Oh My Gosh! Mary Lou's in the House!

If you haven't heard of Mary Lou Weidman, please check her out! She has a blog and a website plus an active yahoo group. She was the reason I decided to attend Quilt Wyoming this year. Usually when you attend the State Quilt Retreat you have to make at least 3 selections of classes you want to attend and number them in order of preference. I told my daughter that we would only put down 1 class each day and if we didn't get in, we just wouldn't attend this year. I was lucky that each class I wanted to take were on different days. While I was picking up my missionary son from Tennessee, my daughter called to tell me that we had gotten in both classes. I was estactic! My next thought was those poor ladies that were having to fill the classes....how dare us 2 only choose 2 classes.....oh well. I'm glad it worked out like it did for us.

The class was called Flower Power and was based upon the book of the same name and this quilt.

 

Don't you love the funkiness of it?! I do! Love the bright colors and the craziness of the flowers! Mary Lou uses a "hoochie" method to making her blocks. It's basically where you start out with a certain size of fabric and then keep adding to it to make whatever shape you want to make. Reminds me a teeny tiny bit of a Buggy Barn pattern. You have to think outside the box for these kinds of quilts but once your head can wrap around the fact that nothing is ever a mistake, you enjoy the concept.

 

 

Here is our design wall with several of the student's blocks on it. My block is the center red flower. Daughter's is the blue bird. She caught on quick enough to make the bird on her own without a pattern.

 

Here are some of Mary Lou's blocks. If you study them, you can see the concept a bit better of how to make each block. She says that she will keep adding if she has to so they all fit into a quilt by using her "hoochie" method.

 

How to make the flower pots and also the large flowers. We cut a 12" block of fabric and then cut it off center then using the hoochie method, turned it into a flower. So fun!

 

Look at all the crazy fabrics being used to make these flowers. I have got to get out of my comfort zone and expand my way of looking at fabric now.

 

In this picture, you can see how the different fabrics are added onto the blocks.

 

Loved LOVED this fabric! It's Kaffe Fassett. The girl who was working with it had already taken Mary Lou's "Hoochy Mama" class in Jackson a few months ago. That class teaches you how to make your regular quilt blocks become wonky. She took this class on Saturday and learned how to make wonky flowers and bugs so now will put them all together. It's going to be a spectacular quilt with the oranges in that fabric.

 

Mary Lou uses lots of buttons on her quilts so I had to get some pics of them.

 

 

Here's our class. What a fun bunch of women! They were all talkers and funny. Did you know that we can all quit dieting because once you hit 70 you automatically become skinny?! Yup. That's what one lady told us. She said you just don't see that many fat women in their 70's so she was happy that she would have the body she wanted in about 10 years. Daughter is going to remember that one for a very long time! LOL!

 

And here's a pic of me, daughter and Mary Lou together. Thanks Mary Lou for a very special class! We had a fun time and are eager to finish more blocks to get them into quilts!