Teaching and a visit to Quilting in the Garden

My class last Saturday at the Quilt and Fabric Art Festival was a blast! The class was full and we filled our day with quilting, discovery, laughs and learning. I was so pleased with the outcome – I must show off the work of my students! Keep in mind, I did not count exactly, but around 5 students were brand-spanking new to free motion quilting, another 6 – 8 were fairly new and the rest had quilted a few projects. I was blown away by what was accomplished in class. I do wish we’d had more time together as it’s hard to get it all done in a 6 hour class. There was one finished piece in class and another finish in the next few days, both of which were newbies! Have a gander:

And we had a class finish, by a newbie! I love this:

And a finish a few days later, again, a new free motion quilter:

Pretty cool huh? It was a super day and I hope my students had as good of a time as I did!

NOTE: I previously had the name of the show wrong; it is officially the Quilt and Fabric Art Festival, with no Sacramento at the beginning. My bad.

I got up early the following morning and drove to Livermore to visit Quilting in the Garden shortly after it opened. Turns out I was lucky I wasn’t able to go the day before as it had been cold and windy. I arrived in time to catch a breezy, warm and sunny fall day. There were over 250 quilts on show among the beautiful Heritage Oaks of the nursery. It is a 2-day show so they take them down for the night and rehang them the next morning – yikes! Lookie:

It is a beautiful sight to see the quilts waving in the breeze!

As you enter, you get a peek of what is to come. The quilts are so beautiful fluttering among the magestic oaks:

Nancy Brown was one of the Featured quilters. Her work is both charming and precise. She is most known for her unique animal quilts:

I just love this of course!

But wait, she also works in a more traditional style:

Detail:

How stinkin’ cute is that?

A few more quilty scenes around the show:

Awww, huggie bear needed a quilt too!

This was a large hand-cross stitched quilt!

Jennifer Sampou had a booth with samples of her upcoming ombre line, Sky. OMG that fabric is fabulous! You may remember I quilted the whale quilt on the far left. It was good to see it hanging in real life.

Such a beautiful fall-colored quilt! I’d love to have this in my entry.

This was particularly striking in the breeze. I lost the legend so I do not have the maker’s name on either of these quilts. Please let me know if you know who made them and I will ammend my post.

It was a jam-packed quilty weekend, Fri – Sunday. My heart was full and I slept well Sunday night, a rarity. I hope you enjoyed the tour. I’ll link up with Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday – there are always good links to check out.