FreeSpirit's Kathy Doughty Facebook Live

can you see it now jeez I hope it's not live now because I'm just sitting in the office you're live we're building an audience for you well hello everybody just waiting to get confirmation that we actually are live ok tell me when you see me ah yes hello everybody I just got notification from free-spirit headquarters that it wasn't going live even though I've been talking for a half an hour already anyway I'm hanging up now bye hi I'm Kathy dowdy and you are here with me live it at Material obsession we've just had a little bit of technical difficulty so I'll just go back into our middle position and get going again I had somebody helping me with my hey Helen up come help me we're on now anyway here we are in material obsession while we wait for my camera holder this is one of the rooms and it happens to be the quiet room at the moment so we thought we would start in here and this does me give yourself a fun watch ok I'd like to say thank you to free spirit for having me today and giving me an opportunity to talk about my collections of fabrics that I've done with them and about material session this is a shot that's been in existence for about fourteen years well just over 14 years now and I'm really proud to say that this is a place where we've concentrated on making an environment that makes people feel comfortable being creative so that means that when you walk into this shop everybody that works here is a quilter everybody that here wants you to enjoy your experience as a quilter and they want to offer you as much help and assistance as possible in making your project because sometimes we get very narrowly focused and where we want to go and having somebody to talk to helps us expand our ideas and to try some new things because a creative this really is about stepping into the unknown hi I said alright okay that's one now I can see everybody good take two so um yeah so this is a great um I I talked about it and I want to talk about it at length as we go through the shop today because I think it's really important that we keep shops alive meeting online is fantastic and it's new to our generations of closers but there's nothing that beats face-to-face quilting and talking to people about what we're doing and sharing our lives and experiences and I have to say that one of the most meaningful things about this business for me is the community that we've created and the fact that I've shared the lives of so many quilters over the last years as they experienced their children growing up and their parents aging and maybe losing a spouse or having breast cancer all these things are part of life and now all of them get shared over the table and conversation and I think that we really have to support our local businesses and local shops so that we have a place where we can congregate meet and and yeah I think that's really important so I bang on about it a lot but telling stories is best together and I really like that so free ferret did ask me to do this today in support of my latest collection which is called celebrate it started with a very simple little drawing that I did I'm just going to move as you move around and I will move um the type of the simple little drawings that has some fun little animals on it and I have been fascinated with these animals for a long time it'll one of us because of the the classes that we have here though Tim Australia has a lot of English tradition in quilting so we do a lot of brewery person a lot of hexagons and a lot of applique and in doing that you do tell your own very personal stories and one of the stories that I learned at the table in my shop was about this print who walked from Africa to Paris with a giraffe on a lead and I've always thought that was a really hilarious kind of in that image because as you know imagine you're doing the dishes and looking out the window in your house you know just before you turn your pot out the window and you see this guy walking up the street with a giraffe I mean how bizarre would that be it's not like they could have seen a giraffe on David our cotton Burroughs Planet TV show so you know I didn't think that that doesn't look like a cow or whatever else you might have looked out the window so yeah so that just sort of is where I started thinking about the you know the elephants of the giraffe the camels of the monkeys and then I thought well what if they were in a beautiful sort of Mexican style pot instead of the flowers so move over flowers you've got the pot so this particular print has the pot on both sides and then in the middle they're sort of hanging off exchange which is really um in a nod to the construction and the structure of clothes hi there everybody okay so this is our first time obviously so we would have in getting Direction all the time but with this you can cut that to go horizontally or you can cut it to go vertically and in doing that you can work within the structure of your quilt so when I'm designing fabric I'm always thinking about the structure of the quilt itself and how we might use the fabric to fill the spaces created in a quote so that might be a medallion it might be stashing it might be borders the other thing that I do and I'm designing my star because I think about the personality is my customers who are often have either a traditional taste and this would be the traditional color way and the pessimists are just for pinging hello ladies while I'm on Facebook today alright so they too are oh well you all just put them all on hold so that would be the pretty color way a little bit softer and a little bit more delicate and the contemporary colorway which I'm always thinking is my partner-in-crime Wendy Williams because she likes really strong bright purples and reds and aqua so that would be the contemporary colorway no party is complete without table decor so I started thinking about the tablecloths and bringing Robert said we might and this one would be on the contemporary color or the traditional color way and it's sort of a humorous nod to entertaining in Australia because we always think that within the sun-drenched comes the country and we can entertain outside but every time I've invited more than three or four people over to my house to sit outside it's rain so just in case I put little umbrellas in there to decorate the rainy scene I mean we have had people sitting in plastic bags at our table at Christmas so then banners have always been really popular so I've designed a little house it go time yeah I'm thinking about travel blankets on the elephants I'd pull some sort of travel blanket style shapes and use some diagonal stripes and some spots and some fun things that can be fussy cut for use at the background that one being a traditional colorway the pretty colorway and on the ground ah and our contemporary so these are quite fun for gums and I think they're a little bit different for sort of a a little bit busier kind of a graphic print and we also have party land which is quite was sort of thinking about you know pineapple in our drinks and the little beach haunts tender little island and when I look at this I inevitably here a little bit of reggae music thinking to go Bob Marley style as you can see there's some fun things to use up close or you can automate those to where I want you to script further away okay and then all of the this is sort of a nod to the champagne bubbles you can see they're busy big and small bubbles in there so a lot of my customers been talking about you need for applique inferred bodies it's also quite good as a spacer in their coil or for even as background for applique so that would come with the three colors as well so let's celebrate and I'm going to show you a few different things made with that in a moment but um let me just see if there's any questions on here Chris get one okay Chris one of my one of the things as a designer and as a quilter that really got me going they can quote was using scale in the beginning as a self-taught filter I was intimidated by fuzzy blocks and funky design so I kept looking through historical books for blocks that had something that was piece and something that had a big block in the middle and I really liked the idea of letting the fabric fill that spacing block or those sashing strips or whatever it was so when I started designing fabrics I thought wouldn't it be good to have something that was beautiful enough to hold those spaces so with flog together which was my first collection for free spirit we I created these medallion shapes inside these lines and I really like the way that if this was cut up those lines would move in and out of the blocks creating interest and I find that with scale one of the biggest questions people ask is you know do I need to cut that exactly in the middle of my square well the answer is no from a design perspective it's actually more interesting to capture the lines moving in and out of the square because your your mind gets engaged in that idea and it sort of splits out to what it can't see and imagine so I like that little hook of thinking process that gets involved with using a larger scale fabric yes I also have another couple of things I want to show you examples that they're in different spots so flock together was all about the gathering of quilters and having them interact it's completely made using flock together it's a nice long boulder cushion which I think would be really good on the sofa in fact what is my son who's just turned 21 asked me if he could have a bolster cushion for his bed and I thought that's pretty good they don't usually ask me for and quilty so I've been making him one tonight as soon as I'm finished so flock together was all about obstruction of the Pope's and another part that I really like to think about in the structure of my fault is using a border so I like to have a fabric that has something that can be cut off as a border and then in the main French are the main body of it we have something you can use as a graphic stripe or you know it's just a relief print from the design oriented designs it's the same kind of an idea as I've used here you can see we can cut the border off and then use the center part to build in the structure of your quote following Slough together I did spoke out revolution which was um something that really I think subconsciously it was part of the fact that we have a lot of political issues about people moving around the world and migrating to new places and I often make the parallel to see pilgrims that ran in search of religious freedom to the US and I feel I'm sorry for our current generation that they don't have the same kind of freedom when they move to establishing new life on to prosper so folks our Revolution was sort of a nod to historic historical pilgrimage and I used the very naive style of folk art drawing to create the little characters so I had you know the Patriots in the houses they might live in and the ship that they might have arrived on as well as um I like to refer to them as you know the landed gentry and the country people and I think these little personalities that's quite a fun little slot for fussy cutting they're all you can cut them in squares you can cut them in diamonds and we've used those and lots of our different quills it's also quite fun as a backing as it sort of tells both story in itself as a piece and then of course there are the prints that are third decorative stripes where you can use that as a little focus point print or you can use it as a stripes in your twelves and the colors are it's white on life so you might notice here in this particular pardon okay we're back off anybody asking me hi Ali okay it's good to know that there are some people out there you might notice too that in at materials session we fill the blocks with a variety of different kinds of styles and designs when a collection is brand new we like to keep it consolidated because the designs have gone to such a nice effort to create a beautiful cohesive collection but the reality is that in the store it will sell through a different rate so we start to take things and mix them up and bring things that we think are either complementary or contrasting well or just look nice in the picture to round out that design and to allow the customers to individualize it a little bit by creating their own mix so I like to think that each one of these days is a starting point for a particular quilt so if you want to make a blue quilt you could use a little bit of fabric from each one of those days what they wanted to make something that was red you can do something from any one of these Bay's and so on throughout the shop the other thing that I like to the other interesting thing I think about material session is the reps come in and show me the collections and they're often quite surprised at at what I buy because we don't always necessarily buy the things that are trending or our popular reply things we think are really interesting to use for example this stripe from the artisan case assets artisan collection when this is cut up it will add fantastic graphic energy and it also is a great starting point for a pallet so something like this would be a must-have for a very long time in the shop you know case is okay is the consummate palette designer and when you pick up one of his fabrics it's quite clear that you could use that to pick all the colors that are going to go into your clothes as a complement to that we get on the more graphic inspired designs by Brandon madly where he's often doing things that are spotty or stripy or you know diagonal stripes or spotty stripes all these different kinds of things and these two kinds of things on design directions together are quite handy choosing your quilt so you get your pretty picture and then you get your spacing elements with your graphic prints there's another one from so I've got revolution which has been really fun again I'm looking for fabrics and looking for ways to use the fabric that you can either fussy cut in small bits or using great big long lengths like striped like this would be fantastic cut out to do a strip equal so you just have one long strip of this you pull all the colors out and build your blocks in your alternating rows and this one was also sort of a nod to susan record because i wasn't going to piece all those little waves so i just glue them up like her beautiful string piece quote so let's go look at some samples little by the way yes you if this is new conversation to you when you're quilting and you're interested in delving in a bit more to how I think about the fabrics and how I get the individual mix with the fabrics I've written all up five books so you might know us from the material session books but from there I moved on to making quilts which was a collection of quilts that were really explorations on my part they were for example soul searching with a quilt that I used to really a very simple block structure and I was using that to UM I was using that to create blocks of color so this whole it was made for much I just pulled two and a half inch strips out from all the different color areas and paste them together so that there were areas of contrast there are areas of blending and in that exercise I learned a lot about the filter that I was I also learned about the quilter that I wasn't in that I could easily see when I went to make a block color what I collected but I also could realize what I don't collect so as a shop owner I thought this is a really valuable exerciser for all soldiers to go through because it teaches you what you naturally gravitate towards so when you walk into a shop you may be the person that walks over to the Aqua Bay wearing your aqua shirt and buying the aqua fabrics but you probably don't need anymore aqua fabric anymore so that's a good opportunity to turn around and maybe develop your pink section or your orange section or your brown section also working with contrast I mean fractures it's been a really popular quilt it's been all over the internet I mean even accounts like itse um fractured is a lesson in contrast you need to be able to create those dark and light lines through there so in each block the contrast varies and that's quite an interesting way to study how you see line developing in your quilt John Foudy just said I'm amazing you think he'd know that since we've been married for 27 years get you later on red Center is also a contrast this explicit in but this one is a more basic use of contrast because all colors stand out against white or neutral so that quilt has so this book has lots of different kinds of exploration of pattern and of course it also starts introducing my love of the wedge ruler so there's a few that's just basic use of the wedge ruler and that's okay we're can and then also garden party which I did in conjunction with Anna Maria Horner many many years ago this is super popular were using contrast to create interesting flowers and then make them contrast against the background the next book that I wrote was called adding layers and this was really about the fact that as a basic filter I really liked it I can use one shape all the time I you square the rectangles for many many years and I discovered a 60 degree and then I he was just kidding saying I was amazing very funny like comment from somebody besides John so this was it's broken down into this book is broken down with three chapters one would be the first one is all about using your stash and and using shape to sort of groove your fabrics together the second one is about using tools because I don't quite find using a template a really good way to work into my stash and the third one is about scale so this happened I'm just going to show you this one thing and then we'll move on but this quilt that's um a 60-inch block and I absolutely love exploring the changing scales without looking at six inch blocks you know antique boat and I thought there's no way I can make all those six inch blocks so I went to I blew it up to be sixty but just to be a little bit crazy I pieced the background with two inch squares but I really like the idea that changing the scale of what you're looking at in your pattern allows you to create this imagery and you can see without sort of talking about when it's referring to the medallions that by having these bits moving off the page your mind is going and filling in the rest of that basket so yeah so adding layers was really about having basic skills and then exploring them and adding layers of complication to what I was looking at and what I was doing I was closer than my last severe most recent book was called mixing four elements and in this book I really wanted to really explore a variety of techniques in single projects because I find that we sort of tend to be able I'm an applique artist or I'm a piece or or I'm handfuls running machine filters but what would happen if you mixed a variety of techniques one project you'd be able to exercise all the different things that you've learned and each time you come to a junction of what how would I do that or what will I do next you have that opportunity to look into your toolbox and find something new to use you might also be interested to know that my photographer is my happy baby takes all the photos and it's quite fun when we go to suit our books could see um he takes me to places that I probably would not naturally want to go and it's and we get some really nice interesting locations around Australia so there's also lots of you know if you don't live in Australia it's a good way to see a little bit of what goes on so this one keeps coming up this is my little quilt into the woods and what you can see here is I've used a lot of techniques that liberated piecing and with machine cool did you go and law it applique so this is one that I'm teaching at multi by the lake in July so if you're interested in working a little bit more closely with me and having a little interpersonal exchange this will be above certain spots available and Mac and also being my the modern wedge one which is my lovebirds Club which is somewhere in here I think we will come fastest when we will offer you that kilowatt yeah so I'm also going to be in epic culture studio in Fairfax Virginia I'm going to be with the modern Cofield in Baltimore's quilting by the lake then the modern quilt guild with the quilters corner in Pittsburgh and then finishing that delight or with on a Maria Horner at Kraft self doing and that workshop will be doing taking shape so all of the information about my workshops coming up in the US are on the website so you can just go to material obsession calm day you and you'll be able to join me live yeah so let's go look at a couple of school samples hey oh wait I have I had one right here hello hi this is Katie visiting from berry orange yeah artists keep getting your daily fixed from coming to hook you up system was oh good well thank you a little bit some workshops and this is what I like to refer to as the wall of fun one of the most amazing things about being a quilter is being able to learn something new every day and I really enjoy working with shade 60-degree shade 45-degree shape and everything in between my latest greatest fascination would be with the Mariners compass believe it or not we had the props all set up but somebody moves them I'll show you a quote made with that but any one of these shapes allows you to cut accurately therefore the Chancellor's are filling together accurately are greater and it allows you to play with different kinds of fabrics and mixing them all up to get your own mix for example this is one that I think it means that Mariners come to school this one is called Haiti days and it's just simply using sixty-degree oh look at how beautiful that is on the back Thanks big scale prints are beautiful for backings but in this one it was using a 60-degree diamond in the star and then in a diamond shape and among 50 degree triangle at setting but this is my favorite kind of thing to do to take one shape and then to just mix up all the fabrics so that they move easily and smoothly throughout the course this is the one that I did with the satin Robin Mariners compass by Ruth very thinking and talking at the same time not my strength on this quilt we should step back to me was every year in January I have a little bit of time off and I do something just for me and this is what I did this year the idea was to use my big scale floral this one by Jennifer peg Nelly and mixing it up with other prints throughout the quilt not worrying about what style or collection was just making little pockets of color that I like together myself so each one of these could have taken me quite some time to pick the fabrics to go into it and then I just pieced them together and set them on some Denise Schmidt plaid because one of the things that I really like to do is mix a variety of designers together and Denise has always been one of my favorites because she gives us these really beautiful fabrics that are great for applique on top of and um and using as you know just a little bit of light relief you know I tend to get just a bit busy in my blocks so having these nice big open space backgrounds is quite nice so here we have an alien Butler here we have Martha negly Jennifer Pegg knowing but just for fun I also like to throw in something that's a little bit reproduction and reproduction mix of case or honor Maria Horner and of course the sashing is my way of saying yeah I make my own choices I love this animal print used to sashing and it strategically I liked it because it wasn't just light or dark it mixed both fabrics together so it's that quite comfortably no matter what the block value was um I also like it because when I make a quilt I like to have a little imaginary journey or a story in my head and this one took me to my grandfather's pool room when I was a kid and he had those really super dorky dogs playing cards you know paintings and posters that were popular a long time ago and I just sort of feel like I'm in somebody's food then when I look at this quilt and I think that's really important this little block lying around to show you fussy cutting with the graphic stripe from flop together oh wait a second let me take this opportunity to introduce you to my secret weapon under my weight to stand in front of my quote no kidding this is Wendy Miller she's one of our resident teachers here and I call her my secret weapon because she is unbelievably talented in all levels and it's a pleasure to be able to present her fabrics and designs and teaching skills to all of you but she doesn't like to be on camera so here's an example of thanks Wendy I know that probably killed there's a sample of using the feature pots from celebrate and I just made these little funky frames and I'm sort of a turned-out style block and you can see how the fabric cuts down the vertical and on the horizontal and then using the stronger colors to set the cornerstone so that was kind of that was quick and easy little tool to make if you want to stay fine with you anytime later named by the hallway at material session was one way just as a note of reference we are located in a 200 year old sandstone terrace which is a very typical style building for Sydney we love it because it's really close to the city so when people come to visit us from other countries they can get here on a bus in about 10 minutes and I love like the hardwood floors of the sandstone walls and the cozy feeling and in addition we have a kitchen so there's often cooking in the smell of cooking which makes something feel like we're all at home really quite lovely back on track this is a quote made by Carolyn Davis who has been a part of the material session team because our very first day on Carolyn mixed together all different konbu who thought folk are revolution we've got cake fast that we've got tulip pins we've got Amy Butler or Jennifer peg Nelly all the free spirit players are evident in this quilt and then it's quilted with pearl H in this case it's the variegated version of elegant why to Fargo and yeah that's a really fun little quilt to put together here's one that we made using so got revolution and Julie Herrmann sidekick ruler so that's a fantastic big triangle and even though it's not squares it's quite simple to put together you just sew it together on the diagonal so you're sewing straight seams all the time Helen I'm who's my camera holder today she made this quilt for us when I was talking about using big diamonds a big big scale print this is one that I did for quote mania for the simply modern magazine and it was using my being the big medallion print and large scale two and a half inch hexagons as frame and I really like the fact that this is a throwback to very traditional style English quilts with the big medallion print in the middle but it's also very modern because using children using a contemporary child protective Joanne ask your local shops order oh yeah there you go if you don't find my balance in your local shop that's quite a good idea to ask you shop around because a Paralympian to you and they're interested in keeping the business to be able to respond not to fly fabric in but it'll help now see if I have something as they want you guys can't be everywhere all the time and here we have lovebirds which is Scott has some heat this is from mixing quilt elements and this is one of the quotes that I'm teaching at quilting by the lake in July using my wedge ruler which is my favorite tool little bits of hexagon and a bit of really super easy applique I didn't grow up sewing I didn't grow up getting taught how to do applique by my grandmother so I had to learn the hard way and to be honest I always thought it was for somebody else to do and when I discovered applique I realized it's actually quite fun and we're so lucky to live with now because the tools are fantastic to make quilting a really good experience so you have really broad stroke curved lines like for example in my heart and really easy shapes to applique down but by the way when you do workshop with me you don't even have to use the designs that I've made we can come up with things that are more personal to you to make it your story so let's go out into the front room so here you see um this is our sort of room you want to scan around the room now what I'm trying to do I look triangle cushion now here it gives an example of what's being done in our classroom today using all of our patterns or the triangle pushing made with the hexagons which you can see I'm tilting right there yeah so we're looking at different shapes and different ideas now there's a couple of pillows from inexpensive elements but what I really want to draw your attention to was again mixing here we have a lot of Annie Butler wonder collection which is quite beautiful and some Heather Bailey and some armory of order - it's really exciting to see how this collection fits with all of their designs so if I was looking to make a strong line in a quilt I could use something that reads very warm like this and a very cool on a Maria Horner even though you might think open I can't imagine those things together when I put them together I think Wow that is a great combination of fabric so I'm not looking for the obvious combinations are looking for interest or for example having bid this week off with a blue and again complementing it with something that's a little bit warmer but it's very interesting how these two different colors of fabric pick up the highlights and interest in each one and make them really interesting therefore strike I can't walk by strike without buying it color consolidation fantastic of binding dashing side borders all different kinds of things stripes people are often afraid of cutting them for fear that they're straight but if you cut them across you really actually don't have that much difficulty so this is a really handy kind of a thing to look for we're just sticking eleganza thread in variegated colors are we looking for a solid this is one of our favorite new products this on little section fair game in the core Lake when do you think separate embroidery and her applique I use them for my quilting you'll be using them for your quilting as well on her on her cushion when you like it so much that she started making little celebrate cases with see-through mesh and we funds if earth and they store all of her eleganza in there and like this is one of the clever things that she's done to the thread I don't give away everything that is coming put there or very generous about giving away stuff especially with it somebody else's yeah so you can see the shelf is filled with samples of different kinds of using the fabric ranges is in a different chair and another thing I'll draw to your attention is you might see this simply modern magazine out in um sorry about that it's Cal cotton but a brilliant series of articles for simply modern the most recent issue was on using scale so if you're interested in exploring larger scale prints you might want to pick this magazine up and have a read through it just talks about how you might want to use your scale whether its large or small and also I interviewed some of our great teachers mark George sue Cody and lead and Manwaring and you might and maybe to given a little tips on how to get more out of there filling this one more on that eleganza and this is also an example of what what we do looking at traditional Japanese Sachiko this is a pre-printed panel and then using the eleganza in the variegated to cover it up makes that very traditional kind of look a little bit more modern or a little bit more material obsession if you will so yeah so I think the points that I really want to make today is it's about the community of quilting and the in shop experience of actually sharing your creative spirit and with other people about talking to people about what you want to do about expanding your vision I mean I can be a very narrowly focused thinker and I really like the fact I want to talk to somebody else they might help me see things a little bit differently and maybe move me away from a personal bias toward a color that I might have or a structure of a quilt so I like this idea of looking at something and saying how can we do that just a little bit differently how can we make it more personal how can we tell our story so that when people look at your quilts or when they look at my quilts they know that I made it they can clearly see the decisions that I that I've made that it's got my sort of style to it which might be lots of different things so at that stage at this stage so that's a guy even him a little bit no I don't think so no no we did a practice run and everybody started to hide when they saw that we were interviewing so does anybody else have any questions they want to ask I'm just going to flip through the bottom part and see if I had covered everything yeah I like these thumbs up I Robin love that one whoops so girls at free-spirit is there anything else if you want me to talk about while I'm here Nancy okay well I hope that you've enjoyed this little tour of material obsession my my babbling you can follow me on instagram at matt augs girl or you can follow the shop at material obsession I have a blog that um I I used to ride all the time I'm trying to get in there once or twice a week because I do really like to talk about the issues that I see in the quilting community and to share new product a new technique I social media has added a great aspect to our quilting life and I'm really proud to be able to reach out to so many people and I know that you love it because our websites very active we're selling kits and patterns all over the world to all kinds of people my husband John has really been taking perfect good care of that region um yeah he's very attentive to all your needs are going to be learning a lot about quilting in the meanwhile so yeah keep up with us I hope to see you in the face when I'm a rot when I'm there in July and if you have any questions you can always email me I'm really happy to respond to no matter what your questions are your your concerns so look for my fabrics in your shorts your shops and hope to see you sometime soon in person yes we still have openings at crafts house I think you're welcome I love sharing my store with all of you wish you could all come and visit hi Jeannie in Toronto police and Robin mom hi Robin oh yeah this is Robin mom who's joining us and she's really um she's the maker of this really intelligent product what I love about that is the instructions are fantastic actually I have to sign off because otherwise I'll keep talking till the end of the day and that could be very scary thanks very much for joining me and thank you to Helena

Channel: FreeSpirit Fabrics

Views: 2,135

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

Keywords: freespiritfabrics, iamafreespirit, kathydoughty, celebrate

Id: fWY94oxlx14

Length: 40min 0sec (2400 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 17 2017