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I needed to create two new class samples for my Yes You CAN Free Motion Quilt! class, as all my other samples had been sent out to other guilds/shops. I LOVE it when my To Do List actually includes “quilt something”. This is my intro class and I do teach it differently than any one else I am aware of – we do 5 different motifs in a beginner class. That way, students learn skill sets from each one that will apply to their future quilting, no matter the motif. Because of that, I felt the need to send out…
I had the pleasure of being the Featured Quilter at the Mother Lode Quilters’ Guild Show in Sutter Creek. I met so many people, engaged in interesting conversations and was generally treated like a Queen! Anelie Belden is the President and was a supportive and attentive host. I stayed at the Foxie Inn, a lovely bed and breakfast just steps away from the show. I took breakfast in the garden each morning and enjoyed an indulgent croissant breakfast. I was greeted with a beautiful basket from the guild: Tucked in there was the local paper with a feature article…
After a 3 year absence, it was time for the River City Quilters Guild‘s show! Clearly, it was a bumper crop year as there were so many fantastic quilts. Like always, keep in mind that some wonderful quilts are missing from this post because my photo was bad or I just lost track as I ran into people and chatted. So here we go: Interesting, there were 2 Best of Shows – one Traditional, and one Modern. Jan Soules took both! Oh this was beautiful! Jan uses fabric with such skill. Lin Squires’ quilting was the perfect touch and enhanced…
I did some dramatic things to my yellow silk quilt this week. There is no turning back now. I hope this works! I cut off the border. The raw silk was just too floppy and I knew this quilt would not hang well. I bit the bullet and removed the border. It was a challenge: The thread I used by almost invisible, visible only that it had a bit of sheen next to the matte of the raw silk. Yikes, that left me with a raw edge: I decided that I would do the whole panel as an overlay…
I recently attended a local event at Meissner Sewing in Sacramento that included a Hillary Goodwin talk and Trunk Show. The store was also festooned with some of the notable quilts from QuiltCon 2022. For those of you who do not know the name, Hillary Goodwin is a local wearable and quilt artist as well as an ER doc! She won Best of Show at QuiltCon with this quilt: This quilt was not available for the Meissner event as it was traveling. It speaks to the hard times that health care professional endured during the Pandemic. I wish I…
What else do you do when it’s 116 degrees? Quilt of course! Bayley still needs her walks, but they are shorter and altered to find shade and paw-friendly places. I was able to finish my sheer piece that I wrote about last week, which is currently nameless: This is a prototype, a lark, a fun romp. I designed it in about 20 minutes, with no planning sketches, just reacting to what I put down. I did have some design errors and I’m fine with that. You might notice the odd gap between the edge of the corner design and…
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…