Liberated Quilts - Student Work

These quilts represent the culmination of our sewing machine unit in the Intermediate 3-D art class.  For many of these kids it was their first time to use the sewing machine, and just look at their work!  We spent the whole 2nd quarter learning to sew and making these quilts.  I teach with Gwen Marston's book "Liberated Quiltmaking" after taking her class myself.  It was one of the funnest quilting experiences I ever had, and so liberating too because there were no patterns to trace and cut around, just grab a rotary cutter and scissors and go!  And no two quilts turn out the same.

I'm crazy about senior Borah Lim's quilt above.  She picked a great bag of fabric during the lottery, and she made magic happen with it.  What Borah also did was accidentally cut thru most of the top after she was done piecing with the rotary cutter, when she was cutting a piece of fabric for her back side.  So the large cross running thru entire piece was put in to piece cut back together again.  Great save Borah!! 

Below we have very creative thinker, senior Noel Kim.  What an unusual design she has come up with, but it totally works.  I adore the sweet little log cabins she has appliqued down on the diagonal.   

I lottery off bags of donated fabrics that spend a bit of time color co-ordinating so that the kids don't have to spend too much time dealing with that.  And the students really get into the lottery and take it very seriously.  I also get to grab a fabric bag so I have cottons to demo with, and I try to stay one day ahead of my students.  I really like the quilt I made this year in the liberated technique.  I'll post it tomorrow if I can remember to photo it tonight. LOL

So the kids learn to machine piece, safety pin baste, machine quilt (not free motion till Advanced level), and to put on a binding edge.  They also are responsible for making a label for their backside, and appliqueing it on with an invisible stitch.  They may choose to embellish at the end as Karisma has done above and below with beads, buttons, and other goodies.

And then there is 9th grader Karisma Dev, who always thinks outside the box for every project and comes up with a unique idea.  Karisma's piece was, I believe, the largest piece in the class, it had the most parts to piece together, and she spent hours working on it at home besides at school.  It was totally worth  it kiddo.  I'm so proud of you!

They learn about the Log Cabin design above.

What a beautiful bag of fabrics senior Andrea De Leon picked to build her quilt with above, very rich and full of autumn flavor.

Senior Johonna Paz picked a bag with her signature colors, peaches and pinks with a bit of green.  Look closely at her fussy cut heart in the center.  Johanna's piece was also very large and required a lot of effort to piece all those parts together.

 Making a heart with diagonals above.

About putting your piece on the diagonal for display.

Junior Kevin Tang picked a very jazzy bag of fabrics for his piece above.  Kevin wants to go into the fashion industry, and he's got a great head start here learning how to sew and design.  

The Flying Geese design above along with a Star and Log Cabin.

Junior Joyce Le has built another beauty above and below.  I especially love her label on her backside below.

How to make labels and applique them down.

And senior Elsie Aguilar's label below is precious with it's bird house and duck postage stamp.  Clever girl Elsie!

Strip piecing.

Junior Nida Fatima choose a Xmas bag of fabrics and made this wonderful house themed piece.  She also took the time to add button embellishments.

And about solutions to covering up seams that are popping open after we machine wash these puppies.

Love, love , love junior Rita Labib's colorful quilt and her unusual embellishments.  Rita ended up not liking her piece but I feel it's one of the best designs.  It calls to me Rita!   It's a crazy, happy piece, like me  LOL 

It's actually worth points to these kids if the quilt can make it thru one machine washing.  Cause it's all about craftsmanship, right Rita???  LOL  Love you

And we will finish off with senior Erika Roderos and her very pretty quilt.  Click on all the images for a closer look at their machine quilting.  All of them came up with great design ideas.

Stitchers of the world, I hope you enjoy these works from my very talented young ones.

For EXTRA CREDIT, make a mini quilt with colorful pieces of papers.  Cut out shapes and glue them onto a foundation.  You can pick one of the patterns from above or make up your own quilt design.  The more elaborate you make it the more points you will get.  You will have 2 days to do this in so you can give it to me Wed. the 14th or Thurs the 15th of March.  Put your name and period on the back side and name which quilt artist's piece you liked the best.