Marilyn Toone

Marilyn Toone spent the evening with us last week at our March quilt guild meeting. She was our guest speaker and instructor. She showed us many of her beautiful quilts and then led a workshop on starch applique. She uses Mylar sheets to make her templates, so everyone did the same. We purchased sheets of mylar for $2.50 and then we got busy! Check back for more Mylar news.

Her trunk show consisted of many many quilts, but for some reason this one really struck me. I am not sure what the name of it is or the story behind it. If someone does, please leave a comment for the rest of us to read.

This quilt is called Pinks My Favorite Color and it has won a few awards. It won second place in the hand quilted division at the Utah Quilt Fest in 2006 and also the Best of Show in the Springville Art Museum quilt show in 2007. It IS a beautiful quilt and the hand quilting is amazing.

I do remember her saying that she doesn't use cotton batting. I think she said it is too hard on her hands to quilt it. She likes wool and polyester.

For the starch applique workshop she had a little project for us to work on. I didn't get a picture of the applique pillow, sorry. Here is a little tip she gave us about pressing our seams in. She said that after we place the mylar template on the fabric we have cut out, apply starch around the seam allowance, along the outer edge where we will NOT be sewing the applique piece to the background. She said to press down the tips of the flower, or the points of the shape first, then press the two sides of the point in. That will give us more precise points.

She also said to clip the inside corners of the fabric to get a smooth, accurate shape. I was surprised by how far she did clip, there is only a thread or two there in the corner of the flower tips.

Marilyn Toone was a wonderful guest to our guild and hopefully everyone learned something. Post a comment about what you learned, so we can all remember the great tips she passed on to us.