I just finished teaching a 2-day class based on my quilt, The Ground, As Seen From Above. This class is very much about cutting organic lines, without a ruler. This is lots of fun once you get into it but it's very different if you've never cut without a ruler or measurements to follow.
On the first day my students constructed their backgrounds and they are all wonderful! Here is Karla's, a lovely mix of green and blue batiks:
And Susan's. I love the purples she used!
Faye's quilt is a lot darker than it looks here, and a bit more wine-colored. I love the movement in it!
Hope's quilt is actually greener than it looks here, and it's very pretty. The light, open spaces are well-placed.
Kathy's quilt is fresh and happy, with a great mix of patterns:
I love the way Bonnie played with the open space in her quilt.
It was fun to see Christy working on her quilt – she looked so good in standing in front of it!
Christy's mom, Marilyn, worked in vertical strips. The areas of blue shine through:
Mary was deciding on the colors of her wheels when I took this photo – when last I checked she was liking the brown ones. She has a nice mix of textures and values going on:
Paula's inspiration is a New England fall and you can see it in her quilt:
Today we appliqued and it was another good day. I'm proud of how well everyone did!
Piece O Cake Blog 
Becky,
Thank you so much for the tutorial videos! It has inspired me to start applique again and I just ordered some items from your website. Can you show how you stabilize your overlay so it doesn’t shift? I have had this issue before and ended up frustrated.
Thank you so much and please, keep the videos coming!!
Sincerely,
Sheila H.
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Hi Sheila:
One thing that I always do is to put the background fabric on top of my sandpaper board before I place the overlay on it. The sandpaper holds the background in place and keeps it from shifting as Im positioning appliqué pieces.
The other thing that you can do is to use just a couple of pins to help hold the overlay in place. Im pretty sure I talked about how to use the long flower-head pins for this in the video. I also use my non-dominant hand to hold the overlay in place as Im positioning pieces.
If youve cut your overlay too large, that can be a problem. It only needs to be as big as the finished block.
I hope some or all of these tips help,
Becky
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Thank you! I did use the pins on the overlay, but not the sandboard. I will give that a try. Thank you for the suggestions, they are greatly appreciated.
All the best,
Sheils
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