her a quilting class that we'd take together. We both quilt a fair amount, but since she lives in Wisconsin and I live in Michigan, we don't sew together very often. We chose Debbie Caffrey's "A Chorus Line" quilt class at Spring Quilt Festival in Chicago. We had a fun day--taking the class, walking the show (during the lunch break!) and grabbing a quick dinner afterwards before heading back to our respective homes. 

Here we are with Debbie, our sample blocks, and Debbie's class sample in the background:

Chain pieced triangles. Debbie had plenty of cutting and piecing tips and shortcuts to share with us. 

My blocks at the end of the day. I tend to sew pretty quickly, to maximize my kid-free sewing time! :) 

Mom's first few blocks. She's using the cool blues, greens and teals from Benartex's Dreamscape collection. Great texture in these prints!

When at Quilt Festival, you have to take a photo in front of the sign! 

We finished the day at Roti, a quick and delicious Middle Eastern restaurant.

Yum!

 I struggled a lot to choose a color palette and fabrics for this quilt. I really wanted to work out of my stash, but just couldn't find inspiration. I ended up at my local quilt shop and walked away with these fabrics:

I fell in love with the stripe and planned to use the brights to contrast with it. I still wasn't totally satisfied, and at the last minute, I grabbed a stack of low volume prints with white backgrounds. That proved to be key to my design. Mom and I took a quick trip to Material Matters, a fun quilt shop in Thiensville, WI, and I found some gray prints. Instead of using white and light gray in the blocks, I chose to use white and light gray prints. That subtle change made all the difference in my mind, and I went to the class excited about my fabric choices. 

Here's where I am right now. I have all twenty-five of my blocks done. Time to sew the flying geese and square-in-a-square units to create the outer star points. 

I can't wait to keep working on this! I'm most interested to see if the stripe will actually work when this is all assembled, or if it will be too busy. If it's too busy, I'll find something else to use it for!