Heidi Parkes - Diary Quilts: Documenting, Manifesting, and Storytelling with Stitch
Heidi Parkes - Diary Quilts: Documenting, Manifesting, and Storytelling with Stitch
Monday - Friday, May 12-16, 2025
10am-4pm each day
Class Fee: $950 WMQFA Members/$1,000 Non Members
Workshop Description:
Have you ever tried to keep a paper diary? Sometimes it’s easier with cloth! Heidi will lead students in creating a Diary Quilt in this 5-day class. Students will receive a wealth of information in advance, with videos on handwork techniques, and a welcome video to spark creativity and offer guidance in collecting and packing fabrics. Quilt top construction will focus on hand piecing, but Heidi will also do a few sewing machine demos in class. Construction choices like this add to the diary effect by chronicling color preferences, found fabrics, trades, and daily whims around stitching with a machine, or by hand.
Heidi will insert strategies for efficient stitching, ways to balance abstraction and precision, and will guide students in riding the line between personal and public. A Diary Quilt can reframe the past, record the present, and represent dreams for the future. Different from a memoir, diaries are tools, holders of secrets, and spaces for play.
Heidi’s clear, yet gentle teaching style allows students to follow their own pace, reflect, intuit, and ultimately: create their own unique quilt top. On the morning of our final class together, we will make plans for quilting and discuss strategy around quilting style, thread color, and overall layout.
Participants will receive a surprise sewing kit personally curated by Heidi!
**If a student needs a refund after they have received the PDF for Framed Quilts or Diary Quilting, they should still be charged the $85 value of the pdf content.
Supplies Checklist:
You can see all of my favorite supplies on my website. For this class, you’ll need:
Needle, I like Dritz milliners
Thread that fits with the needle, I like DMC pearl size 8
A pulling thimble or gripper (I LOVE the Little House Needle Gripper Silicone Thimble, which I purchase from Snuggly Monkey. Use this $5 discount code from me.)
A pushing thimble, to protect your fingers while sewing (I LOVE the Clover Protect and Grip Thimble, which is in my Amazon Shop)
A large solid piece of base fabric to applique on. I often use a 5x5’ piece of unbleached muslin in a large width, but you can use any size from 2x2’ to 7x7’. Any color will work. If using a print, I’d stick towards something subtle. Be careful with bedsheets, since they can be pretty hard to sew through if they have a high thread count. If desired, students can bring a few options and decide on their base in class.
Bring a fabric to share with the class, pre-cut into 17 pieces so that we can divide it up and document our class community in our quilts. This could be a yard of fabric, a square foot of fabric, a handkerchief, a garment, a print, hand dye, lace, ribbon, or anything that you’re willing to part with.
Additional fabric to applique with, items with histories like clothing or domestic textiles are great. Dyed fabric also tells a potent story. Natural fibers (especially cotton) are the easiest to work with, but anything will work.
Scissors
Pins: straight and/or applique
A couple safety pins
An embroidery hoop, any size will work, but ideally 4”, 6”, and 10”
Additional Optional Supplies:
Needle threader
Rotary and mat cutter
Cardboard, thin from a cereal box
Tissue paper, repurposed from gift wrap is fine
Aluminum foil
A marking tool, like a hera marker for pressing a crease/mark into your fabric, an air erasable pen, or chalk
A sewing machine and related thread and tools. I’ll demo a couple things, but it isn’t a ‘must.’ (If you’re already skillful with a machine, or prefer a machine, you’ll really like this option!)
Photo credit: Clare Britt
About Heidi Parkes:
Before Heidi Parkes was born in Chicago, IL in 1982, her grandmother organized a collaborative family quilt to commemorate her birth. Based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin since 2015, her quilting and mending celebrate the hand, and her works tug at memories, shared experience, materiality, and embodiment. Engaging in the worlds of art, quilts, mending, and social media, Heidi is an advocate for the domestic realms, slow stitching, and mindfulness. Find her on Instagram and YouTube. She is the 2024 Pfister Hotel Artist in Residence, and a 2005 graduate from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Heidi’s SOFT MAGIC exhibition will be at the WMQFA from March 6th June 8th 2025.
See this 3-minute Studio Visit on YouTube: https://youtu.be/s3Q-XxWrcYQ
