Teaching, taking and fall

 

We’re going into another shut down here again, sigh. I just taught a delightful class at Meissner’s Main Store and was thinking how wonderful it was to teach in person again. Of course I forgot to take photos. This was a fun class, on Veteran’s Day, with a great mix of students including 2 sisters and a Hubby from one family. And every student was a veteran or raised a veteran – wow! Some had experienced grievous injuries. I am deeply thankful for all of you who served.

It has been a busy week with 2 lectures and 3 workshops since last post. I was to be teaching 3 more classes next week but now one in person class has been cancelled due to the new shut down. This year has certainly taught us all to be flexible, no?

I’m spending a huge amount of time getting my Houston speech ready. I just can’t seem to get traction on it. It’s kind of like the quilt making process, going from being excited to being worried to thinking oh this is awful. This lecture will not be about me (okay, some of it will be), making it harder to write and find suitable visuals. I am guessing it takes at least an hour of searching to find one good photo. I need 40 – 60. Some of them will be of my quilts but I need to support the rest of the speech. I’m plugging away!

As a result, I don’t have a lot to show this week. I am excited to be taking an Inktense class from Telene Jeffrey, aka Lady Jane Quilting. Hester is a South African quilter, Handi Quilter Ambassador and spectacular artist. This is her class sample:

See why I want to take the class? She provided a pattern to create a lovely piece to practice the technique upon, so I marked it and quilted it up:

This is not my usual style so there is a visible learning curve. Normally I don’t quilt complex designs like this and never a completely pre-marked quilt. I love this design! I did a lot of backtracking and it’s distracting in some areas. Maybe I should have done more stops instead of backtracking?

I quilted the front with Glide and the back with Magnifico. I LOVE the way the Glide (front) looks. I always thought Glide to be a “long arm thread” which it really is, but a student or two has brought it into class and I really liked it. My quilting is less-than-optimum but that’s okay, it’s a sample to play with. That outer circle is a bit wobbly!

I learned long ago that you don’t want to make your samples too precious or you won’t embrace the learning that you are supposed to use them for. It took me awhile to make up the sample – 2 hours to mark the design (I don’t know why, but it really did take me that long) and another 3 to quilt it. That all sounds like such a long time but I enjoyed every bit of the process. The class is not until Dec 12, want to join me?

On the home front, I LOVE the light in my home and yard this time of year. I just have to share a few random vignettes:

The light fills my den this time of year and I really love that! I walked in and captured this scene, enjoying those long shadows and the way the light hits. That white-ish couch by the way is bulletproof. We got it when we remodeled and it’s this miracle fiber that will. not. stain. really. It is the fiber itself that is the miracle, not a coating. I took a sample of it and poured soy sauce, Sriracha sauce, red wine, catsup and mustard. It all wiped right off, never penetrating the fabric. If I could do it again I probably wouldn’t have gotten that light of a color. My guests don’t believe me that it’s bulletproof so they are afraid to sit on it. Spill away, it won’t hurt my couch!

Fall here is “circumscribed” I like to say. We don’t have big sweeping swaths of color, more like individual specimen trees and plants. So I revel in the beauty of those:

Nature apparently did not get the 2020 memo and continues to produce beauty.

I will be linking up with:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday