Gwen Marston, Teacher

The West Michigan Quilt Guild had Gwen Marston as our lecturer last night. She talked about "So Old, It's New". Many/most of her quilts are based on lessons she learned from old quilts under the tutelage of Mary Schafer. She thinks the current Quilt Police have forgotten how variable "the tradition" really has been, especially in the individuality of the shapes cut and placed "by eye".

For example, one of her own quilts was displayed to show that the border design does NOT have to be proportional to the size of the blocks! In fact she made it to dis-prove that statement by a Quilt Policewoman.

Today I took a workshop Gwen taught on "Liberated Stars".

We learned how to make stars without a pattern, just let the star points be "roughly" equal, or not equal at all.

Here's Gwen hard at work trying to convince "hardened" quilters that it DOESN'T matter if your points aren't the same size, or if your points don't meet, or if your points get cut off! If all those thing were to happen "correctly", you wouldn't have a "liberated" star.

It was a very difficult lesson, we are so brainwashed. However, by lunch time everyone was having a great time .

My production between 9:00 am and 4:00 pm was eight stars. I progressed from whacky points, to not-square centers, to not-square-Square-in-a-Square centers, and finally to have more that two points on a side. The star blocks are NOT the same size! But roughly nine inches finished.

Fun, fun, fun. Wish I had taken photos of the fabrics other folks were using, and how their progress was going.

Now I want to put these together with my "Follow The Star "quilt and get it finished for this winter tohang in the kitchen. Perhaps the title of that quilt will be "Follow A Star", that is, there are a LOT of stars, just pick one and follow it.

Sara

Gratitudes:

Mother and daughter team working next to me

Adrienne's New Zealand accent and enthusiasm

Dianne purchased lunch for me while she was out