Phillipa Naylor

 I had the pleasure this past week of taking two classes from Phillipa Naylor from Great Britain.  Her book--that I have here--is all about piecing curves.  In addition, it tells of her very interesting life in Saudi Arabia, her return to England and her earlier career as a fashion designer and how it impacted her style of working in quilting fabric.  I also attended her lecture where she had some of her gorgeous, PERFECT quilts.
Throughout my two days with her, one thing that really stood out was her willingness to take her time in all of the steps that go into making an award-winning quilt.  I found it so inspiring and also a reminder that, for me at least, it is better to do one quilt really well than to have an entire closet of them done with little thought and caring about the process that makes them special. 

 We just made a sample block in the Curved Piecing class.  She started out with a conventional Churn Dash block and then showed us how to make it curvy.  And then once that was done, she showed us her method of piecing those curves.  I really liked her method.  It called for a lot of preparation before the first seam is ever sewn.  As you can see by my picture of the back side of the block, there is a LOT of "V" snipping and all of the seams are pressed open to achieve a flatness to the finished piece.  She also talked about threads (thinner is better for piecing) and the size of the needle (smaller needle leaves a smaller hole).
It was a great class and I came home with plenty to think about. 

On the second day, we learned her method of machine applique (no pictures).  Again, we did a LOT of hand work before we ever got to the machine work (actually, we didn't get to the machine work except to do some samples of satin stitching around circles). This workshop would have been better if it had been at least two days because there was so much information to hear, assimilate and use.  Phillipa will soon have a book out on this topic and it will absolutely be part of my library.  I plan on finishing the piece that I started and will share it later.  In the meantime, I'm still thinking about all the things that I came home with and how I might use them in my own work.  I know for sure that I'll be pressing more seams open than ever before and precision is always a much sought after skill.  I'm working on it.