Denyse Schmidt Comes to Colorado!

We were thrilled to host one of our all-time favorite quilters, Denyse Schmidt, for her first teaching visit to Colorado in conjunction with the Front Range Modern Quilt Guild! She came to the shop to give a lecture about her career in quilting and fabric design, as well as teach a workshop titled Pure Improv.

Denyse gave a lecture on Friday night to a packed house. She detailed her amazing career from her childhood to her late-nineties write ups in Martha Stewart Living, The New York Times, and People Magazine on her ground-breaking modern quilting. She talked about the jump from showing and selling quilts in galleries, to working in the craft industry designing fabric and patterns. At the end she answered questions and met her fans.

Denyse taught on Saturday for the Front Range Modern Quilt Guild and was here at Fancy Tiger Crafts on Sunday for her all-day workshop on Pure Improv. This workshop was focused on using one traditional block and playing with the block in a variety of ways to put each student's own twist on it, without any planning. The students were each asked to bring two different tonal fabrics to work with. Even though everyone just had two fabrics (mostly solids), the results were so different!

 
Our favorite part of Denyse's classes are a lot of time spent putting your squares up on a design board and analyzing them. It's a great way to see where the quilt is going and what you like or don't like about it. If you don't like something, you can take it in another direction. The quilts were all coming along great and we love them.

The stunning quilt by a student uses only 2 fabrics, but she experimented with using both the right and wrong side of the fabric—we love the results!

Overall it was an inspiring weekend with Denyse Schmidt. We are ready to take on some improv quilting and see what happens—thanks so much Denyse for coming out to Colorado!