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It’s been another scattered week: kitchen-ing, frogging, Gramma-ing, kitting and cooking! The little sheer quiltlette that I’ve been working on has had its share of challenges. I consider this a prototype for what may be a future class, so I’m not so upset with some “visible learning curve”. There is an expression: “Visual decisions need to be made visually”. In other words, sometimes you can’t just sketch it out or come up with a plan in your head. You have to DO it and see what you think. I did a lot of that this week. I could not figure…
I’m a little scattered right now. I would love to finish my yellow silk quilt, but I’ve hit a roadblock and I have to make some decisions: I need to come up with a border design. I think I like this insert between the center and the border, but I’m not sure about that either. Decisions….. I am wanting to get this quilt done! I forgot to note in last week’s post that I went to the Roseville Quilt, Craft and Sewing Festival. I did not expect to come home with anything because….well, you know, I don’t “need” anything. But…
I am so happy that the Long Beach Quilt Festival returned after 9 long years! It is a great venue and the attendees were thrilled to be there. I had a great time exploring Long Beach, teaching, and a wee bit of time viewing the quilts. Long Beach is a beautiful town; it’s friendly and packed with restaurants, at least in the area around the convention center. The architecture of the convention center is, um, interesting: It’s especially pretty at night: I stayed at the adjoining Hyatt, known for its “Swan Boats”: It looked like fun, especially at night,…
I missed you all! A lot has happened in the last few weeks and I’ll start with my Denver trip – what fun!! The adventure started before we even left Sacramento. We were booked on a Southwest flight that was cancelled, as were all the other SW flights to Denver out of Sacramento that day. Of course it was a mess with everyone trying to figure out what to do. Our choices were a flight arriving at 2AM, or something that would arrive late afternoon the next day. None of that was assured as there were LOTS of people trying…
NOTE: I will be traveling next week and won’t have a blog post. I may be back Aug 4th…or maybe not. I will be teaching at the Long Beach Quilt Festival then. Please stay tuned. I’m running as fast as I can! It was the first California State Fair in 2 years and I was having withdrawal! I’ve attended state fairs in Illinois, California and Texas, as well as smaller fairs, and I’ve loved them all. They’re fun, cheesy and interesting. You can count on lots of aggressive vendors selling mostly useless but interesting items, agricultural exhibits, artery clogging food,…
This was fun! I took a class last Sunday at Cali Quilt Co to learn how to create Clam Up bags by Annie. Tayva, the shop’s owner, walked us through the process and I got two done in a 4 hr class! I forgot to take photos during class. There were two fellow Folsom Quilt and Fiber Guild members in the class, which made it even more fun! I don’t take many classes, and if I do, they are either something fairly easy that I just want to jump right in and complete, or, an in-depth, serious class. When it comes…
This will be short. Here is this week’s finish: I could have made a quilt in the time it took me to land this car. It’s a 2022 MDX, new. I have spent at least 60 hrs on this search. At this specific time in the market, MDX’s are super hard to find, at least the one I wanted. I filled all 90 cu ft of cargo space often in my old MDX. I looked at all kinds of other cars, models, and brands, both new and used, and this is what fit me best. It has all kinds of…
NOTE: I may take next week off from my newsletter and blog; I will play it by ear. I am in the hunt for a car and it is consuming my time. I have accumulated a great stash of pressing tools and products. Whether you quilt, sew garments, or both, you need a good selection of pressing tools. It took a while to accumulate my tools, and as I took photos for this post, I realized that I had hundreds of dollars invested in pressing tools! I garment sew as well as make quilts, so I have a wide variety…
A finish happened this week and it’s got kind of a cute story: BTW, is this upside down? I keep going back and forth on it. My local guild, the Folsom Quilt and Fiber Guild, has a give away table. For our last meeting we had a Sit ‘n Sew, which was delightful. I walked past the give away table and picked up this interesting piece: Wish I’d taken a photo of the whole thing, but this is the piece as I began to work on it. When I spied it, it reminded me of another piece that I took…
I get a lot of questions about stitch length. What is the ideal stitch length? It depends on your thread. How do you know you have the right stitch length? You’ll see it! I have a short, informative post on stitch length. I am talking about free motion quilting here, although the principle would be the same if my feed dogs were up. Because I am free motion quilting, my feed dogs are down and the combination of machine speed and how fast I move the fabric determines my stitch length. So when free motion quilting, it does not…