Classes with Julia Gahagan

Classes with Julia Gahagan

Julia loves making miniature quilts on a variety of themes – – especially small, pictorial quilts with little villages and sea sides. Her quilts have been inspired by travel in the UK & the Mediterranean.

She also loves Christmas themed patchwork & quilting. This is reflected in many of her designs for wall hangings, mini quilts, garlands, tree decorations and wreaths.

Julia tends to use a very quick and easy techniques that anyone can apply successfully. No expertise is required. You just need to like making little quilts.

Currently, Julia is working on larger quilts made with recycled vintage linens, especially those with embroidery. She enjoys recycling beautiful pieces of vintage work into new projects.

She has taught for many years and has experience of teaching the City & Guilds course. She also runs workshops including a weekend retreat with justhands-on.tv!

Julia lives in Surrey and travels all over the country to deliver talks and workshops. And, you will often see Julia at major quilt shows including Sandown and the Festival of Quilts.

Signature Technique:

Miniature Quilts

Top Tips:

- Miniature quilts are a great, quick way to use up your scrap fabrics and have fun playing with simple shapes (e.g. beach huts and houses) and different colour ways.
- For small shadow applique, use a fabric glue pen on the fabric shapes rather than fusible web.
- To secure fabric pieces, cover with shadow fabric (fine polyester tulle or wedding net), lay on top of thin wadding and backing fabric, secure with small pins and then secure shapes with machine quilting.
- You don’t have to use a walking foot when quilting a miniature quilt. Use an open toe applique foot. It’ll help you see the direction to stitch in.

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Classes with Julia Gahagan
  • Meet Julia Gahagan - Miniature Quilt Prize Winner at Quilts UK, Malvern 2019

    Julia shows her award winning quilt made with shadow applique, like all her miniatures. This means that the small pieces of fabric are held in place by the net/gauze, which in turn needs on simple quilting.

    She shows us how easy it is. Indeed we see how useful even the smallest pieces of fabri...

  • Miniature Shadow Applique Quilt Kits with Julia Gahagan

    The shadow applique technique works so very well with tiny pieces of fabric. There is no need for you to sew round this little shapes. They are trapped beneath the net/organza layer, and the quilting is really simple and straightforward too. You can do clever swirly free motion, or just straight ...

  • Meet Julia Gahagan - Miniature quilter

    Julia is a self taught quilter learning mainly from books and short workshops, but eventually signed up for the City & Guilds qualification where she learned how to develop her own design skills.
    Her main passion is to make miniature quilts, as they are fun to make and are great to give as gifts ...

  • Miniature Quilts with Julia Gahagan

    Scraps with a difference
    You will now look at the scraps in your waste basket with a whole new interpretation – there could be a whole village in there!
    Hand or machinework
    Julia shows us how easy it is to create delightful little pictures and landscapes with tiny pieces of fabric, which are capt...