Cutting Bee and Template

Workshop Supply List

There will also be Set B of the Marti Michel templates and accompanying Book One available for purchase should you decide you would like your own set.

Comments on fabrics

As you choose your fabrics for the cutting bee, please bring good fabric. This is not intended as a clean out of your unlovables. Everyone wants to take home good fabric from the exchange. Look for variety in your fabrics in value. Be sure to have light, medium and dark. The fabrics may have slight amounts of other colors, but the fabric should read blue or white. The whites may range in value from white white to beige/tan. The blues may range from lightest blue to darkest navy. Consider variety in the scale of your prints. Have some large and some small. Consider stripes, plaids, florals and geometrics as well as the types of fabric you are accustomed to purchasing. You want a good variety of styles and kinds of fabrics for your scrap quilt to have zing. Consider blues, whites, white and blue designs, and blue and white designs when choosing your fabrics.

When you purchase fabrics or pull them from your stash, if you have favorites or ones that you really like, buy more or bring the rest of the piece to class. You may want to bring some of the blues and whites you know you always like in your pieces. You are not required to trade every piece you bring (other than the 12 cuts detailed in the supply list). In the last class I taught, attendees didn't pick up pieces they knew they had at home, but when they pieced their blocks, they wanted to have those fabrics there. So bring with you what you intend to trade, extra if you really like them, and bring whatever pieces you think you might want to add from your stash as well.

If you want to have a unifying fabric to blend into several of your blocks and then have that fabric for borders and binding, purchase 4-5 yards of that fabric. This will give you about a yard to incorporate into your blocks and enough fabric for 6 inch borders and binding for 70x90 or so quilt.

You may also wish to incorporate another color into your quilt. If you wish to add an accent of red or green or yellow or whatever, bring several pieces of those colors as well. We will not trade the other colors, but in a scrap quilt, you will want to have more than one pattern in your accent color.

The fabric you bring for the cutting bee portion of exchange is to be washed, dried, ironed, and ready to cut. But do not cut any strips before the cutting bee.