Quilt by Numbers Quilts: Book and Class Review

Recently I took an online quilting class on the Creative Spark website and it was so much fun! I’m not a huge quilter, but when I saw Kerry Foster’s Paint by Numbers Quilts: Dog Portraits class offering, I immediately thought, “that would make such a great gift!” I signed up. I asked my son to send me his girlfriend’s favorite photo of her pupper (see below) and got to work straight away!

I actually signed up for 2 classes with the bundle pricing, because I knew I wanted to make a special birthday present for my son’s girlfriend, who has a young Golden Retriever. The first class teaches her technique for animal portrait quilts (Paint by Numbers Quilts: Dog Portraits). The second class (Design Your Own Paint By Number Quilt) teaches how to create your own pattern from a photo of your pet.

I’ve never done anything like this before (portrait and art quilts), but after watching a good chunk of each class, I felt confident I could do this. And I was really exciting to try and make one of these amazing quilts.

Kerry’s teaching style is very straight forward and explains her technique clearly. Her class is based on her book, Paint by Numbers Quilts, which also explains clearly the method and also provides patterns already created for you to use. In hindsight, it may have been wiser to start with one of her patterns and become familiar with the concepts and technique. Instead, I just jumped right in.

That worked okay for me, though it took me a few tries to get a template/pattern that I was happy with. I also changed fabrics and scrapped my first attempt. The first set of fabrics didn’t look right to me. I didn’t have fabrics the color of a golden retriever in my stash, so it took a bit for me to find the colors and prints that I liked. I probably would go lighter next time.

Kerry provides individual help with photo choice, fabric selection, or anything else you may need. She was so helpful in guiding me with fabric pull and what to look for when I was buying my fabrics. Again, I had never done anything remotely like this before and I’m not a huge quilter, so my experience was very limited.

In the end, the result impressed everyone. In fact, when I gave the quilt to her while we were out to lunch for her birthday, she had tears in her eyes. She said it was the most thoughtful gift she’s ever received. That is the most genuine and appreciative response to my handmade gifts that I have ever received, and I’ve been giving handmade gifts regularly since I was a young child. Now everyone wants one of their fur baby! I can’t wait to start my next one of my son’s polydactyl cat, with all those toes!! He has 28! Here’s a photo of the front 13. He has extra toes on all four paws.

Back to the review 🙂

The class is organized in such a logical way and broken down, so when I wanted to review a specific part of the class, such as working with sharp points/corners, it was easy to find to review and keep moving on the quilt. Kerry goes over everything you need to create both your template and quilt.

Her lessons on using the computer programs to create the template were awesome. I’m usually really tech challenged when I’m doing something on the them for the first time and have to search for multiple tutorials to use the desktop programs, but all I used was her tutorials. It also didn’t take me long to get those parts done, which was so refreshing!!

Kerry’s an excellent teacher. Her demonstrations are well done, easy to see and clear–it felt like I was in her studio with her. I didn’t need to search the internet to know what to do. She has lessons on doing a fabric pull and choosing the fabrics, quilting your finished quilt top, and everything in between. She even has a free course to learn the different ways to make your quilt with a method for hanging it on a wall: Hang that Quilt.

Kerry also shows you how to switch our parts that don’t look quite right or that you aren’t happy with. You can see in the photo below that I originally had a larger dark brown shadow on his ear, which I switched out, and not enough detail around the left side of his mouth, so I added some additional pieces there before quilting it.

I haven’t tried many different FMQ designs- I mostly do meandering. I also have not done any FMQ on my new sewing machine. Kerry’s lesson on quilting your portrait quilt was great and helped me a lot! In the end, I admit had over quilted a few areas and knew it while it was happening. Even though I thought I should stop or move over, I just kept going. It was like watching yourself trip over something you saw and thinking to yourself, ‘don’t trip over that’ and tripping over it anyway. I don’t think it ruined the quilt, but definitely learned a lot. I do like the parts I got brave and added some extra texture details, like these on the side of the ear.

When my younger daughter, who also make quilts, saw the final quilt, not only was she so impressed, but she was so proud of me. As she put it, I had challenged myself to try something way out of my comfort zone with regards to quilts.

Kerry’s online classes are on the Creative Spark platform, which is so user-friendly and easy to navigate: Creative Spark. Her fabulous book, Paint by Numbers Quilts, is available to purchase here on the C&T website. The ebook is also very user-friendly. You can see more of Kerry’s quilts and her work online: https://pennydog.weebly.com/

Have a great day!

~Erin