Bonnie Hunter Workshop with the Nimble Thimbles

At the very last minute, I was notified that spot had opened for me in our guild’s Bonnie Hunter workshop!  I was so happy because I enjoy her patterns and it had been quite a long time since I’d done a class.  Our workshop project was Midnight Flight.  It is the backdrop for this photo.

There are basically three units to the block:  four patches, HST, and parallelograms.

We did a quick seam check to make sure our four patches were coming out at the proper size.  This is especially important with these since there are fairly small (cut strips at 1.5”).  Bonnie stresses in all of her tutorials to make sure you cut with the line of the ruler on the fabric.  Although I think I usually do this, I paid more attention when cutting the strips for the workshop.  It must have been that careful attention plus Murphy’s Law that made my neutrals come out slightly narrow (what the heck?!?).  I tried to compensate by staying true to my colored strip widths.  Bonnie stressed feeding pairs into the machine so that the top seam creates resistance to the one below.  She also spins the last seam so that the blocks can be more easily joined to each other.

Once we had made a few four patches, we moved on to the HSTs.  Until recently, Bonnie’s preferred tool for these was the Easy Angle.  I tried to use the Easy Angle on last year’s Quiltville mystery and I had a lot of trouble.  My pieces were coming out small and slightly rectangular no matter how scant I made my seam allowance.  Although, I am normally a triangle paper person, I was determined to conquer my Easy Angle issues in this workshop.  Even if I then decided not to use that tool for HSTs, I was stymied by the fact that I just couldn’t get good units before.  Considering that all of Bonnie’s quilts are very scrappy plus the value of her Scrap User’s System, I understand why something like this technique would be best for a project like Midnight Flight.  Bonnie recently released the Essential Triangle Tool which can be used to make HST and QST.  The tool also comes with a bonus ruler which I’ll talk about later.

In the workshop, I had a cutting station set up at a little table that was near my sewing area.  The table was about 2 feet high and barely bigger than a small cutting mat.  Since space was at a premium and I’m vertically challenged, I was using that space. I should have gotten a photo because it was definitely the quintessential kid’s table.  Bonnie stopped by to check on progress and I told her that I’d had issues with the Easy Angle before but I was committed to working them out that day because I am a believer in using the teacher’s ideas in class then deciding what works for me going forward.   Sure enough, the first units I made were spot on.  I told her that the units were too afraid to act up in her presence.  Later units started to drift back to the old issues from before.  I think my issue is pressing.  Even though I followed Bonnie’s suggestions to only use the tip of the iron on the seam rather than ironing any of the outer corners, I’m still getting some distortion.  I need to focus more on that. I am going to try to use the Easy Angle and/or her tool to make this quilt then decide what I think of it.  So far, I like the Essential Triangle Tool better than the Easy Angle for two reasons.  The EA flips and the ETT pivots.  I don’t like that when you flip the EA, the heavy printed lines on the ruler make it easier to slip and slide.  Also, it just isn’t as intuitive to me to flip the ruler.  I know to do it and I understand why but it requires thought each time.  Also, the ETT, has multiple functions and I really dislike single use items.  In addition to also doing QST, it can replace the companion ruler when making things like flying geese.

Lastly, we made the rectangles with connector corners.  Bonnie stressed the need to sew just next to the drawn line so that you get the full triangle when flipping.  One of my tablemates had an Angler taped to her machine bed.  I’ve been using my Angler lately too.  Bonnie uses a drawn line on her connector corners for two reasons.  First, there is a line to sew next to rather than on.  More importantly, though, she draws two lines and sews two seams per connector so she can trim in the stitching channel to produce bonus triangles.  Maybe if she was friends with Kathy, she’d be more likely to just trim those triangles and collect them in a baggie …  I had also tried this technique on last year’s mystery and quickly abandoned it because I felt like it slowed me down.  Also, I didn’t have a need for those triangles so I decided to skip it.  Since I was in workshop mode, I gave it a try.  Also, Bonnie did some pretty compelling math (36 blocks would produce 16 bonus triangles each which would be a grand total of 576 2” HSTs—in this case scrappy blacks with scrappy neutrals, something that would be useable on a variety of things). It does take extra time but I can see that it is a good habit to develop.

I managed to make one quarter block in the workshop but also lots of subunits.  Bonnie said she is an assembly line sewer and I am definitely wired that way, too.  I think I’ll focus on cutting and kitting so I can take this project with me to Amishland in March.  I realized in the workshop that I like all of the black and white (not cream) backgrounds that she uses so I’ll build more of those into my pile to cut. That will be a bonus anyway since I recently shifted my black and whites from one drawer to two because I had so many white with black prints.

I left the workshop missing all of my Divas even more than usual and wishing I could debrief with all of you after attending something like this together. I was also grateful to realize once again how lucky we have all been to learn from a series of bold and smart teachers such as Mary Ellen Hopkins and Mary Huey.  Many of the habits and design ideas taught this week are already part of my process based on their teachings.  For example, several of the students were struggling to make things scrappy.  The idea of using a wide variety of fabrics was stressful for them, as it was for me when we made those MEH hearts and Mary Ellen was adamant that we use “all of the reds”.  I also remember what an “aha” it was to see that the weird crane fabric made her log cabin great and that you could also use a lot of not so pretty fabric in a Mississippi Mud quilt and it made a stunning quilt that was greater than the sum of its parts.  Most people have to learn those lessons by doing … and all of that “doing“ is embedded in the way I do things because of great teachers.