A fabulous seminar, more applique/trapunto work, preparing for a family gathering and The Biggest Takeaway from the seminar!

 

What a faaaaaantastic week I’ve had (if you go Th to Th)! I had 18 talented, eager, prepared, well equipped and enthusiastic students for a 2-day Seminar at Meissner Sewing‘s main location in Sacramento. I billed it as a beginner’s class, but about half of the students had experience, several of them quite talented already. That was a challenge and it all worked out beautifully.

It is such a joy to teach a class like this, when everyone is excited! I hope you can see that joy on their faces.

I seem to always forget to take as many photos as I’d like. I did get a few great shots of some of the gear:

A new one on me – BERNINA Jeff makes a variety of gizmos for BERNINA machines. This one is a cover that protects your knobs during transport. Pretty slick, no?

This particular Anniversary edition of the BERNINA 790 came with this gold front. I. am. jealous!

Aaaand if you’ve got a gold plate on the front of your machine, you HAVE to have a gold plated ruler foot too!

The World’s Cutest Thread Catcher!

And some brought their previous creations:

First time paper piecing! And she didn’t even follow the pattern. This is going to be super fun quilted up!

Sometimes the answer is NOT to free motion quilt. I love the spiral quilting; perfect for this quilt.

This is felted; oh how beautiful! This is when you pull out that cupped free motion quilting foot, to skim over all the texture and bumpies.

We touched on ruler work, and a wee bit of playing in class yielded these fabulous doodles right off the bat, er, ruler:

I did remember to take a working photo:

Meissner set us up in their event space with THREE big screens, which was fabulous! Students could see my work up close on a huge screen with a super clear image. I loved teaching with that kind of set up. We had plenty of space to display things and move about. I forgot to take a photo, but lunch was gourmet sandwiches and salad. Yummmm! Not a tray of cold cuts and cheese.

Just having the room to display quilts and have the class gather round in comfort was a luxury. Most of the students said they wanted to increase their joy and confidence in free motion quilting. I think they achieved their goals!

BIG NEWS: I am talking with Meissner about a follow up 2-day event in December, “Fills For Days!”. Stay tuned.

This is a Big Weekend for the Lyon family. The whole family won’t be able to gather together over the holidays as we have before, so we created an alternative when everyone could make it: Labor Day. It will be short, just 2 days really, but I will take that!

Baby Morgan is just 3 months old and will join Logan and her parents for her maiden long distance car journey. We are about a 2 hr drive and we hope that Morgan adapts, but we are prepared for whatever happens. Gramma got a new Pack n Play so that Morgan’s Mom and Dad have one less thing to tote.

Youngest son from Tucson is coming with his girlfriend whom we adore. We are in the process of getting a proper queen bed set up in there, but for the time being I got a really good blow up mattress and outfitted it with linen bedding. Yeah, I’m a snot; I love linen bedding. Once the real bed arrives, I imagine it will sleep a child or two!

And of course, cooking will be involved. I love to cook and I will cook as much as I can ahead of time so that I enjoy everyone’s company. I am so excited!

I had to steal away time to put a little into my applique piece:

I forgot to take photos as I went, grrr. At first I thought the beige silk thread faded into the background too much. I tried one corner with navy thread. Yikes, not the right answer! I ripped that out. Ick.

I wrote last week also about the ruler I used. My shorter length Line Tamer ruler was too short for these lines so I thought I would use a regular ruler. I did NOT like the result. I wish I had a photo. No matter how careful I was, I was getting a little bit of wobble. Wobble does NOT happen with the Line Tamer. It was subtle. I went back and forth, should I rip it out or not? I finally decided to rip it out and I LOVE the result above!

There is so much right with the way the quilting is going on this piece. The bouncing bananas in the applique are the perfect fit and are gorgeous. The radiating (and straight!) lines in the corners bring your eye back to the focal point and provide a quiet beauty. OMG I just love those lines.

Here’s the deal about straight lines and ruler work: the Line Tamer is foolproof. Your ruler foot fits exactly into the slot. You WILL absolutely positively have straight lines with the Line Tamer. If you use any other ruler that simply has a straight edge, not so much. I have a lot of experience with fmq and my lines were not straight with a “regular” ruler. I have so many testimonials about how much quilters like the Line Tamer. I wish I invented it. Yes, I sell it on my site, for good reason – I am passionate about it. It really is a game changer.

Aaaaaaand, the Big Takeaway from the seminar?? ADD speed to your free motion quilting! Let me explain.

That is my speed control. See how it’s almost full speed? (Actually it’s accidental that it’s not all the way over). Many times you need that speed.

Let me be clear. I am NOT saying you should go full tilt petal-to-the-metal to quilt. NO! Most times you will be mid- to higher speed, not the fastest. BUT, when you are doing something curvy or circular, you need speed to get a beautiful curve without bobbles. If you have your speed control set to the middle, or even worse, to slow, you will have one heck of a time getting a beautiful curve. You need speed for that. Otherwise you are likely to get a pixelated looking curve.

When you put the speed control to high, you learn to control that speed with your foot control. Now you have the full range of speed possibilities under your foot. That is what you need.

For 4 students, putting their speed control to high was absolutely pivotal; their curves were so much smoother with that added speed. Also, when you set it too slow, many times your stitch length will be too long. That makes for less attractive stitches and also, the beautiful puff created by the quilting line will seep out underneath those loose stitches, taking away some of the beauty of what you have created.

Set that speed control to high and learn to control your speed with your foot control. This so so important!

Okay, it’s shopping day today, cooking tomorrow and family on Saturday! Yippeee!

I’ll be linking up:
Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday