I love to teach, and have done so for over 15 years on various topics. I have taught children and adults about marine conservation and marine life, undergraduate students about Statistics and Biology,  to professionals in computer programming at varying skill levels.

I am so excited to now teach about something I love – Modern Quilting and Quilt Design.

I am thrilled to have an opportunity to share by teaching or speaking to your community. Please contact me for more information about rates and schedule.

2019 – 2020 Workshops

Quilt Design Classes

Modern Quilt Design: Every Day Inspiration (1 day, 6 hours)

This class will illustrate and step you through how to create a Modern quilt design using inspiration from everyday things around you. Once you have a design, skills to turn that design into reality will be shared. You will take home at least two designs and one block.

Designing a Minimal Quilt (1 day, 6 hours)

Designing a minimal quilt is not as easy as it looks. It can take many edit + review cycles to get the right balance or interaction between objects (typically geometric in nature) and the space they reside in. This class will walk you through interpreting an image to a design, then we will work through  a series of edit and review cycles fine-tuning your design. You will then have a chance to turn that design into a postcard or mini quilt.

Modern Quilting Techniques 

Improvisation: Shapes + Lines (1 day, 6 hours)

For such a seemingly free-spirited technique, improvisation can be difficult to get started. In this workshop, you make various lines and shapes that can be mixed to build your own improvisational composition. You will use various techniques to audition and edit your composition.

Art of Fabric Bending (1 day, 6 hours)

Rails, designed based on a railway junction, was created using 1 inch strips. In this class, let us take a new look at strip piecing by folding in improvisation techniques and manipulating the fabrics to add soft curves or waves into our designs. You will design your own quilt layout using soft curves and start constructing your strip-pieced quilt, on the fly, with the aid of a design wall.

Scrappy Large Scale Piecing (1 day, 6 hours)

Do you have a lot of larger fabric scraps lying around and want a way to use them to make a quick quilt? Using those large scraps and improvisation techniques, in this class, you will make an eye catching modern quilt. Along the way you will get a chance to explore color, value and composition.

Phased Circles (1 day, 6 hours)

Looking for a project that lets you play with color, volume, prints and solids.  The Phased Circle quilt allows this exploration in fabric. The workshop uses both machine piecing and needle-turn applique techniques. As a group, we will look at design elements and the role they play in this quilt.

Presentations

Trunk show (60-90 mins, Multi-media)
A Multimedia presentation of my journey as a quilt designer and quilter. I love the ability to combine my love of art and color with my science and math background. Quilting gives me that chance.

Using Every Day Inspiration for Modern Quilt Designs (60 mins, Multi-media)
My husband is always laughing at me, as every thing I seem to see could be a quilt or a quilt block.  This presentation shares with you some of those objects and the designs I create.

Biography

Michelle Wilkie has a love for modern quilting and design, which allows her to incorporate both her art and STEM backgrounds. She has taught classes of various topics for over 15 years to various audiences (kids, undergraduates and adults). She now teaches a variety of quilting workshops, covering techniques of Quilt designing, Improvisational Piecing, Hand piecing and more.

Michelle is a regular contributor to Love Patchwork & Quilting Magazine and the Modern Quilt Guild (MQG). Michelle has also won 3 design competitions: the Winning Entry : Designer’s Choice Award on Threadbias & Penguin+ Fish; Winner of Jungle Ave Quilt design Competition (Sara Lawson @ Sew Sweetness, Quilt Now) and February Block of the Month, Cloud 9 Cirrus Solids.

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