A 3-day seminar, a lecture, progress on my vintage quilt and my kitchen

 

It’s been a particularly busy 2 weeks! My 3-day seminar at Meissner Folsom was a great success. Seven eager students of varying degrees of experience gathered to learn as much as possible in 3 days. Unfortunately I was immersed in teaching and took only a few photos:

This was the only “class photo” I took and one student was missing. One wonderful thing about a smaller class is that we can easily gather around a sample. I always teach with my camera and projector so that everyone gets a front row seat. But it is useful sometimes to have us all gathered around a piece so that the conversation flows around the group and details can be easily seen.

And what a talented bunch! This is the work of some of the students before they came to class:

Look at that beautiful clutch made in Shireen Hattan’s class!

And how cool is this? Fabulous totes for every need!

And I love the cross-pollination that can happen with students bringing in work from other teachers. Joyce had recently taken a class with my friend Cristina Bono from Spain:

I am SO bummed that I didn’t take more photos of student work. Here is a small sampling of what was made in class.

Shelly took my “Multiple Choice Border or Meander” (I make up my own names😊) and will turn this beauty into a chair cushion:

I LOVE teaching multi-day seminars! Everyone did so well, we all got to know each other (and there were some very interesting stories!), the seminar was packed from beginning to end with tips, new designs and new techniques. Each student brought in at least one project that we created a quilting plan for.

I am especially thrilled that I was able to meet each student where they were in their quilting journey; one student was totally brand new to free motion quilting, 2 had a wee bit of experience and the others had a depth of experience. That is a super challenge as a teacher and one I so enjoy. I had a curriculum planned with a lesson, demo or trunk show to begin each morning and afternoon, but I deliberately stayed flexible so that I could accommodate specific needs. It was a success!

I also spoke at the River City Quilt Guild’s meeting about “The Beauty of the Imperfect”. I LOVE giving that lecture and showing the beauty of imperfect work, some of it from Big Name, Big Award Winners.

It was a happy, inquisitive and enthusiastic crowd. They have a  vibrant vibe and are growing steadily, the sign of a healthy guild. There was lots of talent there:

That’s Jan Soules behind this beauty. Sorry I did not get more photos!

I tried to make the deadline for the Houston show with my vintage tulip quilt but I bailed. I realized I was making bad decisions as I tried to make the cutoff and that’s when I knew I had to stop. I just love this quilt!

One technique I used in the making of this quilt was to machine baste with water soluble thread. The corridor for the feathers was wide, about 5″, and the length of some of the feathers was long enough to get some stretching of the bias. This was causing tucks and I had to control that.

I put in 5 rows of water soluble basting in each corridor to control the bias.

If you use water soluble thread you need to store it in a bag to protect it from moisture.

And most importantly you need to segregate the bobbin holding the water soluble thread! Does that not look like white thread? Yeah, one time I forgot to do this and quilted a whole small quilt with water soluble thread in the bobbin….

All that basting ensured that there were no tucks in those feathers. There would have been if they had not been basted.

I thought I was going to add piping to the edge of the quilt. Currently, I am not sure that is a good design move, but at the time, I wanted piping. Do. Not. Ever do piping without Susan Cleveland’s Pipping Hot Binding Tool! It makes it easy and accurate.

One incredibly useful tip she has is to shrink your piping insert by generously steaming it. I have not done this before (yes, I know I should have), and WOW, you would not believe how much it shrunk! I needed 300″ of piping and I’ll bet it shrunk 10%. I did plan for this but still was surprised.

And now I have 300″ of piping and I’m not even sure I’m going to use it, sigh.

I took the extra step to micro-stipple around each feather’s tip. Do you see how much difference that makes? The feathers on the right stand out so much more.

This quilt screamed for rick rack and I obliged. So glad I did. It is very much in sync with the vibe of this vintage top.

And along the way there has been a lot of frogging.

Random view in morning light. Curves + grid = a beautiful thing.

And wrapped around every bit of this has been the ongoing kitchen remodel. It is going very well so far and we’re close to the end. I am so over all of this and can’t wait to actually cook something!

I’ll be linking up with:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday