MQS Classes: The Awesome Part 2

Today I wanted to tell you a little bit about Dusty Farrell's class at MQS. He and his wife own a quilt store and longarming business, so they also had a booth in the vendor area in addition to his classes.  It was a lot of fun (I know I sound like a broken record, but the whole conference was really great).  This was his quilt in the current show, a really cool thread painted dragon.  It had a bunch of features similar in style to my dogs, specifically heavy threadpainting in the center and regular (albeit high density) quilting around it.  You guys will not believe how straight and flat this quilt was.

"Koi Dragon" by Dusty Farrell

I asked him a bunch of questions since my thread painted dogs were all puckered and he was very helpful.  Of course all his work is done directly on the longarm (as opposed to piecing or applique first then quilting), with all three layers (or more) at the same time.

He was really a fun, laid back teacher and I'd definitely recommend his classes.  He kept going around saying peppy things like "isn't art class fun!".  He's pretty young and handsome so it was kind of fun to watch all of the ladies in the class interacting with him.

In the class he taught us his longarm reverse applique, long-arm regular applique, and long-arm threadpainting techniques.  It was (as in the Cathy Franks class), so much fun to just be able to play and quilt on the longarm without having to worry about making anything "good".  It was also really fun to do the thread painting on the longarm, it made me think about longarming in a way I hadn't before; more like coloring than anything else.  He taught us about shading and shaping with the thread (although I wasn't really very good at that) and how he creates structure and dimension.  Almost like hand guided machine embroidery.  His class samples were so much better than what we all managed to come up with, but that just means we need more practice!

Here's my quilt sandwich from the class, the rose is longarm reverse applique, the leaves are longarm applique, and the second rose is threadpainted.  It felt just like doodling, although I had some problems on that left leaf. I made my class sample into a pillow afterwards so I could have it out.  The long arm reverse applique and regular applique leaves loose edges, which give a soft frayed look.

I promise this is my final MQS post for this year, thanks for following along!  Have you guys been trying out any new techniques lately?  Experimenting with non-traditional things on the longarm?