Join me at the Alabama Folk School during their Blue Grass and Gee’s Bend session to dive deep into dyeing and stitching whole-cloth quilts. In this multi-day workshop, we’ll learn to create dynamic resist patterns on fabric, and how to scale those patterns up on large pieces of fabric. We’ll focus on dyeing with indigo and how to manage bulky bundles in the indigo vat. We’ll cover manual resist techniques, like shape resist and twist resist, as well as clay paste resist for hand-drawn patterns.

Then, we’ll use our fabrics we dyed to begin a whole cloth quilt. Whole cloth quilts are quilts made from (typically) one large piece of fabric used as the top, rather than the pieced quilt tops many of us are used to. Whole cloth quilts rely on the intricacies of the fabric and stitching lines for visual interest rather than the patterns of pieced fabric. We’ll learn to plan our quilt layout, transfer it to our fabric, make a quilt sandwich, and get to work with big-stitch whole cloth quilting.

Participants will leave with a stack of indigo dyed fabric and a hefty start on a whole-cloth quilting project.