Claire Sherman Art

I’m teaching Circular Squares on June 9th!

Posted on May 22, 2019 by admin

Slightly Sober Path 2012

Circular Squares and Rectangles Improv Quilt Class

At Hello Stitch Studio on June 9, 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM,

1708 University Ave, Berkeley, CA

Sign up at www.hellostitchstudio.com or (510) 982-6549

This class explores curved piecing in both square and rectangular blocks. Learn how to boldly cut curves with a rotary cutter, but without a ruler or a cutting line! Using a stack of fabrics, you will learn how to make a fun, improv quilt. This is a process class. Once you learn the process, the world of curved, pieced quilts is yours to explore.

Skill Level: Advanced Beginner-Intermediate

Below is some student work from the last time I taught this class.

And here’s one that I made during the class:

Posted in Classes, Improvisational piecing | Tagged Circular squares and rectangles, Claire-Sherman, Hello Stitch, Hellostitchstudio, improvisational quilting | Comments Off

Annual library quilt show!

Posted on May 14, 2019 by admin

The 38th annual Berkeley Public Library quilt show is up from now until June 29. It’s on the 2nd floor in the cases in the lobby and hanging above the reference desk. I have 2 quilts in the show: a 3′ X 3′ star in a star, and a postcard sized basket.

Here’s a better photo of the star quilt. There’s a reception for the show on June 10, at 6:00 pm in the community meeting room on the 3rd floor. Everyone is invited! I’ll be there, with a lot of the quilters from the show.

Posted in Quilt Shows | Comments Off

Shibori, felting and fulling class

Posted on May 2, 2019 by admin

Last weekend I took an EBHQ workshop with Yoshiko Wada. Here is a photo of some of our experiments.

Above is master shibori artist Yoshiko Wada showing us how to brew natural indigo and demonstrating shibori. Since shibori is a form of tie dye, I asked her where tie dye was invented, Japan or India? She said that historians believe that both countries developed it independently of each other.

Here is my output for the 2 days from the top left: wool shibori, fulled, stitched and dyed wool, shibori underwear, cotton shibori, and 2 cotton shibori dyed shirts.

I also learned the difference between felted and fulled. Felted refers to wool that hasn’t been woven. If you do the felting process on a woven wool fabric, it is fulled not felted.

Posted in Classes, Work In Progress | Tagged East Bay Heritage Quilters, EBHQ | Comments Off

Free motion quilting

Posted on April 2, 2019 by admin

I took Mel Beach’s EBHQ workshop on free motion quilting a week ago. Here’s one of my 2 samples, above. I was very out of practice. It’s been at least two years since I did any free motion quilting. Since the workshop I’ve continued practicing by quilting two donation baby quilts that EBHQ always has on hand. I am improving, but it seems like a slow learning curve!

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I’m teaching how to make Cathedral Window quilts this Sunday!

Posted on March 23, 2019 by admin

Three Ways to Make a Cathedral Window Quilt

Sun, Mar 24

Mar 24, 10:00 AM – 12:00 PM

Hello Stitch Studio, 1708 University Ave, Berkeley www.hellostitchstudio.com

[510] 982-6549 | hello@hellostitchstudio.com

Cathedral Window is a beautifully intricate quilt block pattern. Traditionally it is done entirely by hand, however, I will demonstrate three ways to make these blocks: completely hand sewn, completely machine sewn, as well as a combination of both. The background fabric is folded in origami fashion and the contrasting center fabrics are sewn into each pocket like a small jewel. This is a dimensional, multi-layer quilt block that doesn’t require quilting and is perfect for using scraps of fabric.

This is a process class. Once you learn how to make the blocks you can turn them into a quilt, wall hanging or pillow, but those projects won’t be covered in class. These blocks look complicated, but once you learn the process, it isn’t that hard to do.

Posted in Cathedral window quilts, Classes | Comments Off

Last quilt finished in 2018

Posted on March 14, 2019 by admin

This quilt, titled Inspired By Sujata, was the last quilt I finished in 2018. I just realized I never posted a photo of it. I started it in Sujata Shah’s EBHQ class. I started laying it out on a design wall in Maria Shell’s EBHQ class. I think it was called kitchen sink quilting. The idea was to take a bunch of blocks and make a quilt out of them- kind of like what Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran do with their parts department quilts.

Here are two details of the quilting;

Posted in Classes, EBHQ, Improvisational piecing | Comments Off

Baby quilt finished at the last minute!

Posted on March 13, 2019 by admin

I stayed up until the early hours of the morning two nights in a row to finish this baby quilt. Then I took BART to San Francisco to hand it to the grandma who commissioned it for her new grandson in Israel. She was getting on a plane later that day and didn’t have time to come to Berkeley to pick it up. We stood there in the Powell St station, while I showed her the quilt, and sent it on its way. This is my first quilt finished in 2019!

The yellow bicycle fabric is left over from the quilt I made two years ago for her first grandchild. I hear that the grandkids’ parents are avid cyclists. Here is the back of the quilt:

I have had this fabric in my stash for a long time, and I don’t remember buying it. I think it probably came from my mother’s stash, which I inherited. Here’s a detail of the quilting. I used a zigzag on my machine that had 3 stitches for every zig, and a curvy line. I used my walking foot for all the quilting.

Posted in Improvisational piecing, Work In Progress | Comments Off

When your quilt isn’t working…keep working on it.

Posted on February 27, 2019 by admin

This was the hot mess on my design wall, a few weeks ago. My artist friend Lila Wahrhaftig looked through the photos on my phone. She liked the one with negative space, which was just slices separated by an inch or two on the cutting board. That gave me the idea to add a strip of slashing between each slice.

Here it is with the sashing:

But there was too much light blue fabric for the composition. (It stuck out like a sore thumb). I cut it diagonally where the ruler is.

I added another blue sashing strip, but I didn’t like the X it made across the quilt. So I sewed a different slice above the sashing.

It’s late at night, so the color isn’t accurate, but this is what it looks like now.

Posted in Improvisational piecing, modern quilts, Work In Progress | Comments Off

Photos from my wonky log cabin class

Posted on February 5, 2019 by admin

Here are wonky log cabin blocks by my students on Sunday, at HelloStitch. I had 5 students, but can only find 4 photos on my phone. My apologies to the one I left out.

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