Ultimate Backgrounds in Action!!!

I just returned from an extended teaching engagement in Texas where I had the pleasure of speaking/teaching for the Bear Creek Quilt Guild, the Denton Quilt Guild and then finished with a 5-day workshop for Quilting Adventures.  

The workshop was geared towards learning to design and focused on wholecloth quilting where the students had the freedom to create their own designs.  Of course I had my brand new Ultimate Backgrounds with me for playtime in the sandbox.  I was not only blown away by the beautiful work the students created but I was really watching to see how they would use the background stencils.

The above quilt was created by Ann Moore who has taken three workshops from me now.  She worked ALL week on this one piece and I was fascinated with the "modern approach" she took for using a multitude of the backgrounds.  The above picture shows how the triangle stencil was used...

This photo shows the triple lines and the clam shells....

...and this one is showing the twisted grid.  Fabulous work Ann!!!!!

I love to bring Cherrywood panels for students to play with.  It's a little less intimidating to work on a smaller project.  This student drafted her medallion design using the round Ultimate Stencil and also used the papa twisted grid, the baby clams, papa diamonds and baby twisted clam backgrounds. 

This student used the "mama" sized triangles for her background and filled with cathedral windows.

This student used the mama triangles and filled with repetitive lines in a hexagon design, triple lines for a triple-line grid and the 1/2" grid filled with cathedral windows.

I made up a whole stack of thick vinyl sheets and traced the circle and square Ultimate Stencils with Sharpie marker directly to the vinyl.  Students were encouraged to use a dry erase marker (on the OTHER unmarked side) to draft out their designs.  This was very popular in the workshop and many students found it much, much easier to draft out their designs on the marked vinyl rather than the paper master grids. 

This medallion was also drafted on the vinyl sheet, the design drawn on the Cherrywood panel using the circle Ultimate Stencil, and the quilting has begun.

Fabulous, fabulous time in Texas...thank you to everyone who took such amazing care of me and all my students who put up with me!!!

I also wanted to give a shout out that for those that took advantage of the "pre-sale" on the Ultimate Backgrounds, your orders are all assembled, packed and have been shipped in three separate trips to the post office.  You will be receiving them VERY soon!!! 

I LOVE getting show and tell in my emails so if you have done something wonderful with either the new Ultimate Backgrounds or the Ultimate Stencils, please send a photo my way so I can add it to either a future blog post or to my Pinterest page that has been dedicated to these stencils.

Hugs, Cindy :)