Barb Broshous

The first day of the Denver Quilt Show, Michelle and I took a class on making sculptured flowers by Barb Broshous.  Barb is an excellent teacher! The class was all day from 9am-4pm and I never once got bored, tired, or felt hurried or stressed.  It was VERY fun.  Michelle and I both enjoyed it and were happy with our results too!

Barb, who is from Colorado Springs, had brought several quilts so we could see samples of her work.  Her flowers are all three dimensional, so they pop right off the quilt, really making for a fun and interesting wall hanging.  We mainly signed up for the class because CWQG's challenge this year is "Black and White and Floral All Over", chaired by Lorraine, and we're supposed to have something 3D in our quilt, AND something floral, so we thought this would be the perfect class.  Now we're both pretty excited about our challenge quilts, due at the June meeting.

I love the geraniums in the quilt above and we got to learn how to make them!  A MUCH different technique than I thought it would be.  I never would have "guessed" how to make them.

Barb said in order to learn how to make the Birds of Paradise flower she bought a real one and took it all apart and made herself a pattern!
I really like the way she demonstrated each technique to the class, then went around and demonstrated again in groups of two, making sure everyone got it.

The daffodils are pretty neat, but probably my least favorite of the four we made, even though I love daffodils - the first sign of Spring!

Barb was also quick to notice if someone had finished and would show the next step so they kept on task, without making others feel like they were behind and needed to catch up.  That is a true talent in a quilt teacher for sure - probably one of the hardest things to accomplish!

This quilt bouquet shows the flowers we learned to make in class.  On some of her wall hangings she makes a background, quilts it, then attaches the flowers with velcro so they can be switched out. She said she made her mother and sisters wreath background quilts with some leaves appliquéd down, but with several sets of velcro-backed flowers that can be changed out for different holidays and seasons.

With this bouquet, she would remove whatever flower we were working on at the moment and wear it on her jacket.  These flowers would make great lapel pins or hair bows too.




Pretty columbine quilt.

The lilacs are made using the same techniques as the geraniums.

The sunflower is the first, and probably easiest flower we made.  Love her 3D pumpkins on this quilt too!

The red flower was made using the same petal as the sunflower.

On the top flower, she did a hand stitched buttonhole stitch to add interest on those white petals, which were made using the same technique as the daffodil petal.

I really love the geraniums and they're so fun to make!  She said you could use up your ugly fabric making flowers because all the colors just add more interest and the flower is still beautiful!

She also showed us how to make berries and teeny tiny little flowers.

Michelle busy at work on her ruched flower.  This was probably the hardest one for me - I need more practice!

Here are the three I completed in class:  Daffodil, Sunflower and the Ruched flower.

Later that I evening I finished the geranium.

We were somewhat disappointed when we finished class at 4:00 to find out that the quilt show closed at 5:00!  We thought it would be open until at least 6:00.  We got a good walk in though, and besides the iBake pot shop, we discovered a real bakery/donut shop run by a woman from Syria, who gave us a free donut!  All in all a very fun day.