Visible Threads: Framed Quilts

Join artist Heidi Parkes for a six-hour, hands-on workshop exploring quilting as a creative and expressive practice. Drawing from her approach to textile work, participants will learn a variety of techniques, including layering, patchwork, embroidery, and freeform appliqué. Through the creation of a 6 x 6 inch framed quilt, participants will explore how color, pattern, and stitched imagery can communicate personal experiences, memories, and ideas.

Quilts can squish into backpacks and unfurl into art galleries, but sometimes there’s a thrill in stretching a quilt taught, like a painting. When done at a small scale, the framed quilt process creates a satisfying one-day finish. This workshop will teach you to use a wooden frame and staples to display your quilt “stretched canvas style” with neatly folded corners. You will also get an introduction to several exciting quiltmaking techniques:

• Embroidery: add to the composition with thread

• Freeform Applique: apply fabric pieces to a base fabric with turned edges

• Patchwork: sew small segments of fabric to each other

• Layered quilts: place a transparent layer on top, revealing fabric and thread beneath

• Quilting: add batting and learn to sew through all of the layers, creating texture

Your kit fee includes an on-demand recorded version of this class (an $85 value!), which you will view ahead of time, allowing you to begin your framed quilt before we meet in person. During class, we will focus on composition, demos, Q&A, and assisting individual students with thimble use and the overall aesthetics of your framed quilt. Class will end with the opportunity to staple your quilt to its frame.

$180 with Membership | Supplies included

What You’ll Learn

• Knots for starting, stopping, and joining threads

• Multiple variations of visible hand stitching

• Small appliqué with a hoop

• Thimble use and hand care

• Composition

• Tips for sewing on-the-go

• Improv hand quilting

• Framing your quilt!

What You’ll Leave With

• A 6 x 6” framed quilt (in progress or completed)

• Inspiration and skills for making more framed quilts of any size, to create a grid of small quilts to display in your home, or as gifts!

• Tools and tips for caring for your hands as you sew

• Continued access to on-demand, recorded instruction from Heidi

Who This Workshop Is For

• Beginners with limited hand sewing experience

• Experienced artists and makers excited to learn new variations for sewing

• Anyone interested in making art, hand sewing, or quilting

Supplies Included

• Fabric

• Thread

• Thimbles

• Embroidery hoop

• Pins

• Scissors

• Staple gun (optional)

• One frame and batting (supplied by MOWA)

• See more details about Heidi’s Favorite Supplies

• Full supply list provided with registration

Instructor

Before Heidi Parkes was born in Chicago, IL, in 1982, her grandmother organized a collaborative family quilt to commemorate her birth. Now based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, she celebrates the hand with quilts that tug at memories and shared experience. Often using specific textiles, like an heirloom tablecloth, bed sheet, or cloth tea bag, Heidi adds subtle meaning and material memory from the start. Engaging in the worlds of art, quilts, mending, and social media, Heidi is an advocate for the domestic realms, diary, and hand-sewing while on-the-go. Find her on Instagram and YouTube. Heidi is a 2005 graduate from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.